“Well, THAT was unexpected.”
This is something I’ve found myself saying over and over again since mid-march of last year. The highs and lows of the last 10 months have been a bit, shall we say, extreme.
The last few weeks have been particularly trying. Navigating what is supposed to be the ‘hap-happiest time of the year’ under pandemic rules and regulations has caused many folks a lot of personal strife. Missed holiday celebrations, missing seeing family, and just generally a missed sense of human purpose has tempers running high, and it’s not just from Coronavirus.
Like many people I know, when the clock flipped over to 2021, I had to seriously resist the urge to assume everything would be different just because it was the New Year.
To be fair I was excited; we were scheduled to start the year off with a bang by giving a virtual lecture on January 16th, Covid vaccinations were on their way, and a whole new world was coming. We laid solid plans to halt our holiday debauchery and ‘resolved’ to turn this:
into something more like this:
…and then this happened.
Our seminar was canceled, the vaccination distribution was not what it seemed, and the whole world felt as if it were quickly going to hell in a hand basket… again.
Our knee jerk reaction was to give in to a new, aggressive case of the fuck-its and jump right back onto the ‘who gives a shit’ train to quarantine boozetown.
BUT because we made a somewhat arbitrary New Year’s resolution to be kinder to our livers and had already set the plan in motion, the decision to stay the course won and the train to boozetown left the station without us.
In times like these I like to remind myself, and all of you, it is especially difficult to practice positive coping skills while stressing-the-fuck-out or when life becomes unexpectedly challenging. So before you make a whole bunch of promises you might not be able to keep when stress levels rise and shit hits the fan, take a moment to check-in and see if you are exhibiting any of these maladaptive coping strategies that often create or maintain a dysfunctional pattern, preventing healthy psychological growth, personal well-being, and #newyearnewyou hash tagging.
As we gently lean into a 2021 brimming with possible relief from the shit-show that was 2020 let’s not drag our old antics into 2021 and immediately sully that beautiful clean slate. Read on to find out how to stave off 3 subconscious faux pas that could hold you back from becoming the best version of you in 2021.
MOPING
Common symptoms:
Avoidance
Anxiety
Isolation
Depression
Worsening of Chronic Health Conditions
During the last 10 months (holy hell has it really been that long?) you may have found yourself mourning the loss of life as we all knew it. This is natural. It is okay to grieve the loss of what you thought the last few months (or next few months) would be like.
While reactions to negative situations are typically emotional ones, the most common coping strategy adopted is to avoid of further discomfort by simply avoiding people, places, or situations that may prove to be ‘uncomfortable’. Taken to its extreme this strategy can result in the simplest daily activity causing distress and anxiety.
In the short term, avoiding challenging and difficult situations might make you feel safe.
In the long term it reinforces underlying doubts, fears, and negative perceptions about yourself and the world around you regardless of whether or not those perceptions are true.
If you constantly subject your self worth (or someone else’s) to some other standard (maybe a standard that no longer exists, or one you manufactured) you are essentially ignoring reality and therefore will have a hard time finding a comfortable space to operate no matter where you are, what you are doing, or who you are with.
As you can see, this perpetuates the discomfort that causes anxiety – that causes more discomfort cycle. And unfortunately, this type of syndrome often manifests itself physically before it is realized psychologically.
Some of the physical warning signs include:
Shortness of breath
Random onset sweating
Chronic fatigue
Chronic upper respiratory issues
Racing heart rate
Confusion
Irritability
If you are dealing with an overwhelming amount of anxiety or depression, as always, it’s a really good idea to consult a professional.
What to do? Create a plan of action.
Research shows that proactive coping strategies such as creating a plan and/or rehearsing scenarios can be an effective way to manage future obstacles you’re likely to face. Planning ahead and troubleshooting circumstances that might derail your progress can aid in reintroducing yourself to the things that may initially seem problematic.
Additionally, not everything needs to be dealt with immediately. However, you need to ensure you are weighing the negative impact of not taking an action. Not doing something is as much of a choice as making a plan or taking an action and therefore you are responsible for the consequences.
