No, It’s Trauma

Last week I wrote about two fictional couples, the Morrows and the Bodens, as they faced a sudden, forced move from their homes in a foreclosed apartment building.  I used their scenario of dislocation to illustrate the differences between stress and trauma.  I mentioned that many of the people I meet and talk to believe they’re under enormous stress during this, our Great Recession, but would deny that they’re experiencing trauma.  In my professional and personal opinion, I disagree.  I think many, possibly most people don’t understand what trauma is, and have actually been traumatized rather than just stressed by the events of the recent past.

Most often, when people hear the word trauma they think of some horrific and shocking event.  They think of tragedies like car accidents, violence and brutality, death – something horrendous and devastating.  These kinds of events are certainly trauma: a type called shock trauma.

But there are many other traumatic experiences that, while not shocking, are beyond the ordinary.  Extraordinary experiences beyond normal fears and normal circumstances can produce a kind of trauma, too.  When these events occur repeatedly over a period of time they erode our physical and emotional reserves.  They can be very strong and significant and extremely destructive.  I see the symptoms of our “wearing down” in higher divorce rates, higher suicide and suicide attempt rates, and higher rates of disease and depression.

If you wondered, when you read last week’s illustration about the Morrows and the Bodens, whether there might be “more to the story”, you were right.  What if I were to go back in the history of the two families, and fill in some of the gaps?

Take Mr. Morrow, the head of the family who experienced stress, rather than trauma, from their enforced move and handled the transition in a healthier way.  Let’s say, pre-move, he had enjoyed the security of a steady job for the last decade, he and his family were in good health, and had maintained close, loving ties with friends and an extended family of supportive relatives.

Now let’s take Mr. Boden, whose family suffered significant trauma around their relocation.  I could shed some light on his struggle by proposing that his family’s move was just one more trial in a series of unfortunate recent events.  Let’s say he was laid off three years ago and has been alternating between unemployment and scraping together small jobs since then.  Let’s say he has chronic back pain, his wife has stress-induced migraine headaches, and his kids aren’t doing well at school.  Let’s say, even, he’s the son of an alcoholic father who was unavailable both in the past and the present.

My point is that at the outset, going into this sudden and difficult need to move, Mr. Morrow had physical and emotional reserves that Mr. Boden did not.  And how many of us can confidently say, after over three years of economic and personal hits, that we still have plenty of energy reserves for the continuing challenges coming almost daily down the road?

In 2008, when the stock market fell, and the real estate market tanked, and jobs started to disappear – when the Great Recession got its start – we all felt shocked, we all felt traumatized.  Even though it had been coming for a while, it was a shock when it first hit, and it hit fast and hard.  And it was devastating.  That we’re still in pretty much the same place, three years later, is one of the things I think is unique to this period of time.  I see that people are somehow getting used to our hard times and adapting in some ways, and so they don’t realize they’re experiencing ongoing, or developmental trauma.

Developmental trauma occurs when an individual experiences a series of events which may or may not be shocking of themselves, but are painful, disturbing, and overwhelming.  This type of trauma is called “developmental” because it disrupts the normal intrinsic development, or maturation, of a child or adult.  A child suffers developmental trauma, for example, when they are subjected to repeated verbal or physical abuse.  Adults can experience developmental trauma also, when the circumstances of their lives prevents them from growing or thriving in physical, emotional, mental, or spiritual ways.

The economic straightjacket of our recent past has put a severe limit on opportunities for adults to grow and prosper.  People are feeling thwarted and trapped in their efforts to provide for themselves and their families.  They’re learning to adapt, or they’re dealing with their frustration and pain by going numb.  Some of us respond to crises with denial.  Some of us respond with action; some of us tend to freeze into paralysis.  There are many things people do to survive in times of crisis and difficulty.  In the meantime, whether they feel it or not, they’re frying emotionally and physically.  Their systems are under siege, 24/7.

My heart goes out to all of you who find yourselves in this painful, devastating situation.  I too have experienced recent financial trauma.

In the hope that it will provide you some relief, I promised last week to include suggestions for how to deal with ongoing stress – the “wealth, health, and stealth” kind.  These suggestions may make it possible for you to keep your unavoidable stress from turning into avoidable trauma.  You saw some of these ideas at work in the story of the Morrows and Bodens.  In the midst of difficult circumstances and events, I encourage you to try the following:

1. Slow down, don’t panic
2. Remember you’re not alone
3. Think through your options
4. Ask for help, don’t isolate yourself
5. Take good care of yourself physically and emotionally
6. Don’t blame yourself for things beyond your control
7. Reduce the pressure on yourself in every way possible
8. Keep your perspective, others are suffering too
9. Look for ways to help others, and to give back to those who’ve helped you
10. Don’t lose hope, focus on the positive

These ten steps are fairly simple, but I know they are truly not easy.  I’ll be back next week to go through these steps in more detail.  I’ll provide suggestions for how you can get started using these steps in real-life, practical ways.  I know these steps can help you, because I use them and teach them to my patients, and I’ve seen them make a world of difference in these hard times.  I encourage you to give them a try.

