Don’t make the mistake of comparing someone else’s external life to your internal life. Each person’s life appears coherent and certain from the outside and feels incoherent and uncertain on the inside.
Also, don’t make the mistake of assuming somebody doesn’t have a messy and uncertain internal life. We all fucking do.
–Mark Manson.
Are you drinking a wee bit more than you think you should? Quit Lit may help. Read more in my Washington Post story.
The End of Quarantine.
Published June 2, 2020 in Medium
There will likely be a time, in the not-too-distant future, when we look back wistfully on quarantine.
For those of us fortunate enough to be able to stay home, this time of isolation has been a lot of things — anxiety-inducing, boring, stifling, overwhelming — but it has also been simple. We knew what to do. When we ventured out, we knew the precautions to take. And once we got the hang of seclusion, it became almost routine.
As states begin to lift their restrictions, that simplicity is evaporating, replaced by a new kind of uncertainty about the risky world outside. Back in April, a month into quarantine, my psychotherapy patients would ask, “When will this be over?” Now I am hearing more specific anxieties: “Can I visit my grandparents?” “Can they force me to return to work?” “Is it okay to take an airplane?”
Not all of them are eagerly anticipating a green light. Many of us who have been safely sequestered in our homes with strict germ-control procedures in place may not be so eager to head back to a bustling workplace or plunk down a blanket on a busy beach.
That’s especially true for people in hard-hit areas and those who are especially vulnerable to Covid-19 (a group that disproportionately includes people of color, who make up an outsize percentage of new cases and deaths). In a Quinnipiac poll taken early last month, about half of adults in the greater New York City area say that they would be uncomfortable returning to the workplace if restrictions were lifted in the next few weeks. And in a more recent survey from the Pew Research Center, two-thirds of respondents said they were more concerned about things reopening too quickly than not opening quickly enough.
Right now, the freedom of a post-lockdown life isn’t just daunting; for some, it can feel like a terrifying loss of control.
“There is for many of us an underlying anxiety about the unknown, and a feeling of helplessness in dealing with an unseen enemy,” says Judy Levitz, PhD, the founding director and board president of the Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Study Center in New York City. Sheltering at home has become the devil we know — and with conflicting and ever-evolving rules about what’s considered safe, there’s so much we don’t know about engaging with the outside world.
Returning to the office brings up a host of concerns: Will the office be well sanitized, are elevators safe, how much space will you have? What about the bathrooms?
Some offices are leaving it up to workers to decide when they return to the office, but that can create its own anxieties. Are you missing out on anything if you stay home as some of your colleagues return to the office? One of the benefits of working in an office or co-working space is in-person camaraderie, but it’s hard to imagine chatting over a sandwich in the common room, masked and socially distanced.
Returning to social activities outside of work might seem stressful, too. “Amidst the pleasure of getting things back and seeing people again, all the interpersonal demands, obligations, and pressures will be renewed,” says Levitz, a practicing psychoanalyst. “I suspect there is a part of many of us that don’t particularly look forward to that.”
And of course, the relearning and redefining of social norms brings added pressure. Each interaction will require its own calculus: How much closeness are others comfortable with? How much time in a new situation will feel safe? How much do you trust this person?
And face-to-face isn’t the only thing that will feel uncomfortably new. We have grown accustomed to less stimulation. Many people have come to appreciate the low-key cocoon of quarantine, and navigating mass transit, crowds, and elevators may feel like what one of my patients has called a “jarring transition.”
“I am guiltily happy,” one of my patients confessed to me recently. “I prefer being at home where I can set my own schedule, wear what I want, and spend lots of time with my dog.” We’ve developed new habits and routines. Maybe we’re appreciating more downtime with our families, the right to be lazy, or the simple pleasure of cooking all our own meals.
Forgoing all that will be a difficult transition, says Karestan Koenen, a professor of psychiatric epidemiology at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and director of the Covid-19 Mental Health Forum Series. “Sheltering in place allowed us a pass on some things we did not like to do, such as facing difficult colleagues, coping with a busy schedule, and shuttling kids around,” she told me. “Now, when we are feeling really depleted, we have to deal with those things again.”
I know that doesn’t ring true for everyone. Some people are champing at the bit to re-enter the world, and will happily embrace a life with more freedom to go where they please. But for people who feel apprehensive and anxious, the ones who will be taking small steps, it can help to think of this next phase as a new routine to build: Just as we adjusted to washing our hands all the time, we’ll now have to evaluate each new challenge with our own personal, and ever-evolving, risk-reward re-entry matrix.
This is all very unsettling. To say the least. Here are some ways to stay centered.
Be kind. Be very kind to everyone.
Be attuned. When the intensity is rising, stop, notice, investigate and then try to breathe into the emotion.
Be tuned in (to others). Text the ones you love, the ones you have lost track of, the neighbors down the block. Plan a Zoom Happy Hour. Facetime with Grandma, or Dad, or Sis, or whomever.
Be grounded, or at least try to be! Look around at all that is good, at all that works, at all that you have, at all those you know.
Be ready to distract yourself. Take a walk, have a large glass of water, do some jumping jacks, marvel at the sky, find a photo that makes you super duper happy.
Be imaginative. Buy a flowering plant, start a large puzzle, clean out a closet, repair something that’s been broken, make a scrapbook, make a photo album, write a letter (yes, a letter!), to a pal, a relative, a colleague you miss seeing every day. Start meditating, or listen to podcasts about meditating.
Thinking about the future often invites a strange sort of cognitive dissonance: We have all sorts of expectations, hopes, and fears about it — but the image of who we’ll be remains murky. Many of us see our future selves as abstractions, or even as strangers.
