Contagious illnesses such as Covid19, economy, politics are all complex systems. It is possible to build some predictive models but accuracy of such simulations depends on assumptions about relative importance of variables that inform the model AND on the quality of data that are being fed into it. Thinking about our futures is an attempt to build such a predictive model for our own lives. We tend to focus on trying to predict or stop future events. Michel Dugas coined intolerance of uncertainty as the main maintenance mechanism in anxiety. You can think of worrying as an attempt at building a future simulator that is supposed to protect us against vagaries of life. The events of current year overtaxed our internal predictive mechanism. Many of us worry and want some semblance of predictability.
We will not be able to predict the shape of the things to come with a 100 percent accuracy. We might not be able to predict what will happen tomorrow. Will I have a car accident? Fall down on the way to work? Be offered an interesting opportunity or get berated by a stranger? I know there is food in the fridge but what if my partner eats the last of the strawberries that I planned on having in the evening? Other than the accident, most of these are “trivial concerns” that we do not pay too much attention to. Our ability to dismiss such concerns comes from our focus on our actual objectives. In this case: completing a productive day at the office and having well deserved munchies in the evening.
You might think that this approach is too simplistic and does not apply to problems like COVID. I would like to argue the opposite: such little goals can help us survive the worst of times. These little goals can help us add some order to things. These goals are the only thing that we can have some control over. We cannot put our lives on hold to be resumed after everything stabilizes in the world. There is no magical time bank that would allow us to retrieve 2020 from a vault to be used to extend our lives at some future date.
Instead of getting overwhelmed by current crisis, we can learn to focus on relevant information, distinguish gathering of necessary information from search for certainty, solve problems when problems happen (and not when we imagine them) and remind ourselves that although circumstances change, life skills remain.
FOCUS ON RELEVANT INFORMATION
It might be very tempting to consume all the news available. As human beings we feel compassion for others. However as painful as these news are, reading about graves in Brazil and unrest in Hong Kong might do very little to inform what you should be spending your time on today. The debate on the origin of the virus will not clarify the steps that you need to implement to open your restaurant or tell you whether it is possible to visit your loved one at a nursing home. Keep your information bites small, specific, and relevant to the tasks that you want to undertake.
DISTINGUISH GATHERING NECESSARY INFORMATION FROM SEARCH FOR CERTAINTY
Some persons gather information in search of reassurances or because “knowing is better than not knowing”. Many of my clients check the internet several times per day keeping track of COVID cases across the globe. At least they know. But know what exactly? We all know that we have to content with a pandemic, yet how should the numbers from Germany influence my ability to go for a walk in Ontario? Absorbing such information overloads us – home becomes headquarters. It can make us feel like we are part of a major undertaking, makes us feel important. Sure, we are affected but we are not in the pandemic headquarters.
Excessive information gathering results in doubt and anxiety. Just imagine an overly concerned parent or an insecure romantic partner who texts you every hour to find out about your well-being or status of your relationship. If you ever have been on a receiving end of such behaviour, you know that the person making the inquiries will never be satisfied. If you have engaged in such behaviour yourself, then you know the severe anxiety and pain that is felt within couple of minutes of having received a reply. Initially the reply feels great. You know that everything is fine and at least for now and it feels good to know that. But a lot can happen in 30 minutes. Anxiety comes back and the only way that the anxious person knows how to regulate it, is by getting the reassurance that everything is OK. Eventually such excessive information gathering becomes a problem in its own right. It becomes exhausting.
SOLVE PROBLEMS WHEN PROBLEMS HAPPEN (NOT WHEN YOU IMAGINE THEM)
As we worry, we imagine problems that might or might not happen. What if all my efforts are in vein? What if it won’t work anyways? We imagine global unsolvable problems and then these imaginary problems keep us frozen in dread. Although worries tend to be ill-defined, objectives can be specific. Here are couple of examples of COVID worries: “What if my company goes under?”, “What if I get sick?”, “What if the world never be the same?”. Now, see what happens if we replace worries with objectives: “I need to take that class online so that I have better chances of getting hired if my company goes under”, “I am going to protect myself by washing my hands and avoiding unnecessary risks”, “I am going to focus on what I can still do or find interesting even if the world will be very different”.
Consider an avid hiker who has lost a leg in an accident. That person’s world is not the same and will never be the same. It does not make any sense for us to worry about a possibility of losing a leg in an accident and consequently abandoning all car travel. The chances of such an event are fortunately quite low and the price of avoidance would be higher than a lost leg. Yes, it would. How would your life look like if you refuse to commute all together? Being a safe driver and avoiding driving all together are two very different things. We take reasonable precautions. When a painful event occurs, we can train ourselves to focus on objectives: the need to be fitted for and learning to walk with an artificial limb, learning pain control, figuring out the location of wheelchair accessible viewing points in the Rocky Mountains. It will still hurt but at least we won’t lose more than we absolutely have to.
Think of all the problems that kept you up at night in 2019. Did you worry about COVID? Probably not. And yet your worries kept you exhausted and ultimately unprepared for changes that have happened. We waste lot of time and energy solving problems in our imagination. Yet it is impossible to solve problems until we have real data. Worry is an attempt at addressing issues that might not even happen and that we have no concrete information about.
CIRCUMSTANCES CHANGE. LIFE SKILLS REMAIN.
Some want life to stay just as it is. Others want things to be drastically different. We want peace, happiness and prosperity. There really isn’t much wrong with it, except that the belief that our flourishing depends solely on circumstances is false. Daniel Gilbert discusses a telling example in his TED Talk on the Surprising Science of Happiness. We all believe that persons who win lottery should be much happier than persons who end up in accidents. This is true immediately after such an event occurs. However, research shows that as time passes, everyone returns to their baseline level of happiness irrespective of whether you have benefited from a large cheque or lost a limb. Gilbert explains this phenomenon in terms of a difference between natural happiness (we get what we want) and synthetic happiness (we adapt and manage to preserve meaning irrespective of circumstances).
The concept of synthetic happiness holds less appeal than natural happiness and, of course, it makes sense to prefer winning a lottery over being in an accident. Yet circumstances can change without much warning while the skill of generating “synthetic happiness” remains. To phrase it differently, if I know how to swim, I am not going to worry about being thrown into water. I prefer to stay ashore despite my skill at swimming. I prefer for my life to be interesting, stimulating but also reasonably safe and comfortable. Yet, we need an ability to swim to explore the shore. Otherwise each approaching wave creates dread. We need flexibility, innovation, willingness to manage the emotional discomfort when pushing ourselves to do what is necessary. Fortunately, once we develop these skills, once we have resilience, we get an emotional buffer against crises. We do not feel happy, but we do not crash.
Building resilience is conceptually easy yet extremely hard to implement. In short term, your body and mind can produce even more painful reactions than what you are feeling today. Learning to tolerate uncertainty is a very good starting point. The Generalized Anxiety Disorder Workbook: A Comprehensive CBT Guide for Coping with Uncertainty, Worry, and Fear by Melissa Robichaud, Michel Dugas and Martin Antony, and Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert elaborate on concepts discussed in this post and can launch you in the right direction.
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