NOPING
Common symptoms:
Denial
Defiance
Rationalization
Denial is one of the most common maladaptive coping mechanisms. It occurs when you refuse to accept reality or facts, blocking external events or circumstances from your mind so that you don’t have to deal with their emotional impact.
Research on confirmation bias shows that we tend to look for and interpret information in ways that conform to our current beliefs and strategies for interfacing with other people and the world at large. There is an emotional investment in continuing to believe what you want to believe or have believed in the past.
Furthermore, studies on a phenomenon called ‘the backfire effect’ show when people are presented with facts that cause them to feel bad about their self-worth or worldview, they sometimes develop a stronger attachment to the initial incorrect belief or strategy.
Even folks who are seemingly at the top of their game have a hard time disassociating belief and reality. LeadershipIQ found that in a given year approximately 23% of the CEOs they tracked were fired for denying reality, meaning refusing to recognize negative facts about his or her organization’s performance under their watch.
Some people also attempt to explain undesirable behaviors with their own set of ‘facts.’ This allows them to feel comfortable with the choice they made, even if, on another level, they know it is incorrect.
What to do? Practice awareness to aid in regulating emotional responses, question the results, and make behavioral adjustments accordingly.
First you will have to identify the stressor in your life. When interfacing with the stressor record your initial response. Ask yourself questions such as: ‘was that a proportional response to the stressor?’, ‘was my response useful/helpful/necessary?’, ‘should/could my approach have been different?’, and ‘would a different response garner a different result’?.
Consciously asking these questions and making choices on a mindful level as opposed to giving into knee jerk reactions will help curb undesirable behaviors that yield even more undesirable results. This is not an easy endeavor, but practice makes perfect, and the payoff for even small improvements is usually significant.
HOPING
Common symptoms:
Deferral
Distractions
Excessive Daydreaming
“Action is hope. There is no hope without action.” – Ray Bradbury
Hoping without action is a futile process. Without action, hope is merely wishing something or someone could be different, and wishing is ubiquitous – an escape from reality, a diversion from what is actually happening.
Don’t get me wrong; dealing with the unknown is TOUGH. But when it comes to uncertainty having a PLAN (or several plans) is a much better strategy than ‘hoping’ things will turn out ok.
What precisely is hope? The late Charles R. Snyder, PhD, a psychologist at the University of Kansas and self proclaimed pioneer of hope research, believed hope to be comprised of three critical components: goals, agency, and pathways.
I see Dr. Snyder’s definition and raise him that optimism, pragmatism, and planning actually CREATE the sensation of hope and that hope is the fuel necessary to stay the course en route to a specific goal.
“Change requires neither saintliness nor genius. What it does require is the conviction of the incomparable value of life. Nothing should matter more to us than the attempt to grasp our life while we have it, and to awaken from the slumber of routine, of compromise and prostration, so that we may die only once. Hope is not the condition or cause of action. Hope is the consequence of action. And those who fail in hope should act, practically or conceptually, so that they may hope.” – Cornel West & Roberto Unger; The Future of American Progressivism
Coincidentally, making a New Year’s resolution without implementing a plan, and sticking to it, is JUST like wishing on a star for it to happen.
What to do? Use hope as a fuel to stay the course on achieving your goals.
Put simply, hope, agency, and optimism enlivens our ability and belief that we can change our lives. Without this we would most likely fall short of achieving most of our goals. The goal is the hope and the hope is the goal. Losing sight of either component may mean you miss the target entirely.
Understandably, it can be hard to see the light at the end of the tunnel and even harder when that pin prick beam of sunshine flickers and fades because the tunnel is curvy and LONG (10 months long??? Can it really be true?).
Pragmatism is the motivation to reach a desired goal, and the pathways/planning is how we get there. Have a plan (or several), stay the course by keeping vigilant about curbing negative behaviors, and get to work making that ‘hope’ of yours a full-blown reality. It may already be 2021 but it is never to late to ‘resolve’ to be better.
