Improve Your Lousy Stress Response
First Reactions Usually Stink, So Hold Your Nose and Carry on
When trouble strikes, do you strike back or do you wilt? A natural response is to reject and refuse to deal with the trouble. It’s not a particularly effective strategy, but it is common. Before absorbing the shock, you reel from the impact. Like the calm—or numbing—right after a close call and the shock when bad news suddenly strikes, you start to shake minutes later. It might even take days or weeks for the full impact of the bad news to settle in. It’s common to enter a survival state with mental resources dispatched to cope instead of feel. Funeral arrangements require attention, a medical team needs to be assembled, decisions need to be made, acute pain must be endured. Young women with cancer are slammed with the possibility of infertility. Amputees convulse at the idea of losing a limb. Parents of accident victims can’t reconcile the image of their active, healthy child with the casket. Reality refuses to settle in.
I’ve noticed two common ways people tell their disrupters, “This can’t be happening!” or “I can’t handle you! Just go away!” Some people get engulfed in their feelings—especially anxiety—and can’t see their way out of the pit they’re in. I call this way attachment because there is no space between them and the disrupter. They are too attached to the disrupter’s power. Others mobilize coping strategies to avoid falling into a pit. They put off experiencing the full impact of what’s happening. I call this detachment because there is a sizable space between them and the disrupter; they are detached from its power.
Psychologist and author Reid Wilson uses the terms worry and avoidance for these two positions. At the base is the belief that worry and avoidance moderate the anxiety, but they only increase it: “If we simply worry about an upcoming problem instead of solving it, or if we back away to get rid of our distress, we are inviting anxiety to take advantage of us, and we are on a path of suffering” (Wilson 24). Both ways are automatic reactions instead of chosen responses to the circumstances. Anxiety is only overcome, however, by walking toward the feelings of distress.
There are advantages and disadvantages to both attaching and detaching. Because attachers are more in touch with their emotions, they also tend to be more open and sincere about their struggles. On the other hand, they are more prone to enthroning their emotions. They wear their anxiety on their sleeves. Awaiting further news of a diagnosis, test result, accident report, or other assessment is nerve-wracking, like screaming through a Six-Flags roller coaster that someone strapped them into against their wishes. Fear spirals out of control and magnetizes worst-case scenarios that zap resilience. Depending on the severity of the disrupter, attachers feel stuck, abandoned, and drowning.
Detachers are more adept at compartmentalizing their emotions. They put aside their worries until further notice and even experience calm and peace through the storm. That’s not to say that everyone who is calm detaches from circumstances. Detachers report a surreal state of watching themselves from afar. This automatic default mode keeps them from falling into a pit of despair and readies them for the fight ahead. They have a touch of invincibility, but they run the risk of being stoic and unable to appreciate the reality of the loss. Both attachers and detachers fail to grasp, own, and do something constructive with the loss. The job for both is the same: stop condemning disrupters. How? A first step is to identify your own stress responses to a disrupter.
I tend to be a detacher, though I’m learning something from previous mistakes. My first time with cancer, I tentatively tiptoed once or twice toward what Anne Lamott calls “the cold dark place within, the water under the frozen lake or the secluded, camouflaged hole” (Lamott 198) to look into the hole. Then I did a quick about face, like a pompom girl in a march. The second time I acknowledged my discomfort and still felt afraid of going near the hole, but I noticed a benefit from doing so: my priorities came into sharper focus. I also learned better how to live under and yield to my disrupter, which offered a measure of peace and perseverance.
What’s a better approach than attaching or detaching? Begin by asking yourself, “How do I respond when things go terribly wrong?” Do you push away unwelcome news by becoming overwhelmed and immobilized or dismissive and robotic? I’m not advocating denying your emotions or giving up your coping mechanisms. I am advocating figuring out effective ways to endure and tolerate the loss once the shock sets in. Why is knowing your own stress response important? Since stress responses are automatic and habitual, they pass under the radar of awareness, exerting an outsized influence on you. They not only discourage but also impede acceptance of the disrupter. Once you are aware of your automatic response you can talk to yourself and try a new and better approach.
What are better habits for attachers? Tell yourself, “I feel like I can’t do this, but I’ll find a way.” Dare to believe you are stronger than you think. Replace, “What if I can’t handle this?” with “What if I can?” Pray for strength. Most of all, put the brakes on runaway, anxious thoughts and replace them with calmer ones. You have to do this over and over until new habits of thought emerge, but it’s worth the effort. By dethroning your emotions, you allow a more stable governor to exercise leadership over your life.
Detachers need to stop denying their emotions. On my very first chemo treatment I thought I was calm and collected, but I ended up fainting from stress. My emotions broke through the dam. I talk about this in my book Life After Why where you can find other stories and a practical framework for accepting disrupters. If you are a detacher you need to allow yourself to be—and look—weak, to be open with others, and to build a supportive community around yourself. Whereas attachers need to calm and redirect their emotions, detachers need to awaken and ferret out their emotions. These are different tasks but they have the same goal: stop rejecting and condemning a disrupter and move toward acceptance.
Don’t be too hard on yourself. After all, you’re dealing with a vicissitude, which takes time to process. First responses usually stink, so plug your nose and carry on. When you fall back into familiar patterns, keep practicing new habits of thought. Eventually, attachers are less swamped by wild emotions, and detachers are more comfortable with a loss of control. This prepares you for the journey ahead, which will demand a lot of you. Dare to believe you are stronger than you think.
Sources Cited:
Lamott, Anne. Bird by Bird. Anchor Books, 1994.
Wilson, Reid. Stopping the Noise in Your Head. Health Communications, Inc., 2016.
Links to my book: