Tag: control

Lots of questions, too few answers

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There’s a local “celebrity” around my neighborhood who seems to favor the question mark. He sometimes wears a suit with question marks on it, and also drives around in a car covered in question marks. I don’t know why he started doing it, but his quirk is  emblematic of how I feel at the current moment. I think if we could see people’s thought bubbles as they pass by, they would all be full of questions.

When will this pandemic end? Is my family safe? Will I ever work again? When will I be able to hug my children, my sisters, my mom? Do I have enough money to see me through this? Will the stores ever have Clorox wipes again? Is it safe to reopen? When will my kids go back to school? Will we ever have a vaccine? Why did my loved one have to die? Is there anyone we can depend on?

question_marksApprehension about what lies ahead of us is leading to a heightened sense of worry that has both physical and emotional consequences. We’re facing an invisible enemy and that makes us feel helpless,  even hopeless sometimes. People report difficulty sleeping, changes in eating habits, irritability, increased feelings of isolation, and lack of motivation. In fact, the census bureau reported this week that about one-third of U.S. adults are showing signs of clinical depression or anxiety. One-third! The American Psychological Association, which usually issues a report on Stress in America annually, is now doing a monthly survey. Here is some of what they’re finding:

  • Adults with children have considerably more stress than those who don’t, and much of it has to do with education, food and housing.
  • The government’s response to the pandemic is a major source of stress.
  • People are worried about their jobs and the economy.
  • People of color are reporting more pandemic-related stress than are white people.

Even when we do our best to control the things that are controllable, and to acquire as much reliable information as possible, at the end of the day we are still left with a giant question mark about what’s to come. People aren’t just burning through their financial savings, they’re also using up a lot of emotional and psychological reserves. We can’t wait for a post-pandemic time to start rebuilding those reserves – we need to start now.

Here are some suggestions:

  • Know when to ask for help. The APA website lists the signs and symptoms of anxiety, depression and suicide risk. If you or someone you know is experiencing these, reach out to your doctor or a hotline.
  • Incorporate more than one stress management tool in your daily life. For instance, physical activity helps use up stress hormones in the moment, but having a mindfulness practice also will provide some emotional regulation.
  • Make sure to do something fun every day. The danger of staying at home all the time is that we get into ruts and stop looking for diversions. Dr. Giuseppe Raviola, the director of mental health for Partners in Health, says to “remember the things that you really enjoy doing, and find a way to do them.”
  • Learn something new. Download a language app; check out your local library’s website for free online classes; or pick up a musical instrument. Learning may give you new skills that will be useful in the future, it is mentally stimulating, and it provides a sense of accomplishment and control that we all need right now.
  • Close the emotional distance with those you care about. Even if we can’t physically touch each other, we can reach out, check in, share stories and heal relationships. We need them now more than ever. Don’t be afraid to say what’s in your heart.

IMG_3553aLately I often pose the question, “What’s not wrong?” As humans, we’re programmed to focus more on what is going badly, instead of what’s going well. Thich Nhat Hanh writes that “We should learn to ask, “What’s not wrong?” and be in touch with that. There are so many elements in the world and within our bodies, feelings, perceptions and consciousness that are wholesome, refreshing, and healing. If we block ourselves, if we stay in the prison of our sorrow, we will not be in touch with these healing elements.”

Even in the midst of our fear, our grief, our anger and our stress, can we take a moment to find healing in the answers to just that one question – what’s not wrong?

 

 

Resilience? You can build it.

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It’s funny what can put you over the edge. I had been managing to stay pretty upbeat during the first two weeks plus of “pandemic normal.” All through my son’s layoff, my work cancellations, my husband’s working at home and my newly terrifying trips to the grocery store. But the last straw for me was when on Tuesday, as president of my condo board, I had to shut down our roof deck. It was the one place where people here could go to be alone or to work, or to let their toddler run around for a few minutes. Stricter stay-at-home guidelines took that last little escape away from us. Tuesday was also the day that it became clear that these orders will probably have to remain in place not until the end of April, but more likely at least the end of May. I felt sad, depressed and trapped.

Today, I read about polling by the Kaiser Family Foundation that found high numbers of people suffering mentally and emotionally from the pandemic. Forty-five percent said it had affected their mental health, with 19% saying it had a “major impact.” Nobody knows yet how this experience, which is essentially a mass trauma, will affect us long term. Many, if not most, people have the coping resources to bounce back, but as always, some are more resilient than others. And even highly resilient people are finding themselves challenged right now.Labyrinth-with-Pilgrim

What does resilience look like anyway? Here are some of the characteristics of resilient people:

Commitment – a resilient person has a sense of meaning & purpose; and believes in their own value.

