Many men today feel like they’re falling behind, unable to meet traditional definitions of success. They see that others have succeeded, both before them and today, and conclude one thing: This is my failure.
In our culture, men are expected to be providers and achievers. You’ve “made it” if you can pay your bills and land promotions. The social status of another person is what we use as a shortcut to judge who he is. And so we assume others do the same about us. When a man feels he hasn’t reached the level he should, he works harder. He will bring work home with him, physically or mentally. Anxiety over unmet expectations builds, making it harder to get things done and often leading to burnout. The looming fear of getting fired - the ultimate blow to manhood - becomes a constant source of stress. These pressures are made worse by how work is set up. The primary goal of any employer is to get the most output for the least amount of input. So they put workers on a treadmill and gradually increase the speed. If they see you can run at 4 MPH without faltering, they increase it to 5. From 5 to 6. If at 6.5 MPH you struggle to keep up, then they now know what your max speed is. Some employers may demand 7 MPH, and the job market is such that if you can’t do it, they will find someone who will. But either way the preference is that you alone do it. Paying you $60,000 to do a ton of work leads to more profit than paying two people $50,000 to do it. So if we know work is naturally set up to always have us on the verge of breaking, why do we feel so terrible when we do? Times are changing, but much of it is still to do with a pressure to “man up.” Our grandfathers overcame the fascists without complaint, so the story goes. Being able to work through pain is the highest cultural virtue. And that mindset is exploited by those who want things from you. If you are not able to cut it, then it is ‘your’ failure. Buy an expensive watch and you can convince people you have succeeded. If they are convinced, maybe you can convince yourself. Buy the biggest TV and you have the most impressive way to distract from the nagging pain in the back of your mind. Go into debt. The same people who promote the idea that you must be strong, independent, and constantly working are more than willing to lend you money—at interest rates they control. In therapy I see again and again that the symptom is not the real problem. Men come in all the time with vague feelings of anxiety and inadequacy. They tend to want “tools” to get rid of the anxiety, so they can get back in the race. But anxiety is not an ailment, it is a beacon. It is a red flag. It is an alarm going off that says “here, over here, this is what needs attention!” Just addressing how not to feel anxious is putting a band-aid on a lopped off finger stub. We need to talk about how you got here in the first place. How we all keep getting here. And we need to question in what way we would like to participate in the culture that is exploiting you and grinding you down. I often will ask “what does being a man mean to you?” I find that the answers are not usually ones that we have independently come up with. Rather they are usually just a re-frame of what we have been told being a man means. Which to me means we are living someone else’s life instead of our own.
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Imagine yourself in, say Topeka, Kansas, 1938. The circus is in town, and out in a fallow corn field you see a huge beast of an elephant. You stare into her eyes. You do this long enough that something in the back of your mind panics as you realize “my God, this mammoth could break free and trample the whole crowd if she wanted to. We wouldn’t stand a chance.” But the elephant just stares passively back.
Your fear is not eased by the appearance of passivity. Nor is it eased by what you see as its restraints. The elephant has a simple rope tied around its ankle. No thicker than the rope your papa uses with the cattle. The rope is tied to a wooden stake, driven into the hardpan. You think to yourself that you and your buddy could probably tug of war that sucker right out of the ground. There is no reassurance there. How is it holding this monstrosity in place? The answer is standing right next to this long trunked colossus. Jumbo has an adorable little Dumbo. And around that baby elephant’s ankle you see the same rope. This being 1938 and you not having a smartphone to distract you, you sit and watch the elephants for a while. Every twenty moments or so the baby elephant yanks and yanks on the rope with childish exuberance. The stake does not budge, neither does mama. Then it dawns on you. The baby elephant is learning that the stake cannot be defeated. It gives up trying before it gets the strength to learn otherwise. That behemoth casting the long shadow on baby learned she was not capable at a time she was not capable. So she has gone through life believing she is not capable. It begs some questions: What were the ropes that were tied around your young ankles? Who are the circus owners in your life? Who is benefiting from your continued disbelief in your abilities? How can you break free from bondage with one sharp yank? What stops you? Human beings seem to be unique in that we are the only species that can physically be in one place but mentally be else. Be that ruminating on the past or dreading the future. Either way when we are emotionally flooded our hormones are bombarding our mind and making us feel not present.