It’s Just Stress, Isn’t It?

Over the last several weeks, I’ve pointed out what I believe are the three major sources of stress in our lives today.  I see them in my practice, at the gym, at church, and over dinner at one of my favorite restaurants.  I’ve catchily coined these stress-inflictors “wealth, health, and stealth”.  “Wealth” stands for our long-standing and devastating financial downturn.  “Health” stands for breakdowns in our physical and emotional health resulting from the downturn.  And “stealth” represents the challenges and struggles of our nation’s veterans as they come home and try to reintegrate into their lives, families, and communities.

Also, over the last several weeks, you may have noticed that I used the word “trauma” to describe what’s been happening to us during the three-plus years of our Great Recession.  When I suggest to people – in my practice, at the gym, etc. – that what we’ve been enduring is not “just stress” and has actually been traumatic, they most often respond, “Oh no, trauma happens to other people.  That’s not me.”  I disagree.

What is stress?  What is trauma?  How are they different?  And why is this important?

Rather than starting with textbook definitions (I prefer a practical, straight-forward explanation over academic jargon any day), I want to give you a real life example to illustrate stress and trauma, and the difference between them.

Let’s say two families live in an older apartment building near downtown.  We’ll call them the Morrows and the Bodens.  Their apartment building has been for sale for some time and the owners have notified the tenants that foreclosure is a possibility.  Well, the building doesn’t sell, the bank forecloses, and it all happens suddenly.  The new owners of the building know several idle contractors willing to work for bargain rates, so they decide to completely renovate the apartments.  The building is in a part of town that is becoming more desirable and they’ll be able to charge higher rents, post-update.  All the tenants must go, and quickly.

From the moment they heard the building was up for sale, the Morrows considered that they might have to move.  When they heard about the possible foreclosure, they put even more effort into spreading the word among their friends and family that they could need a new place to live.  It didn’t seem likely that they would find anything affordable in their current neighborhood, so they started getting to know other neighborhoods, checking out schools, shops, and parks.  They involved their kids in the planning process, letting them know what was happening, in a way that was appropriate for their ages.

When the foreclosure came down, they found a new place – a house in a great neighborhood, actually – but which wouldn’t be ready for them in time for the move.  Again they put the word out to their friends, and were able to temporarily store their belongings in someone’s garage, and stay for a couple of weeks with a relative.  When their new rental was ready, they gathered a big moving party and got settled in fairly quickly.  It didn’t take them long to start making the new house feel like home.

The Bodens had an entirely different experience of their move.  Seeing the “For Sale” sign go up on their apartment building left them almost frozen in fear of being put out on the street.  They hoped against hope they wouldn’t have to do anything, that the building would sell and nothing would change.  When the foreclosure came, and the short notice to move out, they panicked.  Not able to find a place in the same neighborhood that they could afford, they rushed out and grabbed the first place they could find that was cheap and close.

Too upset to let their friends and family know what was happening, the Bodens struggled through the move by themselves.  The parents didn’t really explain what was happening to their kids, who ended up feeling uprooted and insecure.  The chaos the Bodens felt inside left them desperate to stay in control, to get it all done and over with as quickly as possible, and the move ended up being a horrible experience for them all.  On top of that, the Bodens quickly learned that their new apartment and neighborhood weren’t all that great.  They hadn’t checked it out enough to discover that the apartment was actually dingy and depressing and the neighborhood wasn’t safe.  At the end of it all, the Bodens felt regret, disappointment, anger, and discouragement.

Let’s pause for a moment in the lives of the Morrows and Bodens for some definitions of stress and trauma.  I define stress as pressure, strain, or tension on our emotions.  Trauma, however, is an experience, possibly a shock, that goes beyond strain to create significant pain or an “injury” to our emotional selves that may be deep and lasting.

Back to the Morrows and Bodens.  Both families experienced the very real disruption of change, of needing to move and find a new home.  Moving is a stressful experience for anyone.  The Morrows, however, responded to this reality by facing it and asking for help.  They kept their calm but quickly went into action to find a new place that would be right for them.  They communicated with each other and their friends and family, and coped well with the upheaval of their move.  They started out determined to find a good place for their family to live.  The Morrows wanted to create positive change and begin a new stage in their family’s life.  While they felt pressure and strain, they coped and had faith in the process.