Challenge – a resilient person sees change as opportunity and looks for creative ways to manage it.

Control – a resilient person tries to impact the things they have control over, and lets go of the things they don’t.

You can build your resilience by:

  • Developing & strengthening supportive relationships – it’s more important than ever to bolster the bonds you have with family, neighbors and co-workers in order to build a mutual support network. Keep reaching out.
  • Making & carrying out realistic plans – even it’s just a daily to-do list, rather than a long-term plan, it’s important to have a structure and to get a sense of accomplishment from each day.
  • Believing in yourself — Keep saying, “I can do this.” Think back to other hard times when you survived and thrived.
  • Enhancing your communication skills — take the time to think about what you write in emails and texts so that your true meaning gets conveyed; check in with people more often by phone; work on ways to convey meaning without the benefit of body language; use humor.
  • Learning how to manage strong feelings — take the time everyday to sit quietly for a few minutes and notice what arises. Name your feelings, think about where they’re coming from, maybe write them down. Tell yourself that it’s okay to feel the way you do.

In case you haven’t been with me for long, you might also want to read some of my older posts about resilience — one in 2014 about bouncing back, and another after Hurricane Sandy in 2012.

We’re going through one of the biggest challenges most of us will ever have to face, but I I have to believe we can get through it. I wish you and your loved ones continued good health. Be safe, stay strong.

 

 

 

 

Welcome to our new stressor: Coronavirus

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In America, and globally, levels of stress, worry and anger have been on an upward trend for several years. As if that’s not enough of a concern, we now have the outbreak of Coronavirus arriving in the midst of these already-high levels of stress and anxiety. Given the situation, it would not be alarmist to ask yourself if you have the mental and emotional resources to cope with yet another stressor. 3FD2D89B-6B21-44CE-8A37-648FCD91557E

We can’t isolate Coronavirus from the other stressors in our lives. Its impacts – especially to the economy – may intersect with, and exacerbate, other existing stressors such as worries about job security, the election, health issues, and our children’s futures. When we don’t know exactly what will happen or how bad it will be, what can we do to calm our worries?

For any kind of stressor, there are usually two main ways of handling it – either through a problem-focused approach or an emotion-focused approach. The problem-focused approach asks, “What actions can I take to either eliminate or change this stressor?” The emotion-focused approach doesn’t change the stressor, but may change how you think about it, how often you think about it or how you interact with it.

With Coronavirus, there aren’t many problem-focused steps to take. Why? Because the spread of the virus really isn’t in any individual’s ability to control. The actions we can take are simply those we’ve read about in the press for the past couple of weeks:

  • Wash your hands, frequently and well. See how here.
  • Don’t cough or sneeze on other people.
  • Keep clear of people who seem sick.
  • Don’t go to work if you are sick.

With such a limited ability to act, the only way to keep our worries under control is to look at the emotion-focused strategies we have available. These kinds of strategies help us refrain from catastrophizing, they distract us, they help us reframe our thinking about the virus. Luckily, there are a lot of these kinds of tools available:

  • Tune out the noise on social media. Get your information straight from the CDC here.
  • Reframe the story – instead of focusing on the numbers of cases, think about the billions of people who are well.
  • Express your worries – either to friends or family; or by writing them down  in a journal.
  • Distract yourself – watch a movie, play a game, start a project.
  • Relax with meditation, prayer, or simple breathing practices.
  • Get outside in nature.
  • If necessary, say “STOP” when you find yourself obsessively focusing on the negative.

The difference between the problem-focused and the emotion-focused strategies reminds me in some ways of the concept of effort vs ease in yoga. Effort (or sthira) is about steadiness and strength, while ease (sukha) is about feeling light and balanced. It’s about when to step on the gas (take action) and when to ease off the pedal (find relaxation). We need both of these for managing stress so that we can regain a steady state where we have that sense of balance.

While we may not feel completely easeful until the danger has passed, we can do a lot to calm anxiety by using the tools we have. We may not be in control of this virus, but we are most definitely in control of how we react to it. As Henry Ward Beecher wrote, “Every tomorrow has two handles. We can take hold of it with the handle of anxiety or the handle of faith.”

