I’ve been trying to think of what might be useful for folks right now, with everything that’s happening in the world at the moment.
People are coming to terms with the fact that the world has changed, and it’s unlikely to go back to the way things were for quite some time and without a lot of heart ache in between. This means that you folks are going to need some slightly different advice from what I gave you during the pandemic.
The thing about a pandemic is, eventually, things generally DO return to some kind of normal. You just have to get through the in between and life mostly regulates.
But witnessing a democratic ally descend into an autocratic chaos of threatening invasion and upending the global order of things, well, that’s something pretty different. It’s the difference between a loved one getting sick but recovering, and a loved one getting sick and dying. Life will just be different now. It doesn’t mean that there isn’t a hope of recovery, but the process is going to look different.
We don’t get to go back to the way things were before. Choices other people have made, we now all have to face and live with. There will be far reaching consequences that will be difficult to predict. Some of them, we can plan for and hope they don’t happen, but others…
The human brain doesn’t love living under that kind of uncertainty. So, you’re going to see a lot of different brain types over the next little while and the ways that those brain types cope with uncertainty of this variety. We saw that during the pandemic - the different kinds of Survival Modes and the ways that those modes play out in the people around us. This will be similar, but different. The ways our brains handle a pandemic versus the kind of looming uncertainty of economic hardship and potential invasion by a neighbouring state - again, similar but different.
One thing that always helps brains handle chaos is predictability and understanding cause and effect. So, I’m going to attempt to give people some of that over the next little while. It will help you to navigate the things that will inevitably happen over the next while, regardless of what happens with our neighbours to the south. I’m also going to give you some tips for how to manage your own nervous system reactions right now so that you can make better, fully informed choices rather than be subject to a hijacked evolutionary thought process that’s maladapted for current circumstances.
First up - things that you can do for yourself right now.
1. Create predictability for yourself.
You can’t rely on the world around you to give you a sense of predictability right now, and our brains NEED that to function at their best. You have to establish some routines and stick to them, otherwise your nervous system is going to first go haywire and then shut down.
Being unable to predict cause and effect leads to a nervous system depressed state called ‘learned helplessness’. In military campaigns, they create this effect through a series of attacks designed to cause this state in the people they wish to invade. You’ve likely heard it referred to as ‘shock and awe’. Whether you do that with bombs, general chaos, or online disinformation (propaganda campaigns), the effect on the nervous system is the same. It forces your nervous system into a state where it first freaks out, attacks everyone around you, and then, finally, shuts down and lacks the motivation to do just about anything, especially fight back.
So, how do you fight back during a campaign of chaos meant to get you to destabilize your own country from the inside first and then shut down your nervous system so that you’re easier to invade? Don’t rely on the world around you for a sense a predictability. You have to create it for yourself. So what routines can you create for yourself right now that will decrease rather than increase your nervous system response? Trial and error some things. But start by asking yourself the question - does this make me angry and frustrated or calm and happy? That’s a super easy way to start managing your nervous system right now in a way that makes you harder to manipulate.
2. Learn what you can, to your tolerance level, about what’s happening so you can recognize it when it occurs instead of panicking or falling for it.
Just like with an illness or injury, not knowing what to expect throughout the process can lead to significant anxiety. Once you know what to expect and what to do should it occur, you can calm down and just handle it. The same is true here for this.
Also important - misinformation is rampant right now. The same way that you can’t trust any random health information site or online influencer for disease process information or treatments, the same goes for world events.
That doesn’t mean just watch the news or doom scroll all day looking for the latest updates. It means learn the theory behind what’s happening from actual academics and scholars so that you can recognize things for what they are instead of getting all caught up in the disinformation online about it all.
If something is written or shared in a way to get you all fired up - they’re trying to manipulate you. That in and of itself isn’t necessarily bad, but it can absolutely be a red flag that means you should probably figure out the intentions behind it.
