William James once said, “The great thing, then, in all education, is to make our nervous system our ally instead of our enemy.” But what the preeminent philosopher and founder of modern psychology forgot to say was that doing so was easier said than done. For many, or perhaps most of us, it seems as though our nervous system is out to get us. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Making stress and anxiety a friend—or at least not a constant enemy—is well with our capabilities. It starts with mindset.
Mindset is really just a fancy term that comprises the set of attitudes that define us. It starts with a belief, i.e., that we can understand stress and anxiety and manage their effects. But from that point on, mindset is all about action; it's about doing and becoming. Belief is a powerful thing—indeed, the stories we tell ourselves and others are powerful things. But we don't go to the theater just to hear the script being read by the actors. We go to see the script (the story) acted out. So let’s get going.
Anxiety: The Child of Stress
I say that anxiety is the child of stress because we are, in some respects, the cause of our own anxiety. In other words, our anxiety is but an internal emotional reaction to an external event—a stressor, like COVID-19. But before we scold ourselves for our reactions, we should remember that anxiety is a normal and healthy emotion. In fact, it’s a gift handed down by evolution: If something didn’t feel right, our ancestors took steps to address it, and those who didn’t, or those who thought the saber-toothed tiger was a nice kitty, didn’t live long enough to pass on their genes to us. In short, anxiety kept our ancestors alive. And in the age of COVID-19, this is helpful: Anxiety motivates handwashing, social distancing, and wearing masks—all practices that can keep us safe.
But anxiety can turn our nervous system against us, as well—it can turn unhealthy. For instance, when we feel anxious in the absence of a threat, anxiety is no longer a friend but a foe. Here, consider phobias like phasmophobia—the fear of ghosts. I'm pretty sure ghosts aren't real, but for some people they are, and that "fact" is enough to paralyze them with fear. Similarly, for some people, the very thought of a snake slithering across their feet is enough to bring on crippling anxiety.
Additionally, when our anxiety is way out of proportion to a threat, it can turn unhealthy as well, or at least unhelpful. For instance, meeting new people seems as if it should not be a big deal, but for some the very thought of it can be overwhelming. Ditto for talking to authority figures and speaking in public. I have the toughest time getting my kids to speak to their teachers about homework assignments and grades. "Your teachers are not going to bite,” I tell them. “They might,” they’ve all said.
So what can be done to make our nervous system our friend and tamp down our anxiety? Well, first of all, recognize that while anxiety can make us feel out of control, it’s actually a systematic process—and one that we can interrupt. Those first flutters in our bellies are a sign that we’re responding to a stressor. And then our heart rate and our breathing rate go up as well. This is the fight or flight response that redirects blood and oxygen to the brain, heart, and muscles, enabling us to run faster, fight harder, and concentrate better—all good stuff. But there's a point in there where we decide, consciously or otherwise, that these signs are ominous. And that's the point at which we can get carried away by our emotions and feelings. After all, we don't interpret elevated heart and breathing rate as ominous signs when we're exercising, so we shouldn't necessarily determine them as bad when faced with uncertainty. Anxiety is simply the body's way of signaling that we are ready for whatever comes our way. But we could use a little help dialing those anxious feelings down from time to time.
First off, breathe. Our lungs are lined with stretch receptors, and when we take a deep breath those receptors are activated. They essentially tell our brains that everything is ok, that we've got this, and that there is no reason to get carried away. But just one breath usually isn't enough. Try box breathing: Take a deep breath to the count of four, hold it for four seconds, then let it out slowly to the count of four, wait another four seconds, and then inhale again to the count of four. Inhale, hold, exhale, wait—all four sides of the breath equal four. Hence the name. Keep doing this until your anxiety recedes.
And while you’re breathing, perhaps try to reframe your anxiety. Take the initial negative beliefs and feelings and replace them with more optimistic ones. For instance, we might remind ourselves that although these are challenging times, we've been through such times before, and together we’ve weathered them and even grown from the trying experiences. Reframing is a way for the newer parts of your brain (the prefrontal cortex) to consciously tell the older parts of your brain (the limbic system) to lighten up. You might also just be excited or energized by an upcoming event or even the thought of an upcoming event. In other words, remind yourself that you are primed to perform, and great performances require some level of anxiety. We can neither be asleep nor frozen by fear and emotion if we want to perform at our best. There’s a sweet spot somewhere in the middle that is different for everyone. Breathing and reframing the discomfort as a challenge can help us find that sweet spot.
Finally, it's time to act. Like COVID-19, events can produce a set of beliefs about that event, like, “Oh no, the sky is falling.” And the beliefs we harbor (i.e., the stories we tell ourselves) can and do have emotional and behavioral consequences, like anxiety (the emotion) and withdrawing (the behavior) from friends and family. So we breathe, and we reframe the situation, perhaps, as an opportunity to connect in new ways—virtually, for instance. And then we get out there and do it. We connect; we act.