The Bodens, on the other hand, avoided dealing with the situation until the need to move was in their face.  The pressure and panic they felt then caused them to close down and cut themselves off from potential help from friends and family.  They didn’t even talk among themselves about what was happening to them and how they felt about it.  The kids felt left in the dark.  The family lost any hope for finding a good place to live, let alone something better than the old apartment, in their frantic search for anything affordable and quick.  They felt wounded and in pain, and lost faith in themselves and the process.

It’s probably not hard to guess which family experienced stress and which one experienced trauma.  The Morrows, now happy in their new neighborhood, accepted and dealt with the stress of their forced move as best they could.  The Bodens, now stuck in a depressing environment, panicked and isolated themselves in their trauma.  The same experience – a quick, forced move – happened to both families, yet they reacted entirely differently.  Why?

This question reveals another key aspect of stress and trauma that I’ll return to in next week’s post.  I’ll also suggest important ways that can help you prevent unavoidable stress from turning into avoidable trauma.  Stay tuned.

We’ve Got a Bad Connection

This week I want to return to a disturbing statistic, taken from a recent Pew Research Center survey of veterans and the American public, which I quoted in my last post.  Only about half of our civilian population feels that our armed forces’ sacrifices have been greater than their own, post-9/11.  I want to repeat that, as I repeated it last week – only about half.  I think this reveals a bad connection, an enormous disconnect between our veterans and our communities.  Of those civilians who do believe the military and their families shouldered greater burdens with their combat service, about 26% believe it to be unfair, while 70% consider it “just being part of the military”.  I find that attitude very disturbing as well, and I will get back to it later in this post.

First, some good news.  The survey results indicated that 96% of veterans are proud of their service, 93% say the military helped them mature, and 74% say their military experience has helped them get ahead in life.  Over 80% would recommend a military career to a young person close to them.  Also on the positive side, as reported by Tom Bowman of National Public Radio, the general public holds the military in “highest regard.  It towers above organized religion, big business, and Congress”.  The negative?  Only 40% of civilians surveyed would advise a loved one, friend, or acquaintance to join the armed forces and bear the heavy burdens of military service.

Now, some bad news.  Of the veterans surveyed, 44% experienced a difficult adjustment back to civilian life, 50% reported signs of post-traumatic stress, and 75% live with nightmares and flashbacks from their combat experiences.  And, of the general public, only 25% say they follow the progress of our wars in Afghanistan and Iraq closely, down from about 50% just a couple of years ago.  Marine Sergeant Jon Moulder, interviewed in Afghanistan by NPR’s Bowman, didn’t need the Pew survey to tell him that people back home are losing interest.  “We’re starting to fall by the wayside,” he feels.  “This has been going on for so long.  It’s America’s longest conflict running to date.  Kind of like the bastard children of our generation.”

What’s happening?  Why don’t these wars feel like a national experience?  Paul Taylor, editor of the Pew study, observed, “We’ve never had sustained combat for a full decade, and we’ve never fought a war in which such a small share of the population has carried the fight.”  According to Taylor, just one-half of 1% of the population has served on active duty in the past decade, while 9% of Americans were in uniform during World War II.

Having such a small fraction of the public in uniform this time, according to Martin Cook, a civilian professor of military ethics at the Naval War College, makes it “much more easy to deploy U.S. forces in tough environments for long periods of time because the vast majority of Americans don’t feel they have any skin in the game.”  “I’ve often speculated,” Cook continues, “could we have fought wars for 10 years if this was a draftee army and I doubt it.”

These Pew Research Center survey statistics leave me with a lot more questions than answers.

Are the sacrifices of our veterans – and their families – really “just being part of the military”?  Have recruits been fully able to anticipate the potential physical and psychological health risks of combat?  Did they know just how bad warfare conditions would be in Afghanistan and Iraq?  Did they expect multiple deployments?  Did they realize how menacing it would be to police terrorists embedded within a civilian population?  And, if their “job-related” stress has become debilitating, can service members “quit” – like civilians can – without long-term consequences, such as a less-than-honorable discharge?

Here are some more uncomfortable questions: Do we all agree that the 9/11 attacks – which killed thousands of innocent Americans, and targeted not only our nation but our way of life – required an armed response?  Do we all believe that without our Homeland Security and foreign military commitments post-9/11 more innocent lives would have been lost on American soil?  Haven’t these battles been deemed necessary by politicians on both sides of the aisle?  Hasn’t our involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq in fact benefitted all Americans?

Does the military serve our government, or do they serve us?  Aren’t they fighting on our behalf, for our sake?  Isn’t whatever happens to them in country more than “just being part of the military”, more than just their tough luck?  One of our greatest presidents, Abraham Lincoln, declared in his Gettysburg Address that ours was a government created “of the people, by the people, and for the people”.  Are we willing to uphold this long tradition, sharing in the decisions, commitments, and obligations of our elected representatives?