 

 

 

 

 

Stress on the job – & why culture matters

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High blood pressure, insomnia, heart attacks, anxiety, depression – these are just a few of the real costs of workplace stress. And according to a new book by Jeffrey Pfeffer, outcomes such as these make the workplace the 5th leading cause of death in the United States. In “Dying for a Paycheck,” Pfeffer makes the point that it is underlying management practices that are the culprit, and no amount of spending on wellness programs can make a difference if those don’t change.

Every day in my work (supporting wellness programs!) I meet people who suffer from high blood pressure, or who tell me about the stress of their jobs. These are not generally the people in top management; these are the people on the middle and bottom rungs of the organization. Where does that stress come from? Often it’s about a lack of control – when employees are subject to many demands, but can’t exercise control over them, research shows they are at increased risk for heart attack and hypertension. The American Institute for Stress published statistics about other sources of workplace stress from a 2006 survey of EAP providers:

  • Workload 46%
  • People issues 28%
  • Juggling work and personal lives 20%
  • Lack of job security 6%

Pompei (60)Stress reduction programs and personal choices such as meditation, exercise or disconnecting from email can only alleviate symptoms. The root cause of much workplace stress — corporate culture — is not something that any one individual can change. People are willing to work hard, and even to work long hours, if they see the work as meaningful. In a MIT Sloan Management Review article, Catherine Bailey and Adrian Madden write that meaningfulness is more important to employees than salary, advancement, or even working conditions. Meaning is something that people often discover for themselves. Good leaders can’t make it happen, but research shows that poor leadership can almost certainly destroy it. What makes people feel that the work is meaningless?

  • The work isn’t aligned with their personal values
  • They feel that they’re being taken for granted
  • They perceive unfairness in the workplace
  • They are asked to do pointless or risky work
  • They don’t have supportive relationships at work

In 2010, Tony Hsieh, the founder of Zappo’s, wrote a book called “Delivering Happiness,” which became a bestseller. His message was that corporate culture can not only support a company’s success, but may even be a prerequisite for it. Since then, Delivering Happiness has morphed into its own business as a coaching and consulting organization. Their research shows that there are three main elements that lead to employee happiness and greater engagement:

  • Connectedness
  • A sense of progress
  • A sense of control

Think about how much time you spend at work every day – eight, ten, twelve hours? Why would we want to spend that much time each day not feeling connection and empathy for others? We need to have friends at work – people to bond with, people who have our backs. In fact, DH research shows that “having a best friend at work increases engagement seven-fold.”Close-up of human hands clasped together in unity against white backdrop

Seeing progress in the work is also important. Personal progress needs to be measured and affirmed more often and in different ways than just an annual review. In addition, having a sense of the role each of us plays in the growth of a project or of the organization also leads to greater commitment and engagement. People want to feel that they are making a contribution.

Control may be the most important of the three elements. When people sense that there is transparency in the organization, that their ideas are respected, and that they are empowered to make decisions, it builds trust and motivation. Trust is incredibly important in itself because without it, no one will speak up about problems or safety issues; fear, disconnection and hostility often increase.

Changing the corporate culture begins with the emotional intelligence of its leaders. Can they embed and support policies within the organization that lead to connection, progress and control? Can they see the organization as a community in support of a mission – a community where people spend at least a third of their lives?

My suspicion is that most of us don’t work for organizations that are excelling at delivering happiness. I have no fear that my job in workplace wellness will be ending any time soon. Long ago, Aristotle wrote that, “Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work.” At the very least, maybe that is something to strive for.

 

 

 

Lessons from an amateur parent

jilrob2 Comments

Parenting, for all its joys (and they are abundant) is an endeavor fraught with the potential for second-guessing. When children are young, we ask, “Am I a good enough parent? Will I screw it up? Do I do too much for them, or am I doing too little? Am I too tough, or am I not tough enough?” Later, when they’re all grown up, the refrain becomes, “Should I have done things differently? Would he be happier if I had done X, would she have an easier time if I had done Y?”

 

You begin your life as a parent fooled by the child’s complete dependency into thinking that you are in control; in reality, almost nothing is in your control. Andrew Solomon, in his book “Far From the Tree” says that we think we are reproducing – making a newer, better version of ourselves – when, in fact, we really are producing someone completely different, whose life story is her own to realize.

 

Solomon’s book focuses on families whose children have what he calls “horizontal” identities, which sometimes become more important for them than the “vertical” identity of the family. In chapters covering children who are deaf, who have Down’s syndrome, autism or dwarfism, for example, he writes about how, for them, the community of people who share their deaf or autistic identity might be more comfortable or necessary than that of the family. He shares the experiences of dozens of parents who have had to completely change their expectations of what their child would be like.

