Thresholds to Fear and Stress

Daily rhythms and rituals help reduce stress.

Developing new daily rhythms and rituals can help us all cope better with stressful events. The government issued social isolation order gives us all a time to learn about our own behavior and prepare for better times. This is a time for self reflection as well as action.

When under unusual stress, most individuals do not behave the same as when they’re in a state of homeostasis and relaxed. There are those who perform at their highest level when they’re under what could be called, “optimal tension.” But even those who do their best when under pressure will often notice more raw behaviors and emotions emerge when pushed to extremes.

Panic Buying of 2020

The first time I saw non Asians starting to panic buy was February 27th and 28th, 2020. Asians started panic buying on January 26, 2020. It was also 1/26/20 that I was asking the company I worked for to start making plans for the coming epidemic. The early panic buyers hinted at what the future held. It was a few days after 2/28/2020 when the real madness started. I remember the first day of the real crazy Covid-19 panic buying. There was a mad rush of desperate people literally running to the back of the store to get water and toilet paper. They were actually racing each other as the doors opened. As they ran by me I thought they would start pushing the people in front of them down. Fortunately, aisles in the store were wide enough to accommodate the aggressive panic buyers and those who were more leisurely.

Stress reveals our narrative themes.

Being placed under stress will often reveal one’s coping strategy. In good times it’s easier to hide our true nature, but add a little stress and our underlying traits will surface.

People with a low tolerance for stress will be more easily affected by events than emotionally hardy individuals.

As I mentioned earlier, there are people who perform best when under some pressure. I know I seem to get a lot more done in a given amount of time when I have no extra time. When I am constantly working I am utilizing every minute to accomplish some goal.

I’ve worked as though there was not enough time to finish anything for about 1 month. Now that many old goals have been reached or put on the back burner, I have slowed down. I think it’s more a matter of finding new goals that work in a Covid-19 world than not wanting to intensely focus on goal achievement. The old narrative theme is still there, but the old opportunities are not.

Variations in mood and levels of activity are normal when dealing with the prolonged stress of isolation and the disruption of one’s livelihood. We can expect these changes to become more common during long uninterrupted periods of stress and an uncertain future.

One of the first stress management strategies for many people is, reduce the stress. One way to reduce stress at this point in history is, don’t binge consume Covid-19 news. It’s good to be informed, it’s not that useful to be consumed by bad news.

If you’re consuming over 3 hours of harmful Covid-19 news a day, I say, just stop. How do you know if you are or aren’t over-consuming toxic news? The only way is to track it. Keep a little piece of paper handy and write down when you’re exposed to Covid-19 news. You can refine this further and classify the news as unreliable, general, sensationalized, and useful.

That last one is the one we should be thinking about as we go about our day. In fact, I would say, useful news should be sought out. Useful news is news from reliable sources that help us cope with our current situation. One form of useful news are the proper protocols for going out in public and how to stay safe. Another type of news we need to look at is information that helps us predict what the new normal will be like. This kind of news is adaptive rather than reactionary. Some examples of the later could be, what is local business going to be like in one year? How about two years down the road. What about in three years? Will we still be feeling the effects of Covid-19? If so, how can we prepare for that world? How can we adapt to the future? What kind of jobs will be more plentiful post Covid-19?

Change will be part of the post Covid-19 stay at home world, it’s best if we can plan for the change instead of only reacting to it. It’s best if we can have a thought out plan for a best case, mid point , and a worst case scenario. Having some idea of what to do will be better than having no plan and no control when change is forced upon us.

People exposed to three or more hours of toxic news will find it beneficial to take at least one of those hours and meditate and or exercise. There are other activities that are beneficial as well. We’re each different and need to find what works for us. It could be painting or practicing some other art. Perhaps writing or building something is more for you. The point is, you need to find something constructive to focus on.

While reducing stress by good behavior and environmental management is a first step, we do have some other options as well. Finding a positive outlet for your mental and physical energy will help reveal opportunities for turning the uncertainty and isolation of Covid-19 into something positive.

Isolation is a time to reevaluate options as we try to find ways to live with a new reality.

This is a time to pay attention to our inner self as we evaluate and weigh the possibilities of different actions and estimate the likely outcome. To reflect on future options, take some quiet time when you are not preoccupied with the distractions of the day. Think through the different scenarios of a new action. What are the roadblocks and walls that will make the new action viable or not a good choice. Are there ways around or over any of the roadblocks or obstacles?

In the future I will explore another ancient way of observing the inner self as we evaluate our possibilities. The method that has been in use since before the days of Gilgamesh and often mentioned or alluded to in the Bible.

During isolation I’ve found I spend much more time exploring new ideas, business models, and technologies. This means I am not spending all of my time on task achievement. It remains to be seen if more exploration will have any real benefit.

Adapting to change is always accompanied by stress.

We all have thresholds that once past, sees normally reliable behavior begin to change and breakdown.

Stress is encountered any time there is change. One’s attitude and hardiness affects how a person deals with stress. There are at least two kinds of hardiness. On is an individual’s natural resiliency, the other is learnt and/or managed through the environment. There are many things we can do to help those around us who are not as hardy. We can help by giving rational guidance as well as structuring the environment in a way that encourages more useful and less destructive behavior.

I rate stress on a hierarchy of 1 to 100. The ability to read how much stress a person is under can be difficult. Many of us have well developed strategies for hiding distress. From what I have seen, most people show obvious, although sometimes subtle, signs they are reaching their limit.

One place I found signs of stress behavior particularly interesting is on the sales floor of a company I worked for. Many of the people who had, had enough, displayed many of the same behaviors that over stressed dogs do when they are getting ready to quit. I can often tell when a dog is going to run off the training field by how they are performing low stress tasks. I think it’s also possible to tell when people are going to run off the sales floor as well. During high stress experiences it’s useful to be aware of how others and ourselves respond to stress. However, the important element to overcoming current problems is how do we incorporate this information into helping people through the Covid-19 crisis.

While most people think of stress as affecting individuals, it also applies to larger groups, including species. At this moment in history all of humanity is threatened by a new killer that is stressing the system beyond its capabilities.

Now is the time to use isolation to find direction in life.
What are you going to do?

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