I believe, as “the people”, that the government’s promise and obligation to restore veterans’ physical and psychological health post-service is our promise and obligation as well.

I know my calling: to provide health and healing for veterans and their families.  To restore them to full participation in life and in their communities.  To say, “Thank you for your service”, in the most practical, effective way I can. And I‘m asking, can we – can you – make a commitment to be better aware of the pressing needs of our returning veterans?  Can we all make a commitment to care?  A commitment to stop the disconnect?

Your Neighbor, Your Co-Worker, Your Friend

Last week, I offered my take on the top two sources of stress in our lives today – “wealth”, or our lingering financial downturn, and “health”, the toll that downturn is taking on our physical and emotional well-being.  Today, I want to add what I see as the third major source of stress, and I’m going to call it “stealth”.

Why “stealth”?  Because too few of us recognize it exists, or, when encountering it, prefer not to acknowledge it.  So what am I talking about?

I’m talking about, possibly, your neighbor or your neighbor’s son or daughter.  I’m talking about your classmate, your co-worker, the person you used to see at Starbuck’s, the movie theater, or church.  The one who’s been away for several months now.  The one who’s coming home sometime soon.  In uniform.

I’m talking about our country’s servicemen and women, and veterans.

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have been going on now for almost a decade.  Hundreds of thousands of Americans have served in some of the most physically and psychologically intense battlefields in our history, served repeatedly over multiple deployments, and none of them will come out of their stressful combat experiences without deep and lasting personal changes.  Those changes will be both positive and negative.

Along with the combat stress our returning service members and veterans have endured, they’re experiencing health and financial stress in disproportionately greater numbers than our general population.  Technological advances in personal and vehicle armor have increased the ability of service members to survive attacks both in battle and from improvised explosive devices.  The downside to this is that more veterans come home with significant wounds and physical health limitations that will follow them the rest of their lives.  Whether it’s the challenge of losing an arm or leg (or both), loss of sight or hearing, or loss of mental clarity and memory from repeated concussions, the stress from physical health restrictions is and will continue to be a very real part of many lives.

Studies of post-traumatic stress (PTS) rates in returning veterans vary, but I’d estimate maybe half will suffer some kind of emotional and psychological stress as a result of their service.  Symptoms can run from mild – sleep disturbances, short tempers – to extreme – drug and alcohol addiction, paranoia, and suicide attempts and completions.

Financial stress for veterans runs extremely high, as well.  Statistics show that the unemployment rate for former servicemen and women is well over 20%, more than double the rates for the rest of the country.  Individuals who have prided themselves on their abilities and contributions to society are finding themselves without purpose or value in our stagnated job market.

I’ve also seen a kind of spiritual stress in the returning veterans I’ve treated: a crippling self-loathing because of the acts they committed in country, some necessary and some beyond the stipulated rules of engagement.  Men and women, who left the States with a strong set of ethics for their thoughts and behavior, return having violated their innate personal code.  Along with the bullets and IEDs, they find their personal honor and worth have exploded as well.  In some ways, I feel that this loss is the most tragic.

About that word, “stealth”.  I believe that the combat stress of returning American service members and veterans, and their families, can be characterized as stealth because of my own experience and because of a recent survey by Pew Research.  In an article in USA Today, “Veterans Proud but Struggling in Civilian Life”, reporter Gregg Zoroya summarizes some of the survey results from about 1800 veterans and about 2000 members of the public.  One question throws an extremely disturbing light on the different ways the public and service members see the sacrifices our military has made on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan.

Only about half of the general public surveyed believed that American troops and their families made more sacrifices than all other citizens, post-9/11.  Only about half.  Eighty-four percent of service members, however, say that “the public has no idea of the problems incurred as a result of wars demanding multiple deployments”.

I’ve seen this myself, even in my own, much-loved hometown.  There seems to be some kind of irrational disconnect between the community and our veterans who are coming back devastated from the wars, having faced atrocities we can’t even begin to imagine.  There doesn’t seem to be real recognition by enough of us that we’ve been at war, and there’s a lot of good people – service members, their extended families, and neighbors – who are truly traumatized and suffering.  I’m a veteran of the Vietnam War era, and still I’ve never seen such a complete disconnect between the community and our military and the wars that are being fought.  This hits very close to home for me; it almost breaks my heart.

The Pew Research survey included many other significant findings, some encouraging and some disturbing.  I’ll return to share more of those results, and more of my perspective, next week.

Wealth & Health

The biggest and most obvious source of stress right now is our long-running financial downturn.  Heavy hits from unemployment, foreclosure, bankruptcy, and vise-tight budgets are wearing deeply and destructively on people.  But another significant source of stress has been appearing lately.  I read about it in the newspapers; I see it in my practice.  There are a lot more serious health problems going on now than I’ve seen in years.

