This is Part 2 of a series on De-pressure = depression.
Here’s where we left off in Part 1 (which I recommend you read first if you haven’t already.)
Survival Mode puts us in a state I call the “Froth”, which feels like the electrical charge I experienced in the story about the aspirational project above. It seems the difference comes down to what we do with the Froth. Do we escape it, using whatever behavior or medication we can get our hands on, or do we ride the wave of it, allowing it to elevate us?
What if the agitation we are avoiding creates the exact conditions required for growth? How would we see pressure if it became a good thing, not a bad thing? If we can’t get rid of pressure, can we change our assumptions about it?
So back to the original question examined in this piece – does de-pressure equal depression? In other words, if depression is not being able to get oneself moving, does pressure help get one moving? I’m not a doctor or a psychologist, so consider everything I’m saying the musings of a lay person, not as advice at all. I know nothing about depression in the clinical sense of the word. That’s not what I’m exploring here. This series is exploring how pressure is a natural part of life and how too much pressure can make us anxious and how too little pressure can make us lethargic.
All that said, when I started exploring this topic, I had NO idea where it would lead. Every rabbit trail I went down had at least a little nugget of gold along the way. While exploring my initial assumptions, I started finding more layers of assumptions. It was like my assumptions started having puppies and then the puppies started having more puppies.
As I’ve gotten into to it, my initial intention, which was to explore a pattern of de-pression following a period of de-pressure has changed. Now my intention for the series is to call out assumptions and ask questions. It’s to show another angle from which to look at things we take for granted.
This week, the assumption I am testing around Survival Mode is this one: Survival Mode (fight, flight or freeze) renders you ineffective. When I buy into that assumption, I don’t want to get into Survival mode, because I don’t want to be rendered ineffective.
But wait! There’s more! There’s a huge assumption in that first assumption. “I don’t want to” assumes that I have a choice. Since Survival Mode is automatic, hoping for a choice to prevent the sensation of agitation is a hopeless game. At least it has been for me. Rather than work with the feelings associated with Survival Mode, I tend to shut them down. I refuse to use the very resources my body is offering to deal with situation in front of me. Then I get in my head and over or under react to the situation.
Survival Mode is not the problem. The story I tell myself about it is the problem.
What if I just reversed the assumption and said: Survival Mode renders you effective?
If that’s the case, what do I have to do to make Survival Mode work for me? It comes down to how well I read the agitation so that my stories and actions as a result are matched to the situation.
Deadlines are an excellent form of pressure. When I had a “chief of staff” role at the bank, deadlines were constantly present. With one of my bosses, I discovered that his deadlines tended to move in the wrong direction – at least for me. On Monday, he would give me a project, and say “Can you have it to me by Friday?” Then on Wednesday, he would ask for the results of the project. It didn’t take me long to figure out that I would be wise to be at least 80% complete on any project by the halfway point of the deadline. While some would argue that it wasn’t fair to expect me to be ready so far ahead of time, I saw it differently. Those sub-deadlines created the pressure for me to overcome inertia and not have to “cram for the test” the night before. Plus, something unexpected almost always happened, and front loading the work gave me the latitude to complete the project on time, rather than having it be late.
On the other side of this negotiation, I remember giving several tasks to a young woman on my team at the bank many years ago. It must have been in my “I don’t want to be a hardass” years, because I clearly didn’t ask enough of her. I came in to check on progress the next day and she had a perfectly clean desk and was reading the newspaper. Given that she had so far brought NONE of the tasks to me, this picture of Sunday morning chill did not go over well with me. When I said something to her about not getting the work done I had asked for, her retort was: “It’s going to take me all of an hour to get that shit done. I’m saving it for later.” Suddenly, I was in the Froth – bigtime. The electrical charge running through me went to a 10 as I got angry, felt disrespected and wondered what made me hire her in the first place. In other words, I went from under-reacting to overreacting. We might have had a little fight as I rescinded my previous deadline and asked her to get it all done asap.
If I had paid attention, I would have recognized that she needed the pressure of a deadline to get moving. She was not the go-getter type, like several of my other team members were.
The key to rendering Survival Mode effective is to seek to match our response to the level of intensity called for in the situation in front of us. I find it useful to give a number to the level of the agitation that I’m feeling, and the level of pressure created by the situation. Getting projects mostly done by the mid-point of a deadline was effective practice in that work environment. It was a good match. Being wishy washy with deadlines and then taking my frustration out on people was not a good match.
Here's a recent example of navigating Survival Mode. I’ve been out cutting overhanging branches off the lake at Mystic Waters recently, one day with my daughter Jen and the next day with my nephew Jake. On the first day, as we pulled the boat into the low hanging branches, I mentioned to Jen that we needed to keep an eye out for yellow jackets, snakes, poison ivy, etc. Jen is allergic to wasp stings, and we were on a non-motorized pontoon barge. If anything happened, we were not going to get first aid quickly. As the day progressed, the main adventure was when I dropped the brand-new clippers into the lake. Later, standing there in my soaking wet shorts, clippers in hand, we noticed something swimming in the lake towards us. We quickly recognized that it was a water snake, and I took a video as he swam right up to the boat. He paused next to us, resting on one of the branches and then ducked quickly under the water when one of us made a move. In this case, my number was a 1, and the pressure created by the snake was a 1. The snake was non-venomous, nor could he get onto the boat. If I was terrified of snakes, my number could have been a 10, although the situation would have still be a 1. In other words, my Survival Mode could have interfered with rather than informed my actions.
On the second day, as we approached the last group of branches to cut, I said to Jake “We are going to skip this one.” He had seen it about the same time I did. A grapefruit sized hornet’s nest hung from the nearest branch. It was alive with the tiny black beasts. I said “Let’s check out the other side. Maybe we can get the branches on the far side.” As we carefully made our way around the nest, I felt my number go to about a 4. Shaking these branches would shake the hornet branch. We had no spray or speed to get away from angry hornets. Seemed like a better idea to wait until we were better equipped to handle the danger. Had Jen been on the boat we with me, my number would have been about a 9. Why? She has had a life-threatening reaction to a wasp sting. For her, it’s not just a matter of discomfort. My numbers matched the pressure of the situation.
How do you draw the distinction between the true danger in front of you, and the story your mind tells about it? How do you calibrate the Froth – that electrical charge that happens involuntarily – to read and respond to the situation? What mindset can you adopt about Survival Mode that makes it more effective? How can you use the resources of Fight, Flight, Freeze to navigate the pressures of the world?
In the next blog, I will explore assumptions about building mental fitness and adopting a mindset for growth.