Common triggers for emotional flooding are situations we previously found stressful. If we are having an argument with our partner that feels similar to a previous argument, our frustration will increase and we will have the feeling of 'here we go again'. That here we go again feeling makes us feel trapped. Because if we had that feeling before and are having it again now, the anxious part of our mind assumes we will keep having that feeling. Emotional flooding in this case means panic! It is hormones that are the biological cause of emotional flooding. Hormones, chemical messengers such as adrenaline, are shooting throughout our mind and body when we are emotionally flooded. Left unchecked, to put it simply, we do stupid stuff. We say things that hurt our partner, or we take actions we cannot untake. Over time, resentment builds in the relationship. Think of emotional flooding as like being drunk. If you are under the influence, it's best not to drive a car or make big decisions. We are not our best selves when drunk. But when alcohol wears off, we can think straight again. The same is true with these hormones. When you are emotionally flooded try your best to remove yourself from the situation. The tried and true technique of walking away to calm down still works. Once you have calmed down, and if your partner has as well, circle back to the argument. You can let them know why you walked away, and why you believe it was for the benefit of the relationship. Having these conversations when hormonally "sober" can lay the groundwork for better future arguments. So next time the fight comes up you can say some version of "hey, I think we are getting emotionally flooded right now. I don't want to lose connection with you, so for the health of our relationship, let's give each other some space." The Conclusion Drawing Machine The brain is a conclusion drawing machine. It does not believe in our ability to live in uncertainty. It has little faith in ‘we’ll figure it out when we get there’. It abhors ambiguity. It needs answers now, and if good ones cannot be found, it will settle for bad ones. The brain’s first preference is the correct conclusion. It wants to be right about people, places, and things. It wants to be right about relationships and ideas. This is the golden conclusion we are always striving for. The brain’s second preference is an incorrect conclusion. We like to close loops in our head. Mysteries are fun when they have answers. So many things in life are either unanswerable, or unanswerable in the moment. We lose sleep worrying about things that have yet to play out. Telling ourselves a lie can help us rest. Believing we have arrived at the truth means no longer having to think about it. The least favorable preference is coming to no conclusion at all. Like the uncomfortable feeling when you are walking and the next step isn’t where you thought it would be. For our cavemen ancestors who faced threats we have since inoculated against or drove extinct, mysterious situations were where deadly danger dwelt. We are hardwired to have a nagging voice in our head saying ‘figure it out, figure it out. Don’t wait for more information, figure it out now.’ Comparitivitis Comparitivitis - noun - /kəm-per-I-tə-vī-dəs/ : inflammation in soul caused by thoughts of others successes, particularly in comparison to ours. Psychosomatic disorder. Arises in subject from misconceptions on how ‘they’ve got it over there’. Individuals most vulnerable to comparitivitis include infants, toddlers, and those who have difficulty imagining what it is like to be in other people’s shoes. Symptoms include: (a) endless social media scrolling, (b) “I wish I/we could do/had that” statements, (c) inability to appreciate what one already has, (d) decreased motor function SEE ALSO: Joneses, keeping up with; First World Problems High School is Over
Maybe when we look back on it there is nostalgia but let’s face it, high school was awful. We were in rapidly changing bodies, first discovering what the social world was, and surrounded by others in the same situation. No longer was there the innocent equality of the prepubescent days, when every kid was just a kid. Now there were rankings, cliques, hierarchies. We spent our days all in the same brick building. Everyone knew everyone, had an opinion on everyone and we had one for them. Hell even everyone’s parents had an opinion on us. We were being watched and judged; ‘No Mistakes’ was the order of the day. After high school it’s all over. When we become an adult no one cares anymore. We are cast out into the world for our chapter three. Trouble is, every single person who has reached this point brought with them a view of the world developed in the preceding eighteen years. So if that view says that people are compared, categorized, and ranked, then we are going to march into adulthood thinking that is still happening. It’s not still happening. No one cares, and that is a really good thing. Go make mistakes, fall flat on your face. No one is watching anymore, they too are off on their own. Go do a thing. Become you. (Originally featured on Social Work Today)