Chronic health issues – high blood pressure, strokes, diabetes, heart problems, insomnia, migraines – all seem to be on the rise.  Rates of suicide – tragic, heart-breaking suicides – as well as suicide attempts are up.  Destructive behaviors, including addiction and extreme risk-taking activities, are more prevalent.  Nagging infections, viruses, inflammation, and joint pain keep appearing and seem more stubborn and resistant to treatment.

I have two patients in my practice who came to me recently for help with chronic, debilitating physical pain.  Both experience excruciating symptoms for which the traditional medical community has found no direct cause or explanation.  Both even checked in to Stanford’s highly-regarded medical center and were sent home with an identical set of messages.  The spoken message was, “There’s not much we can do for you”.  The unspoken message was, “We’re not sure you’re really in pain”.  Believe me, their suffering is real.

Could there be a connection between our “health stress” and “wealth stress”?  Last week I mentioned a recent article from the New York Times, “Foreclosures Are Killing Us”, which identified our foreclosure epidemic as “a bona fide health crisis”.  The authors of the article, Professors Craig Pollack and Julia Lynch, along with a paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research which they quoted, all found a strong correlation between a community’s rise in health problems and its rise in foreclosure rates.  Losing a job, a business, a home, can bring people down hard.  Events like those are usually traumatic.  And I’ve learned from over forty years in my line of work that trauma, even purely emotional trauma, can cause physical damage and disease.

What can be done?  There are a lot of ways to approach the problem.  I’m going to continue to provide the best treatment I know for physical and emotional pain and trauma, the modality I created and call RMFR.  Pollack and Lynch also propose something I’ve actually been thinking about offering soon.  “Health care should be part of a comprehensive approach to foreclosure prevention,” the professors recommend.  “For example, mental health caseworkers should be embedded in mortgage counseling agencies.”

I’d like to make this extremely timely suggestion a reality by beginning to offer a new combination of personal and financial therapy.  In collaboration with a top-notch financial advisor, I’d like to integrate aspects of smart money management and financial survival skills into my established resiliency training and relationship counseling.  I’d include practical advice for self-care, stressing the importance of maintaining good physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual well-being in order to be able to confront the challenges of these difficult times.  I know the value of all these qualities and skills from personal experience.  Like almost everyone I know, our hard times have affected me, too.

I think the Professors Craig Pollack and Julia Lynch – and I – are onto something very important.  I intend to begin offering some real help, for our very real health and wealth problems, very soon.

Where We Are Now

Steve Jobs was a genius.  The technology savant – the unique “I” behind the iPhone, iPad, and iPod – knew what our media- and gadget-hungry society wanted, often before we knew it ourselves.  But even Steve Jobs could never have created the device most of us would love to get our hands on right now.  I’m thinking of a technological marvel that would absolutely fly off the shelves this coming holiday shopping season.  It would be a variation of a GPS unit – the “where are we and how do we get there” wonder – called an “FPS”: a “financial-positioning system”.  It would be capable of answering the question that is on almost everyone’s lips: How much longer before our economy starts to recover?

It’s been over three years, by my reckoning, since our economic downturn made itself depressingly obvious.  I’m a psychotherapist.  Depression is a part of my profession.  My job is to help people explore the issues, both past and present, behind their anger, hopelessness, anxiety, obsessions, and addictions.  With the help of my staff, I enable my patients to address and resolve their lingering traumas so that they can realistically and practically move forward in positive ways.  My job has never been an easy one, but these last three years have brought a dismayingly large number of struggling individuals, couples, and families through my doors.  I’ve been in private practice for over forty years and, frankly, I’ve never seen it this bad.

Despite some news reports that a least a partial recovery is underway, I don’t think things are getting better. I think that in some ways people are becoming more accepting of the distresses, but I don’t think our situation is getting better at all.  In fact, I believe things have gotten worse because of the intense level of stress that people have been under these last three-and-a-half years. I see that the needs of the community now are greater than ever, because people are starting to wear down. I think our economic downtown is finally taking a toll on people’s health in much more severe ways.

Last week, a New York Times article reviewed a health study of people living in communities hit with high foreclosure rates.  The results from the National Bureau of Economic Research indicated that massive foreclosures were not just a financial epidemic, but “a bona fide health crisis”.  The statistics were alarming.  Over one-third of homeowners surveyed had symptoms of major depression.  In an effort to save money, people were skipping doctor appointments and leaving prescriptions unfilled.  Significantly higher levels of suicide attempts, emergency room visits, heart failure, high blood pressure, and diabetes were observed as compared to communities where foreclosure was less of a menacing presence.

At the Bernstein Institute, we’ve seen financial stress turn into serious health complications, too; we know that this is true.  Prolonged unemployment or underemployment, homes lost to foreclosure, diminished outlooks and opportunities just wear people down.