 

While Solomon writes that many parents “are unprepared for children who present unfamiliar needs,” we don’t have to be talking about very extreme instances of disability or difference to know what he means.  Those parents just realize sooner than the rest of us how little control they have over the outcome of their child’s story. The beauty of life is that each of us is a unique individual, but that can make us feel like mysteries to each other sometimes, or as Solomon says, “Parenthood catapults us into a permanent relationship with a stranger.” Instead of trying to make the stranger into a copy of ourselves, we need to be brave enough to accept the child as he is.SF trip.Monterey_26

 

When I was growing up, especially as an adolescent, I didn’t think my parents could see me for who I was at all. I chafed under the strictures of the family, craved independence, felt that I belonged someplace else. During my teens and twenties, I would get irritated when I would hear my mother talking to someone about me, partly because she would sooner brag about me than praise me to my face, and partly because she would invariably get some detail of the story wrong. I moved to San Francisco when I was eighteen, where at the time, the local radio station would sign off from the news by saying, “If you don’t like the news, go out and make some of your own!” That slogan seemed to perfectly convey my own mindset: “Yes, I will write my own story, and it will not be anything like my parents’ story.”

 

Fast forward to the present. Now I’m not just a daughter and sister, but also a wife and mother. Yes, I have my own story, but I realize that it is inextricably interwoven with the versions other people tell. I can’t ask my mother to get my story right, or not to tell it, because she has her part in it, just as I have my part in my kids’ stories. I try not to cast myself as the hero or the villain of their stories — all I can do now is give them the love and freedom to tell their own version.

 

I’ve discovered that I can live with the stories as they tell them. When my daughter calls on our anniversary and says, “Thank you for getting married,” or my son acknowledges how much of an influence his father is on him, it tells me that they are comfortable with the identity they got from us, even as they so beautifully establish their own.

Go out and play!

jilrob5 Comments

Plato wrote, “You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation.” Playing allows us to take risks, to laugh at ourselves, to fall down, and to get back up. We discover truths about ourselves, as well as others.

Earlier this week, my yoga teacher announced at the beginning of class, “We’re just going to play today.” It was the last class there for most of us, since the yoga studio was closing at the end of the week. We all felt a little bittersweet about it, and by making the class more playful, our teacher helped us focus on the sweetness and joy rather than the sadness at the ending.

We went on to practice a lot of partner postures, flying postures and other fun stuff. We had to trust each other and give up some control in order to balance in the air on someone’s feet. Some of us found that easier than others, but there was laughter all around as we played together. And yes, I did learn more about my flying partner in that hour than I ever had by practicing yoga next to her.

Playing helps take us away from the stresses of “real” life, but it also prepares us for them. The first time I tried the trapeze, years ago, I was terrified. You have to stand with your toes hanging off the edge of a platform, high in the air, and lean forward to grab the swing with the assistant only holding onto your harness with a finger. I had to trust myself to reach for the swing as I stepped into the void, and know that there were only two possible outcomes. Either I would be successful, get a grip on the swing, pull my legs up over it, and fly through the air (with the greatest of ease?). Or I would miss the bar, fall into the safety net, and..….be okay. The only thing at risk was my ego.

Why do you think we use terms like “take the plunge” and “leap of faith” to describe life’s risk-taking? Those physical chances we take during play – diving into the deep end of the pool, and jumping off the trapeze — teach us that we will probably be okay even if we fail. By continuing to play as adults, we keep ourselves flexible (mentally and emotionally, as well as physically) and more able to deal with changes that come along.OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Do we play enough? NO! Even kids don’t play in the traditional sense nearly as much as they used to. And adults are often so oriented to work and worried about the future that we forget to incorporate play into our lives. Deep down, though, we all want and need to play.

How can you start playing again? Try a Laughter Yoga class, where you can just be goofy and creative for an hour or two. If you’re near Washington D.C., check out an organization called “Spacious” that connects people around fun and play. Bring the Instant Recess program to your workplace. Play in the snow, dance in the street, go on a roller-coaster, ride a wave, or even try the trapeze. Re-discover that baseline joy that comes from letting go and trusting that everything will be okay.

Living with uncertainty

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“Stress levels increased since 1983,” read the headline in USA Today last week. Not surprised? What’s interesting is why stress is higher for some people than others.

Sheldon Cohen and Denise Janicki-Deverts analyzed three national surveys (1983, 2006 and 2009) that used the same measure of stress. In all three, women’s stress was consistently higher than men’s, younger people had more stress than older people, people with less education reported higher stress than those with more, and people with lower incomes showed more stress than people with higher incomes.