In part, that’s accurate. One of the longest-running studies on personality found that our six core traits change almost completely between adolescence and old age. But for many of us, the difficulty in imagining what we’ll be like in five years, or in 50, is the result of cognitive biases — errors in thinking — that distort the way we understand the world and our place in it.
No one is completely immune to the bias of shortsightedness, which is baked into who we are as a species. “Our brains evolved for a very different world than the one in which we are living,” explained Daniel Gilbert, a Harvard psychology professor and author of Stumbling on Happiness, in a TED talk. “They evolved for a world in which people lived in very small groups; rarely met anybody who was terribly different from themselves; had rather short lives in which there were few choices, and the highest priority was to eat and mate today.”
Read the rest on Medium.
Bill Gates meditates, so do Derek Jeter, Arianna Huffington, and Oprah.
You probably know a few devoted meditators. You might even be one yourself.
The number of Americans who say they meditate for better health or wellness increased threefold from 2012 to 2017, from 4.1% of adults to 14.2%, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And folks age 45 to 64 are the most likely to say they practice regularly.
There’s a lot of hype about what meditation can do, but it has one undeniable benefit: more clarity. In addition, research consistently shows that a regular practice may be helpful for depression, chronic pain, and anxiety.
Studies have also documented that meditation can increase your gray matter and help slow some of the natural age-related atrophy of the brain. Regular meditators report feeling calmer, happier, and better able to deal with stressful situations.
Read the rest of my story on Considerable.
Another day, another upset: Your manager gives you an bad review. Your love interest ghosts you. Your teenager tells you to f&^% off. Your mind whirls, your heart pounds, your palms sweat.
How do you get back to baseline? You could distract yourself (TV! Shopping! Social Media!). But a better option would be to try this simple trick: Accept and identify what you’re feeling, and then say it out loud or write it down.
Though it might seem counter intuitive, researchers have found that focusing on your feelings and succinctly labeling them helps to lessen their intensity.
Click here to read the rest of my story on MEDIUM.
Each year the New York Times WELL blog publishes dozens of wonderful health articles. This year my story on controlling negative thoughts made the Top 10 List of best read stories of 2017. It came in at #6. Yay!
And boy was it a year that called for thought control. Read it again here:
A quick excerpt:
The first step to stopping negative thoughts is a surprising one. Don’t try to stop them. If you are obsessing about a lost promotion or the results of the presidential election, whatever you do, don’t tell yourself, “I have to stop thinking about this.”
By acknowledging your negative cycle and accepting it, you are on your way to taming your negative thoughts. Acceptance is the basic premise of mindfulness meditation, a practice that helps reduce stress and reactivity. You don’t necessarily have to close your eyes and meditate every day to reap the benefits of mindfulness. You can remind yourself to notice your thoughts in a nonjudgmental manner, without trying to change or alter them right away.
Accepting negative thoughts can also help lessen their weight. Getting mad at yourself for worrying or telling yourself to stop worrying only adds fuel to the negativity fire.
After you’ve accepted a negative thought, force yourself to challenge it.
READ THE ENTIRE PIECE HERE.
(From my 5/2/17 NYTs article. Read it here.)
We love our phones. We sleep with them, eat with them and carry them in our pockets. We check them, on average, 47 times a day — 82 times if you’re between 18 and 24 years old, according to recent data.
And for good reason: They tell the weather, the time of day and the steps we’ve taken. They find us dates (and sex), entertain us with music and connect us to friends and family. They answer our questions and quell feelings of loneliness and anxiety.
But phone love can go too far — so far that it can interfere with human love — old fashioned face-to-face intimacy with that living and breathing being you call your partner, spouse, lover or significant other.
Here are some suggested ways to break up with your phone long enough to connect with your partner.
Designate “no cell” zones in your home. With your partner, decide which areas of your home, such as the living room and the kitchen, should be technology-free. And consider eliminating phone use in the car so that you can use that time to talk to your partner about whatever is on your mind.
Try a phone-free bedroom for one week. Yes, it’s fun to check Twitter just before bed, or when you’re sleepless at 2 a.m., but you might be more likely to converse with your partner if the phone were elsewhere. And just the act of favoring your relationship over your phone sends a clear message to your partner.
“Buy some old-fashioned alarm clocks for your bedside table,” Dr. Turkle suggested. “Put your cellphones in a basket in the kitchen.”
Keep phones off the table. When you’re eating at home or in a restaurant, keep phones off the table. The mere presence of a cellphone — with the possibility of it chirping or buzzing at any moment — can inhibit the free flow of conversation, according to a study published last year in the journal Environment & Behavior. Researchers examined how conversations between two people were influenced by cellphones. When a phone was present during a conversation, the partners rated the conversation as less fulfilling and reported less feelings of empathic concern than when phones were absent.
Practice phone etiquette. If you must look at your phone, announce that you are doing so. “I am just checking the score/weather/playlist for two minutes,” shows courtesy and indicates to your partner that you are aware that your attention is shifting. It may also make you more aware of how often you pick up your phone when your partner is present.
Should your partner seem reluctant to let go of ingrained phone habits, consider turning to an objective source. Rather than wag your finger, you might suggest that you both take a closer look at your phone habits.
“Couples need to form an alliance and decide together what are the new rules,” Dr. Turkle said.
Dr. David Greenfield, a University of Connecticut psychiatry professor and founder of the Center for Internet and Technology Addiction developed a simple quiz, the Smartphone Compulsion Test, to help determine if a person’s phone use is problematic. Let the score be the judge, rather than you.