In the American Southwest, there’s a little guy called the trapdoor spider. It sits all day in the small tunnel it dug into the earth with specially adapted teeth. It chose this space, seeing it as best suited for its purposes and freely available. It did the work of digging, closed its silk-hinged trap door, and now it waits. Time passes, its prey creeps across its doorstep, and it strikes. It’s quick, and to our eyes violent, but also natural. It’s smooth. It’s the way of the world. The tree in the woods did not select its spot. But it too works with the parts it has evolved on the ground that it found available. Time passes, and the storm winds rise up. The many branches of the tree bend and give way; the wind moves on. Maybe it appears violent to our eyes, but it is also natural, smooth, and the way of the world. Some trapdoor spiders may starve, and some mighty trees may fall. But the tree does not attack the wind, and the trapdoor spider does not run around the ground in a panic. They do not force these actions because they know intuitively they won’t work. They do not force these actions because they lack anxiety. Anxiety can be a beautiful thing. In large part because of anxiety, we do not have to live with our bodies or roots hiding in the ground. We can venture out across the earth safe in the knowledge that, to a strong degree, we can react to trouble and threats. Our blessing is that our reaction switch is always set to “on.” Our curse is that we can never turn it off. Reaction will always be our default. Reaction is controlled by our amygdala, the almond-shaped bit of brain that sits near where the brain connects to the rest of the body. When we feel, see, smell, or taste things, that information passes through our amygdala first before moving on to the rest of our brain. If we see a bear’s paw swinging at us with claws out, our amygdala will direct the body to dodge it before we even recognize with the rest of our minds that it is a bear’s paw. The amygdala is so wonderful when it is functioning properly. When we have suffered a trauma, have suppressed a lot of emotion, or are under considerable stress, the amygdala can be like a malfunctioning fire alarm. It will scream out to us, “Something is wrong! We need to take action now!” Action, action, all the time. This is anxiety. The amygdala reacts. But it knows its abilities are limited, and that it has an ally in our skull in our higher brain. The prefrontal cortex. The place where we do our higher thinking. This is the part you are using right now to comprehend and consider these words. The amygdala reacts and asks our higher brain to take action. It sends up stress signals like the Bat Signal. It makes us physically uncomfortable so we will act. When we act, we feel comfortable again for a while. If there are no actual threats that can be addressed, we may turn to our default coping strategies. We may rearrange the furniture, seek out some reassurance, or throw a tantrum. Afterwards we feel better. Unfortunately, in searching for short-term relief, we often do long-term damage. Our actions, when there was no real immediate threat, fed back to the amygdala the message that it was right to get all worked up and send out those stress hormones. The amygdala then thinks it should see more things as threats and make us even more anxious next time. The solution then is the most counter-intuitive thing imaginable in the moment. Unless the bear’s paw, the tornado, or the city bus truly is barreling toward us, the best thing we can do is take inaction. It is to sit there with the pain, watch it swell up like a wave in our mind and body, reach its crest, and then recede. Because it will recede. It will not drown you. As the stress hormones taper off, you will find that you survived, that your life was never actually at risk. After the initial reaction of our amygdala, our actions are within the control of the higher mind. When we ride the wave of anxious discomfort to its conclusion, we are then able to respond rather than react to what is going on. With practice this becomes easier, and we grow more skilled at working with our anxiety. Eventually we can even learn to appreciate our amygdalas, which do so much good for us. We can learn to love them because they are part of the beautiful experience of being alive. We can learn when we need to respond. Or, like the patient trapdoor spider or the tree on a peaceful day, we may find that no action is required at all but to be. Satellite View on Anxiety When we are in a highly anxious state the world closes in tightly. It’s kind of like being in Google Street View. We’re locked in place and all we can sense is our immediate surroundings. Our brain is scanning the area around us because it perceives threats. We can see detail in every direction, but only about 40 feet out. But that 360 degree bubble is not the only place life exists. Our anxiety is so concerned with the moment that we lose sight of that. If we are able to zoom out we see that the moment is a small part of the whole. There is the town, the county, the state, the nation, and it is all happening on this green and blue orb. If we can catch ourselves in the moment, and click that (-) button to zoom out, we can be better off for it. Oftentimes the people that know us best are already there, viewing our life from 40,000 feet. It may be worth asking them what is actually going on in the wider view, help adjust your perspective. The Overnight Attendant