These distressing realities are also beginning to affect how people relate.  They have a certain underlying desperation that gets expressed as anger, upset, and frustration.  They have short tempers.  Often they don’t act rationally.  Underneath the anger, they’re desperately afraid of what’s happening.  There’s no hope in sight, they fear, no relief coming.  What happened to the promised assistance from the government and President Obama that hasn’t come through? 

Instead of anger, some people feel defeated, victimized, and despairing.   They’re distressed at how they’re being treated by the banks and corporations and how exploited they feel.  Banks are treating them like they’re to blame, it’s their fault, they should have been more responsible.  It’s absolutely not true.  While every one of us can learn new and better ways to manage money during this downturn, I believe most of the people now suffering with unemployment and foreclosure issues are decent, hard-working, good people.  The way I see it, and I know I’m not alone, the banks and corporations are responsible for much of what’s been happening.

Can we have hope?  I fervently believe so.  The events of my life, past and present, and the successes in my patients’ lives are a testimony to the resiliency of the human spirit and to our capacity for courage and strength.  The support we can offer each other in our relationships and community is priceless.  Stay with me, and I’ll share the reason for my hope with you.

Good News, Bad News

Your heart is pounding, your palms are sweaty, you’re short of breath and you’d like to either scream or jump up and down.  Bad news: your company just announced another wave of lay-offs and you wonder if you’re about to lose your job.

Your heart is pounding, your palms are sweaty, you’re short of breath and you’d like to either scream or jump up and down.  Good news: you’re strapped into your seat, having a great time spinning through the air on the Zipper carnival ride at the Sonoma County Fair.

Wait a minute.  How can your body respond in almost exactly the same way to two very dissimilar situations?  How can the sensations aroused by two distinctly different emotions feel so much the same?

The two distinctly different emotions I’m talking about are anxiety and excitement.  In her recent Psychology Today article, “Make Your Own Luck”, (which I’ve been blogging about recently), author Rebecca Webber makes five suggestions for making the most of the unexpected, fortuitous events that cross our life-paths.  To start off her discussion about point #3, “Say Yes”, Webber makes the observation that anxiety and excitement, or intrigue, are connected.

When a “juicy” opportunity comes along, Webber states, we can be “immediately besieged by two competing emotions: intrigue and anxiety.”  “You’re curious about that job opening,” she continues, “but you can think of a hundred reasons why you should stick with your current gig.”

When we encounter something new, each of us instinctively responds in similar ways.  Since the new person, place, event, or idea could possibly be either good news or bad news, our minds and bodies go on alert in order to assess the situation.  The phone rings; the caller ID is unfamiliar.  We say hello cautiously and hear the voice of an old friend we haven’t heard from for awhile.  We relax; all is well – very good in fact.

Or, the caller on the other end of the line is a bill collector, threatening to repossess our car.  Our initial alert status goes into fully-armored protection mode.  We need all our wits and defenses instantly operational to respond to this attack.

One of the consequences of unresolved painful issues in life – past trauma that has not healed – is that our ability to accurately “read” possibly threatening situations gets damaged.  Opportunities and fortunate events can look like danger to avoid, and, conversely, dangerous situations can masquerade as harmless and benign.  Trauma damages our emotional “radar” such that we have trouble seeing reality the way it really is.

But we can make an effort to counteract our overly fearful or cautious tendencies if we are aware of them.  Can we prime ourselves to be more open to serendipity – to fortuitous chance?  Webber points out in her article that “serendipitous people are more fearless about trying something new.  Instead of giving in to worry about what could go wrong, they think, ‘Isn’t that interesting?  I’d like to give that a try.’”

I agree strongly with her next statement: “Good outcomes increase self-efficacy, or the belief that you are capable of accomplishing whatever you set out to do; they also fuel an appetite for future risk.”  I would translate this by saying that every time you challenge yourself to take a promising risk, and are able to make it work out well for you, it will get easier to tackle the next attractive opportunity.

I see this happen all the time with my patients: the ones who improve their lives and relationships are the ones who motivate themselves to move through their fear and anxiety to discover excitement and joy.  Sometimes they stumble, sometimes they misread situations, but they also make incredible strides forward into the lives they’ve always dreamed of living.

So, the next time a heart-pounding, sweaty-palm moment comes your way, ask yourself, “Am I anxious, or excited?  Which response does this new situation call for?”  Is it good news or bad news?  If there’s any way it could be good news, take the risk.  Step out.  Don’t wait to feel comfortable.  Faced with the new, the exciting, or the unexpected, waiting to feel comfortable is a dead end.  Stay on track, don’t get stuck, and embrace our unpredictable, uncontrollable, but infinitely wonderful world.