We don’t make good choices from an amped up state. We’re MUCH more easily manipulated when we’re afraid or angry. Remember, brain function goes down 30% in your stress response. Anyone trying to activate your stress response doesn’t want you to THINK about what to do, they want you to act in whatever way they tell you to. So, though having our biases confirmed right now by whatever podcaster or newscast, or social media whatever might FEEL good, it’s just keeping you in a, basically, weaponized state for whoever wants to take advantage of that state and direct you to whatever target they choose. And please believe me when I say this - there are currently active organized campaigns to do just that right now that have been going on for a while. Online misinformation has been rampant for years now. This is, unfortunately, the culmination of some of those campaigns.
So, learn what you can about the current art of modern warfare and how much of it is waged online first these days, but really monitor your own nervous system response when doing so. When you feel yourself getting amped up and reactive - take a break and chill out.
3. Learn about nervous system responses so you can better understand both your and other people’s responses right now.
I’m going to do my best over the next while to help with this one like I did during the pandemic, because it helps to understand the reactions you’re going to see from friends and family during all of this. People react to the same situation in different ways that are evolutionary based and not necessarily helpful or matched to today’s society. Remember during the pandemic and you had a real range of behavioural responses from randomly attacking cars, to yelling at baristas, to denying germs are real? Same idea here. This time will be a bit different because there's a direct threat target to actually be mad at, rather than a pandemic where the actual threat is nebulous and indistinct. That will help many of the responses make a bit more sense, generally. We can appreciate the people who get Big Mad at Donald Trump or Elon Musk (fight response), or the people who get mad at how our political leaders are handling it (indirect fight response), we can understand the people who get really afraid (fear response), we can even understand the people who say we should placate the US and do whatever they demand (fawn response). We’ll also have the people who have less adaptive responses - the denial response (this isn’t happening or won’t happen), the re-direction response (what we should REALLY be worrying about are those damn vaccines), and, my personal favourite, the full-apeshit response (not the clinical term, and self explanatory).
I find this helpful for when evaluating people’s advice and opinions about how things should be handled right now. You’ll notice that the people you feel drawn to listen to probably match your own preferred nervous system response. You’ll also find that this is the root of a lot of tribalism that will occur over the next while. People who have one type of nervous system response really tend to judge other people’s responses and they get Big Mad at each other, especially when one group tries to reason them out of their response.
I’m going to say this as plainly as I can because it’s important - you can’t reason someone out of a nervous system response. They’ll just get mad at you for trying. So it’s important to learn how to recognize when someone is in one and the correct ways to handle it to avoid nasty, overblown confrontations that just get you both further entrenched in your respective responses. This is incredibly important to understand because the way disinformation campaigns work is by getting groups with differing brain types to attack each other to create chaos within a country to destabilize it. If you’re both so amped up that you’re willing to destroy your relationships by arguing why you’re right and they’re wrong because your nervous system is telling you that the only way to survive is by convincing everyone around you to handle this exactly the same way you do… that’s how we wind up with things like huge protests that immobilize the country and demand the overthrowing of the government. The actual bad guys got us to do the work for them. We’ve seen recent examples of how effective it can be. It’s important that we learn how to not fall for it.
The key here to managing both your and theirs is SAFETY. You have to first make yourself feel safe. The end. Whatever that looks like for you. And I’ll talk about ways to do that in my next post. Only once you’ve got a good handle on your own nervous system can you help someone else with theirs. If you come at someone all amped up and they’re also all amped up and your nerves system responses don’t match, you’re just going to end up fighting with each other. I know many of you have experienced this multiple times over the last few years and you walk away bewildered and hurt. It’s ruined friendships.
This is the only way out of that. You have to deactivate people’s nervous system responses FIRST. It’s the only way to help them right now. People who feel safe with you are willing to hear what you have to say about something. Otherwise, they’ll just shut you out and even become more entrenched in their response.
So, what makes you feel safe? And how do you go about making other people feel safe?
We’ll talk about that in my next post.
Until then, do whatever makes you feel the opposite of amped up, is generally a good rule. What would you do for a sick day? You can’t lose with comfy jammies and a show that makes you laugh. It’s a go-to for a reason. Try that before you get into any arguments you can’t take back.
Until next time, Folks!