What was different between 2006 and 2009 was that the increase in stress after the economic downturn was almost totally driven by middle-aged, college-educated, white men who were employed full-time. Cohen and Janicki-Deverts theorize that this finding could be related to the “threat of job loss, actual job loss, or loss of retirement funds.”

But what I see is that this could also be about loss of power and control. It’s not news that people who are lower in a hierarchy have more stress than those on top. And since it’s also still true that most of the power in our society is held by white middle-aged men with college degrees and full-time jobs, in some senses those people had the most to lose when the economy turned sour.

The stress levels of women, the young and the poor didn’t increase significantly because their position in the hierarchy didn’t change much. But for white, middle-aged men, the downturn may have been the first time they felt themselves to be on shaky ground. All of a sudden, there were no guarantees.

“The Company Men”, a film about the economic downturn, portrays this theme convincingly. The main characters, who thought they had it made, suddenly were experiencing the uncertainty that other groups have traditionally lived with. Depending on their access to coping strategies, they either weathered the storm or were destroyed by it.

Our new reality is that many of us will be living with uncertainty for a long time. So how do we inhabit that reality in a way that doesn’t wear us down and make us sick?

  • Recognize what you can control and what you cannot. The stock market is out of our control. So are the actions of other people. But we can control how we react to events. Focus on what’s present right now instead of worrying about what can’t be predicted or controlled.
  • Be careful of how you talk to yourself. Too often, we limit ourselves by having a negative narrative going on in our minds (I’m not good enough, I’m too old, I’ll be next to lose my job). Practice replacing those negative thoughts with positive statements.
  • Believe in yourself. Easier said than done, right? It takes practice to change how you think of yourself. But if you remind yourself of the way you’ve handled situations in the past, and all the things that you are capable of, your ability to believe and trust in yourself will increase.
  • Write about it. James Pennebaker and others have shown that people who write about their feelings every day for several days can improve their moods and feel better emotionally.
  • Have a sense of humor. It helps us change our perspective on life events and sometimes even turns a potential stressor into something less threatening. Know what kinds of jokes, movies or comics are sure to make you laugh, so that you can turn to them when necessary.
  • Consider the idea of change as opportunity. As Claude Bernard once said, “Man can learn nothing unless he proceeds from the known to the unknown.”

 

Knowing when to surrender

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While doing child’s pose yesterday in yoga, our teacher said that the pose is also called “wisdom pose”. I had never heard this before, but as I thought about it, it made sense. In child’s pose, we need to relax and surrender to gravity, to make ourselves vulnerable like children. And in life, it often requires a lot of wisdom for us to fully surrender and let things be.

Do you ever think about how much energy you use up fighting things? From the mundane fights (traffic, kids’ bedtimes, the cable company) to more important fights (interpersonal conflict, problems at work, health issues), so much of our time is taken up with struggling against things that we sometimes feel like we’re not moving to anything.

Part of what drives us is the need to have and keep control of things in our lives. A feeling of control is important to managing stress; but so is realizing when something is out of our control, or deciding that control just isn’t worth the price it requires. So there might be times when it’s appropriate to “give in”, such as when maintaining a relationship is more important than winning an argument, or when the outcome is clearly more important to the other person than it is to you.

Exercising control is often a response to fear as well. Fear of change, fear of failure, fear of success, fear of facing difficult emotions – all can lead us to fiercely hold onto positions that really aren’t serving us. Bertrand Russell said that “to conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.” And sometimes surrendering control, allowing events to happen and feelings to rise, is the beginning of conquering fear.

Sometimes when we are over-efforting, micromanaging every detail, too focused on the outcome, it’s easy to lose sight of the big picture. If we take a step back to see things as they are, and just stop trying so hard, we might be more successful in reaching our goals. Soren Gordhamer writes that “we can often make more progress and with less stress not by trying harder but by trying softer. By doing so, there is an ease to our effort…”

Top athletes and other types of performers know how to try “softer”, although they may call it by a different name. They train and practice for hours, but when called upon to perform, they have to let go of thinking through every move, step, or note and just let things flow through them. They have the wisdom to surrender, and to trust what is inside of them.

I just read about a study of centenarians showing that the people who live longest are the most optimistic and carefree, relaxed and upbeat, and notably non-neurotic. They are the people who let go of their stress rather than internalizing it. I don’t know if they are practicing child’s pose, but something tells me that they are also people who have learned the value of surrendering.