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Crazy world outside
“I feel like a basket case inside. My thoughts and feelings are a jumbled mess,” Tina lamented.
“What’s your life like on the outside?” I asked, to which she replied, “Pretty much the same.”
Living in a helter-skelter world of too many tasks, not enough energy, uncertainty and loads of stress (sound familiar?), this 40-something single mom found herself in a mental space that felt like madness on wheels. Many folks, particularly parents of school age kids and frontline healthcare and service workers, are experiencing this version of craziness via the pandemic. When the outside world seems like pandemonium, it’s all too easy to absorb this external turmoil into one’s internal emotional and spiritual space.
“Sounds like there’s no psychological boundary between the lunacy around you and your state of mind. The madness on the outside keeps breaking in,” I suggested to Tina, and she agreed.
Ruled by Circumstances
Some of us are accomplished at maintaining strong psychosocial boundaries, the kind that help us lessen the impact of taxing external events. Others are more vulnerable and poorly defended, making it challenging to keep the world out there from dictating the world “in here.” This is a mindset psychologists call an “external locus of control,” meaning one believes outside circumstances dictate one’s mood and attitude, sometimes even behavior. For such folks, when their life situation is copesetic, they are too. When their outside world sucks, their inside follows suit.
The pandemic has made clear the power of external factors to influence our emotions, how we see the world, the ways we behave, etc. For example, studies show those most affected by the pandemic are experiencing elevated rates of substance abuse, anxiety, depression, family conflicts and stress-induced illnesses. Many are discovering how little control they feel over their mood and perspective while swimming in a sea of lifestyle disruptions, apprehension, contagion, social conflict and generalized angst.
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Some cognitive and spiritual disciplines (such as meditation and gratitude journaling), and some psychological defense mechanisms (such as dissociation and denial), help us modulate the impact of outside forces impinging on our inner lives. The effectiveness of these and other buffering methods varies greatly across individuals and even generations. For example, research shows elders, while suffering the worst of the pandemic’s health impacts, remain more resilient in the face of its challenges than younger folks.
More Time in Nature?
For those like Tina with porous mental boundaries, immersion in external settings that counteract one’s internal sense of mayhem and distress proves helpful. After all, if one’s outer experience shapes one’s inner experience, then changing the former is a way to influence the latter.
“You may want to spend more time in nature,” I suggested.
A robust body of research shows as little as 10 minutes immersed in the natural world induces relaxation, solace and an abiding feeling that life makes sense. There are exceptions, or course, like blizzards and lightning storms, but, most often, nature offers comfort and spiritual reassurance. Frankly, I think storms do also, but I’m weird that way.
“Nature puts me in a better place,” Tina reported after following my suggestion. “It helps knowing something out there still works and has it together, which is more than I can say for the human world.”
While effective, natural settings are not the only way to use the outside to shape one’s inside. Some of my clients employ a blindfold and noise cancelling headphones (with soothing music). Others create a kind of emotional safe room in their domicile that is quiet, pleasantly appointed and free of electronic gadgets. I’ve even worked with folks who spend time in cemeteries or empty churches for the same purpose, and a counselor’s office can help in this regard, as well, serving as a kind of refuge from the mayhem out there.
So, when the outside leaves your inside in shambles, seek an external space that conveys stability, comfort and equilibrium. Then just let it pour into your soul.
For more, visit philipchard.com.