But along the way, give yourself permission to not get it perfect the first time out. Novel situations are just that—novel—and there’s no handbook for getting things right on the first try. Furthermore, recognize the signs of inertia—resistance to action, or what I call “over-under thinking.” We tend in uncertain times to overestimate the threat presented by an event and underestimate our ability to manage that threat. Take COVID-19: It’s grave indeed, but with social distancing, handwashing, and wearing masks, we can keep the virus at bay, or at least keep it from reaching those in the population—the old, the infirm, and the immuno-compromised—who are most at risk.
Remember: breathe, reframe (replace the negative beliefs with more optimistic ones), and act.
If anxiety is an emotional response to stress, stress is a physical response to an external event, like the driver who suddenly cuts you off in traffic. And like anxiety, stress is both normal and healthy; we stress our hearts, lungs, and muscles in the gym, and they grow and become stronger because of it. And, like anxiety, there are times when stress, too, can become unhealthy, particularly when that stress becomes chronic (when the stress pumps just won’t turn off) or when it is a result of physical and emotional trauma.
We often experience stress, the daily kind, when confronted with change—particularly when that change represents a loss of some sort. The threat of losing a resource is one such stressor, and resources don’t have to be material, like money. They can also be immaterial. Our sense of identity and control, our self-esteem, our sense of connection to our social and support networks, and our sense of mastery (our ability to be effective in a given situation)—all of these are resources that, when threatened or taken, can induce a stress response. And we can also experience stress when we invest these resources, say, in our jobs, and we don’t experience an equal or greater return on our investment. In other words, when we work hard and expect a gain—for instance, in meaning and satisfaction, not just money—and experience a loss instead, that experience can leave us feeling stressed out.
Interestingly, threatening or losing just one of these resources can induce stress, but the current pandemic is threatening them all at once, proving overwhelming for many of us. Additionally, we experience stress in times of turbulence, uncertainty, novelty, and ambiguity (TUNA). Again, the current pandemic is touching on all these conditions at once. For many of us, our worlds have been upended.
First and foremost, breathing helps. When you recognize the daily hassles that threaten to sap you of time and energy (your valuable resources), take a big deep breath. Tell the limbic system to take a pause, like when you’re sitting in traffic—a daily hassle we all have to cope with (and cope is a good word, more later). But kids are a daily hassle as well. I swear that while I've come to know my children (3 boys) better during these months of homeschooling and summer vacation (without the vacation), I've also realized that they need some work, some refining and polishing as it were. They eat with their mouths open, bathe rarely, leave every light on, leave towels on the floor, and call me "Dad" but really mean "man-servant."
Furthermore, filling the coffee machine with water is a daily hassle, at least for me. I swear I’m the only one who ever fills it. I’ve tried reframing the experience, too. When I go to get a cup of coffee and I see that there’s no water, I shout, “I won!” This behavior freaks my wife and my sixteen-year-old son out. It doesn’t change their behavior of leaving the water tank empty, but it does freak them out—a small victory for me. Even brushing one’s teeth is a daily hassle for some. It costs them time (four minutes a day minimum) that they feel they don’t have or could be better spent elsewhere.
The solution to the stress these hassles cause isn’t found in minimizing them (i.e., saying it’s nothing, really, even though it is), or judging ourselves (I shouldn’t get so upset over such a small thing), or complaining about them endlessly. Take the daily hassles life offers up head-on, breathe deeply, and accept them. And follow Teddy Roosevelt’s advice: “Do what you can, with what you've got, where you are.” Once you’ve done that, accept the rest as a fact of life, a pull on your internal resources, and set it aside. That’s sound advice.
Decision-making can also be stressful, particularly in these uncertain times. On top of that, the average person makes thousands of decisions each day (upwards of 35,000 decisions a day). Those decisions range from what we should wear, to what we should eat, to what we should say and do or not say and do, and to whom we should say and do it. And decisions require what? Energy! And the more energy we expend during the day making our thousands of decisions, the worse the quality of those decisions becomes. This is known as decision fatigue or sensemaking fatigue. And as the quality of our decisions declines with our sinking energy reserves, we experience even more stress, leading to even poorer decision quality, which can lead to more stress. This is a feedback loop, but not a good one. And by the end of the day, we find ourselves becoming combative, cantankerous, disagreeable, and downright ornery.
Raise your hand if you've been here. Uh-huh, me too.
Consciously or unconsciously, this is why we develop routines to conserve energy and apply it to the decisions and the actions that matter most in our lives. But along comes an event like a pandemic, and those routines are upended, turned over, and torn apart. So the solution is to get back to a routine as quickly as possible. Within two days of schools being canceled here in Virginia (and travel to my clients' businesses as well), I put all of us on a new routine: 8am breakfast, followed by virtual lessons (and client sessions for me) till noon, followed by lunch, then back to work till 3pm, and then a workout with Dad on the back porch till 4pm, then free time (of which I had none) till dinner. We did that from early March until mid-June when virtual school ended. That’s eight hours of unnecessary decision-making wiped clean off the slate, virtual or otherwise. And we enjoyed ourselves to boot. (And I discovered that even my nine-year-old can run faster than I can these days. Such is life.)