The Virtues of Being a Slacker

No, it’s not a misprint, and no, I haven’t gone off the deep end.  Could there be any redeeming value in slacking off, in not always conscientiously following through on what needs to get done?  Right now, your “to-do-conscientiously” list may be a mile long.  Whether it concerns your job, your finances, or your relationships – with your spouse, kids, parents, friends, or co-workers – keeping your life on track may pose a real challenge for you during these very difficult times.

In her recent Psychology Today article, “Make Your Own Luck”, author Rebecca Webber states that “conscientiousness is no friend to serendipity”, or fortuitous chance.  She quotes University of Utah psychology professor Carol Sansone’s definition of conscientiousness to mean “you do what you’re supposed to do, and you stick with it”.  What could be wrong with that?  Isn’t being a quitter a sure road to ruin?

The problem happens, Webber maintains, when we persistently pursue a task even if the reason to continue is gone, or our goals or priorities have changed.  I agree; it really is possible to “try too hard”.  Remaining absorbed in an effort that may no longer be promising – just because you think you should stick with it – could lead you to miss a more likely solution or path to your goal.

So, give yourself permission to get distracted.  What might seem like aimless mind-wandering could instead be your creative side making fruitful leaps of inspiration.  Creativity arises in our right brain function; linear, logical thinking originates in our left brain.  We live in balance when we can draw on the resources of both sides of our brains – using our reason and our imagination in partnership to find new solutions to the sticky problems in our lives.

“Allow yourself to stray off-task sometimes,” Webber continues.  “We need to be loose to become aware of hidden opportunities.”  What would this look like?

When you’re reading something with new ideas, or serious content, do you find you want to stop and drift off?  Maybe an important concept – just the insight you’ve been hoping to find – is right before your eyes, but your mind needs some time to take it in, to wrap itself around this new perspective.  Indulging in a little “drift time” allows your mind the opportunity to make intuitive connections that can bring the whole picture into focus.

Or, when you need to make an important decision and have been intensely studying and analyzing all the various choices and their ramifications, do you feel a sudden urge to go clean the kitchen, or detail your car?  Sometimes thinking leads to over-thinking leads to brain freeze.  A little physical activity can often free you from the anxiety, self-questioning, and possible second-guessing that can leave you stuck and stumped for an answer.

So whether you indulge in a little daydreaming, or a radical spring cleaning, take an occasional break from rigid management of your time.  Following a seemingly aimless train of thought, or surfing a semi-random chain of websites, can lead to “ah-ha!” moments arising from the somewhat unfathomable processes and truly remarkable capacities of our own minds.

Maybe mental wandering looks suspiciously too much like play to us, especially as we grow older and the pressures and stresses pile up.  “I can’t take time off, now”, we tell ourselves.  “I’ve got to keep working!”  Today’s lesson: You deserve a break today (and I don’t mean going to McDonald’s – remember their old ads?).  Slack off a little, take off the blinders, let your mind drift, ease up on yourself a little – and give leaps of inspiration and imagination a chance to happen.

Let me warn you: if you live life strictly by the clock, all that ticking may drown out the sound of opportunity knocking.

Do You Feel Lucky?

Are you a Dirty Harry fan?  The iconic Inspector Harry Callahan used a signature phrase in each installment of the San Francisco-based police thriller movies.  “A man’s got to know his limitations” was one.  Good advice, actually.  Another standout phrase was “Do you feel lucky?”  Harry added a derogatory epithet at the end that I won’t repeat.  So, do you feel lucky?

Luck and chance are related concepts.  In a recent article in Psychology Today, entitled “Make Your Own Luck”, author Rebecca Webber makes an important connection between luck, chance, and opportunities.  She lists five suggestions for making the most of the unpredictable, based in part on The Luck Factor, by University of Hertfordshire psychologist Richard Wiseman.

Her first point: See serendipity everywhere.  People who “take advantage of happenstance have competence, self-confidence, and the ability to take risks,” she observes.  Spontaneous, extroverted people are more likely to encounter what I’d call “random acts of fortune”.  Living in a rut, either in our daily habits, our thought patterns, or our relationships, rather than confidently embracing the unfamiliar, reduces the chances for “chance” to enter our lives, with the potential for a happy outcome.

Webber’s second point, “Prime yourself for chance”, makes the related observation that while successful people set goals, they often stay flexible about how to achieve them.  Think of this in terms of a GPS device.  You know where you are.  You know where you’d like to be.  How many different routes can you take?  The number is probably infinite.

So you give your GPS some guidelines.  Maybe you want the shortest route by mileage, or by time.  Maybe you want to stay off the freeway, or out of certain neighborhoods.  Programming your GPS can be a big help in finding the best path.  But what happens when the road specified just happens to be closed for construction (and your GPS doesn’t know it)?  What if an accident has traffic backed up for miles?  Good GPS units can redirect you to alternate routes.