The brain is like a good hotel. It is all efficiency. During the day bellhops zip up and down elevators, maids toss white linen in the air, and a team of workers at the front desk process weary travelers. We can take on most challenges in the daytime. At nighttime things change. Staff go home to their houses and apartments. Come 3 AM there is no one around but the Overnight Attendant. That one lone person manning the front desk in the unlikely case someone is needed. The staff need rest, so they rest while the rest of the world is at rest. We need, uh, rest too. We can run a whole operation during the day. We can hold conversations while operating vehicles. Listen to podcasts while cleaning. It is amazing what the brain can do! The cost of being human is that such an amazing piece of machinery as the neocortex cannot run at full power, 24-hours a day. At 3 AM it wants to be asleep. So if we are awake at 3 AM, the hotel is not at its best. The anxiety we experience then is like a group of teenagers broke into the swimming pool area, someone clogged the lobby toilets, a surprise tour bus just pulled in, and oh by the way the building is on fire. The Overnight Attendant is not equipped to handle all this. What brain is awake at 3 AM is not equipped to handle problems. The best possible answer is to lock the doors and say “I am going to figure this out tomorrow when I am fully staffed again.” Hope Loan This one is dorky, but it can work. It’s called the Hope Loan. Sometimes in life we know we are in a pinch point, where life is coming at us from different angles. Perhaps the kids are at a really tough age, while simultaneously we are overwhelmed at work. Or you are in some major transition. A divorce, grieving a loss, an emptying nest. What all of these situations have in common is that they are not permanent. They are tough times, but the pain we are feeling in those moments won’t last. There are better times ahead. It’s hard to imagine that in the moment, of course. But the moment is emotional, not logical. Logic is clear: periods of pain are followed by periods of not-pain. We all are familiar with loans at this point. A loan is a bet on yourself. It’s saying “I am gonna be worth enough in the future, I just need a lump sum to help me in the present.” A hope loan says the same thing. “The future is gonna be alright, so I am gonna take a lump sum of those good vibes now.” Hope loan: like a regular loan, but no monthly payments! When we have BIG feelings like anxiety, anger, and sadness, or when we are just feeling overwhelmed, we tend to get stuck in our head. Our fight or flight reactions are triggered and we start to narrowly focus on whatever caused the problem or the pain.
This can be a healthy reaction to things if the problem is we are being physically attacked, but thankfully modern life is not as often like that. Instead the best thing we can do is come out of that mental state, so we can think with a clear head again. The 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 Method (not my invention) can be helpful with this. It involves using all five of our senses to reconnect us with the world outside of our head. And of course if you lack one or more of these senses, feel free to adapt it how you see fit. The idea is to acknowledge 5 things you can see, 4 things you can touch, 3 things you can hear, 2 things you can smell, and 1 thing you can taste. If I am in a position where there is not much around me to see or smell (such as laying in bed) I will think about things I encountered that day. The benefit of this technique is to remind you that the rest of the world exists, and that it isn't falling apart. It also takes time to run thru the process, giving our mind-body a chance to slow down the release of those nasty hormone chemicals. (More about those chemicals here!) I like to not only name the object I can sense, but also think about the object. For example if I see a chair, I like to think about why the chair is shaped the way it is, who could have designed it, what I like about it, why we have chairs at all, etc. By the time I am done with this I am curious about the world again, and not lost in my own problems. Ever catch yourself feeling angry and wish you could just shut it right off? If only it were that easy.
When something makes us angry, our amygdala -the almond shaped mass in our brain responsible for fight or flight- says "my time is now." Before we have a moment to think it over, the amygdala commands our body to produce and rapidly fire chemicals such as adrenaline throughout our body. Unless we are in the rare position of actually fighting off a real attacker, this is not a mental state we want to be in. Prolonged anger can lead to health problems like heart disease and significant damage to relationships. (Click here for more on couples counseling) Ideally we would stop anger like stepping on a car's brake. At the size of a common vehicle we can go from 60 to 0 pretty rapidly. But anger is not like that. Anger is like a 100-car train flying down the tracks. In the cab of the train's locomotive the engineer pulls the brake lever to stop. The brakes are applied, but that of course does not stop the train 'in its tracks'. With all that weight behind it, it can take a large train well over a mile to stop. Adrenaline is like that. Once you notice it moving in your head, the brake lever needs to be thrown immediately to head off disaster. The force of the adrenaline will want to keep the train moving. That is why it is important to not let up on the brake when the adrenaline urges you to. Whatever method you use to calm - breathing, mindfulness, walking away - do it and stick to it as soon as you notice the nasty chemicals flowing. |
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