I’m not saying that all routines (and the assumptions that lead to them) shouldn’t be challenged. They should—that’s how we get better. But the simplest routines allow us to focus our limited supply of energy on what matters most—assuming we know what matters most, of course.
But perhaps the most significant cause of stress in our lives is the ongoing uncertainty. What does tomorrow look like? Who knows? For some, that’s no big deal. But for others it is. And for many, the absence of predictability in their lives is crushing. Again, what to do?
In times of great uncertainty, we have but two choices. First, we can do what many of my SEAL teammates and I did in SEAL training: We can adopt a short-term outlook. During training, I told myself, at breakfast, that I only had to make it to lunch. At lunch, I told myself I only had to make it to dinner. At dinner, I told myself I only had to make it to “mid-rats” (the late-night meal or rations). At mid-rats, I told myself I only had to make it to breakfast. And so on. Now, that’s a bit radical, but taking it day by day can be helpful in the short term.
Second, we can put issues into one of two camps. In the first camp goes the problems we have some control over, and in the second camp (or bucket if you prefer) goes the things we can’t control. For problems that fall in the “controllable” camp, generate and test solutions, explore new ways of doing things, take calculated risks, and get downright creative. But accept that there are likely no elegant solutions for those problems. Workable is good enough—for now. And for problems that fall into the “uncontrollable” camp, breathe and practice acceptance (just like we did for the daily hassles) but reach out to others as well. Funny thing about the problems we have no control over: If we are willing to talk about them with our friends, family, and teammates, we might find that they've experienced similar problems and have come up with effective ways of coping with those problems. Indeed, this was a strength of ours in the SEAL Teams. We shared our experiences, particularly our failures, fears, and shortcomings, and we often discovered from our teammates new and creative ways of dealing with similar situations in the future. Try it out—act on it.
And lastly, a note on a word I've mentioned a few times already: Coping. How we cope with stress and anxiety will influence how we come out on the other side. This is resiliency, and while resiliency is a broad topic, it’s mostly about coping.
I like to say: “Connect, distract, care, and care.” And I say it because it’s a way for me to remember some positive coping strategies. Connect refers to keeping in touch with the people that matter (and for most of us that’s about five to seven people, the core group that will support us no matter what). Find ways to keep in touch, even if it’s only from a distance of six feet or virtually. We feel a loss of connection in the same way we feel hunger and thirst; that is to say, connection is that important to our psychological wellbeing. Get over the resistance and get in touch.
When I say distract, I’m referring to those joy-inducing distractions that take our minds off the day's stress. Listen to music, read a book—or here's one: go for a walk outside. Going for a ten-minute walk gives us a two-hour wellbeing and energy boost (and who couldn’t use one of those?). This is also the time to dust off old skills (crosswords, sudoku, playing an instrument) and learn new ones. The philosopher Bernard-Paul Heroux said, “There is no trouble so great or grave that cannot be much diminished by a nice cup of tea.” My point is, whatever it is you enjoy or think you might enjoy, plan it into your day and stick to it.
Care (the first one in the list) is pretty straight forward: Take care of yourself. Eat better, sleep better, get outside more, breathe better (mindfulness practices), and share the load. Talking about our experiences with others, i.e., connecting with others, is just as much an aspect of self-care as it is a coping and problem-solving skill on its own. And of course, exercise. Mild-to-moderate aerobic exercise is still one of the best brain foods going. And all that’s required is a ten percent increase in these activities to experience the outsized effects. Little changes can have big impacts.
Finally, care number two (caring for others) is an essential coping skill. We tend to think of “care for others” as altruism or charity, and that’s true—at least partially. What’s also true is that we stand to benefit just as much as the person being cared for. Practicing kindness brings with it a cascade of neurochemicals that make us feel better. It’s that simple. So, if you want a quick feel-good boost, do something nice for someone—practice kindness. And practice is the keyword when it comes to coping: To experience the benefits and build up our resiliency, our ability to spring back from stress and even reinvent ourselves when necessary, we have to practice these skills. Every. Single. Day.
Making a friend of our nervous system is a worthwhile but challenging goal, and it's well within our reach. It starts with telling ourselves and others a story that expresses our belief that we can get there. And then we have to set about proving it—we have to act on those beliefs and make that story, in all its clumsiness and imperfection, come alive. We can do this alone, sure, but it's more fun and more fulfilling to pull others in, connect with them, and go for it together. And because the world is constantly changing, resiliency is always a story of becoming.