Does your “internal GPS” do that?  How do you feel when your master plan hits a road block on the way to your goal?  Can you change your route, be willing to try what looks like a less promising “side street”, or do you tend to stay stuck behind someone wearing a hard hat and holding a stop sign?  Staying flexible about how you reach your goal gives you a much better chance of arriving more quickly at your destination than when you pick one route and rigidly stick to it regardless of whether it’s working for you or not.

Also, having to take a personal detour may lead to an encounter with people and places you’ve never seen before.  New people and places can mean new ideas and opportunities.  Chance turns into opportunity which can mean you get “lucky”.  Always living in the “usual” leaves no room for the “unusual” break that you just might be looking for.

Try to maintain a large network of all kinds of friends and acquaintances.  Try new methods in your line of work.  Read books or magazines you wouldn’t normally pick up.  Take a different road into town, vary your exercise time, talk to someone from another generation or culture, go to Peet’s instead of Starbuck’s.  “Breaking behavioral habits can lever changes in mental habits that have kept you from success so far,” Webber maintains.

And stay positive.  A new route or a new suit won’t help if you’re fearful or skeptical or just plain feeling hopeless.  Don’t turn left instead of right tomorrow only feeling sure you’ll come home with nothing changed, and justified in saying, “I told you so.”

Serendipity, chance, opportunity – a shake-up in routine can transform your life, if you let it.  I’m telling you so.  What do you have to lose?

Do you feel lucky?  You can be.

Dis-a-What?

One of last week’s lessons from trauma concerned dissociation – a term many of you may not have heard of before, or fully understand.  I made the statement that “surviving can mean dissociating” and then went on to say:

“Dissociating is the capacity to distance ourselves from present-moment events and feelings.  Our innate, built-in survival mechanisms include the ability to dissociate during highly dangerous and traumatic moments.  This concept is valuable to a real understanding of trauma and the process of healing from it, and so I want to devote my next post to a fuller explanation of this aspect of our human nature.”

As human beings, we each have built into us a survival mechanism called the trauma response.  While everyone responds to crises in somewhat individual ways, the basic progression of our response follows a common pattern.  When a crisis event occurs, or we feel threatened, we first become acutely, extraordinarily alert.  This part of the trauma response is called hyperarousal.  The purpose of hyperarousal is to get ready, to mobilize the energy we’ll need to handle the crisis, whether it’s real or anticipated.

The next step of our response to crisis is called constriction.  Constriction is the way we prepare our body to deal with a threat, in much the way a fighter prepares for a boxing match.  The bell rings and he advances out to meet his opponent with his arms flexed and ready to strike, his chest tightened against a punch, his legs tensed and ready to move in any direction necessary.  Constricting our bodies into certain patterns prepares us to focus on and meet a threat with the best chance of protecting ourselves, or someone else.

Now we come to the time for dissociation.  We’ve put ourselves in the “ready position” as best we can, but we anticipate that painful events may still happen.  So we put some distance between ourselves and reality.  If we were to feel all the effects of the pain which may occur, it could incapacitate us and prevent us from fighting effectively or running away, whichever would make more sense in the situation.  Staying strong and doing what needs to be done may require us to not feel certain things that may happen, both emotionally and physically.  Our bodies are capable of numbing both physical sensations and emotional perceptions.

The ultimate dissociation response is a complete numbing or freezing, such as happens to an animal when it plays dead.  When a mouse is caught by a cat, it senses that death is imminent and may be unavoidable.  To protect itself from experiencing the overwhelming sensations of being killed by the cat, it completely dissociates by becoming unconscious.  Human bodies can also respond this way, in moments of complete panic and terror.

At any point in this progression, if the threat goes away, we can reverse our way back to a relaxed state.  We can unthaw, reconnect with our emotions and physical sensations, loosen our tensed muscles, and lower our high mental alert status.  We can “stand down”.  Because we’re human, however, and have a rational mind that can override this process, there’s no guarantee that we’ll always fully back off from a trauma response, even when the present danger is past.

Why is this?  Much of it has to do with our history.  The more trauma we’ve experienced without being able to let go of it, the more we continue to carry it around with us in our bodies and minds over time, and the less able we are to let go of the effects of our current responses to crises.  New responses pile on top of old ones.  We never really left our previous dissociation, restriction, and hyperarousal, and now we’re cementing all those states even further in place with more of the same.

Have I lost you?  I hope not.  This post has been more of a lecture than usual for me.  But I want to help you gain some awareness of how our bodies and minds work in a crisis to protect us.  There’s a real need and purpose behind the trauma response.  There are also ways that we can sabotage ourselves by not dealing with the aftereffects of our trauma stored in our minds and bodies.  I’ll have more to say about this process and its effects in upcoming posts.