Emory Rosenow

Category: Theme of the Week

Musings on a chosen theme of the week!

Usually these are a single-word or short phrase that I have chosen to examine in more detail.

  • Theme of the Week: Fear

    Theme of the Week: Fear

    Continuing on my self-care kick, I want to talk about fear. I like keeping things fun and light-hearted, you know? Hopefully you can bear with me through another frivolous frolic through the fields of fantastic fun and… what else starts with F?… oh yeah, FEAR.

    What Is Fear?

    If you don’t know what fear is, then either you’ve led an incredibly blessed life or there’s something actually wrong with you. Fear is a very basic biological and emotional response to threat stimuli. It’s what makes you run away from the hungry cave lions instead of trying to make friends with them. Basically, it’s your body doing its best to keep you alive and your brain doing its best to remind you about dangers.

    So at its core, fear is very useful. However, it can also keep us from pursuing things that might be beneficial. Too much fear of cave lions can prevent you from going out in search of food that you really do need; too much fear of social interactions can prevent you from going outside. At some point these fears tip into the world of phobias, or irrational fears, in which your biological/emotional response far outweighs the actual threat.

    We also have an upgrade to fear called anxiety. This happens when you start to be afraid of being afraid. Again, it’s something that can be very useful in motivating you to do things, but there’s also a tipping point of too much. Then we’re in the world of anxiety disorders, which includes not only general anxiety, social anxiety, and panic disorders, but also posttraumatic stress disorder and obsessive-compulsive disorder (DSM-5). In general, these develop from both genetic predisposition and environmental stimuli.

    Should We Be Afraid?

    First answer, yes. As I said before, fear is useful in keeping us alive and progressing. It is perfectly normal and healthy to be afraid in dangerous or threatening situations. If you’re in a situation like that, please be afraid. Use that increased adrenaline to get yourself to safety.

    Second answer, in moderation. Fear triggers the classic “fight or flight” response, which isn’t super useful when what you’re afraid of is intangible. And, of course, the modern world is full of intangible fears: public speaking, job interviews, performances, tests, and all kinds of interpersonal interactions. The physical symptoms (elevated heart rate, increased sweating, adrenaline shakes) can easily get in the way of what you’re trying to do. So we have to learn to manage our fear.

    Third answer, do you want to be? It is October, the time of Halloween, haunted houses, and scary movies. Some people enjoy the thrill of being afraid. Some people are adrenaline junkies and enjoy cliff diving. If that’s your jam, then go for it! Just don’t invite me to watch that scary movie with you.

    Scaredy cat
    Mr. Butters also does not like being afraid; please do not scare the Butters.

    Fear and Self-Care

    Obviously, there’s a complicated relationship at work here. We have to find a balance between having enough fear to care about things, but not so much that it becomes debilitating. Where that balance is varies from person to person, so you’ll have to find your own point.

    If you feel like you are excessively anxious, know that this is not a failing. We are hardwired for fear; your wiring is just a little more aggressive than you need it to be. The good news is that there are plenty of resources available to help! You just have to get over the initial hurdle of seeking that help. There are three main (non-exclusive) methods of treating excessive anxiety: therapy, drugs, and our good friend self-care.

    Self-care can also be a preventative measure to developing anxiety disorders. The median age of onset of generalized anxiety disorder (which, for the record, is a specific disorder) is 30 years old. This is, probably not coincidentally, also around the age at which life starts to set in (like a stain). You’re probably either established in your career and might be getting disillusioned with it, or you’re not established and you’re panicking that you’ll never succeed. Either you have a family and you’re (just a little) mourning your loss of freedom, or you don’t and it feels like you never will. There is always something to worry about, if you want. Self-care can help us keep things in check.

    Using Fear

    Fear can be a powerful inhibitor: it can keep you from pursuing your dreams, it can keep you from making changes, it can keep you from seeking help. It can also be a powerful motivator, as a drive to stay alive (fear of dying), a drive to succeed (fear of failure, fear of disappointing people), or a drive to thrive (fear of all kinds of starvation). So how do we find that balance that allows us to harness fear, instead of the other way around?

    This is starting to sound like the cult-y kind of self-help seminar. Unleash your inner wolf! Grab life by the horns! Say yes to everything! Eat a bowl of scorpions! FACE YOUR FEARS! … ugh

    But really. Baby steps. Fear exists for a reason, we just have to find ways of working with it. Try to identify what you’re afraid of, or what triggers your anxiety. I personally have to break things down into steps in order to do them, because big projects paralyze me. An overload of information or stimuli is a common stressor. So is a loss of control, or a feeling of needing to meet expectations. While fear is causing these stresses, it could also be your route to overcoming them. Find a way to be just afraid enough.

    Managing Fear

    One common way of treating phobias is desensitization. You are exposed to what you fear (in a controlled environment) until you’re no longer afraid. This works for lower levels of fear too. Think of basic animal training: if your dog is afraid of people, you can gradually and gently acclimatize him to family, then friends, then maybe strangers. If your horse is afraid of flapping objects, again you can gently acclimatize her. See if you can gently acclimatize yourself to your fear.

    Fears and anxieties are also helped by sharing them. For whatever reason, our brains just love other brains. Just talking to your friends, family, and/or therapist can help a shocking amount. Try communicating today!™

    Other methods include meditation and exercise. Quiet time alone, intentionally quieting your ever so noisy brain, can help you reset to a calmer state. Exercise can help burn off the extra energy that your body likes using to fuel its anxiety. Or you can combine the two and do yoga, or maybe some kind of martial arts (I’m not an expert on those).

    Fear and Society

    You thought maybe you’d escaped my soap-boxing, didn’t you. WRONG. Fear isn’t just an individual thing, it can also be societal. A generalized fear of change is what can keep societies from adapting and progressing, but it can also help hold societies together. It is also a method of control: Machiavelli, whose ideas are still influential today, (in)famously wrote in The Prince that it’s better to be feared than loved. Fear is also a common undercurrent in dystopian novels and shows, as well as in real-world oppressive regimes.

    As with managing personal fears, managing societal ones starts with identification. What about a change scares you? Is it a loss of status, the fear of the unknown, or historic precedents that indicate bad idea? We first need to know the root cause before we can do anything about it.

    Fear can be infectious. If Gorp goes running past looking terrified, it might be a good idea for you to be primed for being afraid to, so you’re ready when the cave lion comes into view. The problem is that our brains aren’t great at discriminating between CAVE LION AHH and POOL TABLE AHH. Herd mentality based in fear is something to watch out for, lest it sweep you up and away from your rational thinking.

  • Theme of the Week: Isolation

    To continue from last week’s Intro to Self-Care, I want to talk about isolation for this week’s theme of the week. It might not seem like the most logical progression, but I think that to actually talk about self-care, we first have to look under the hood and think about some of the underlying factors.

    What is Isolation?

    Isolation is the state of being alone. Humans in general do not deal well with being alone, especially involuntarily; we are social animals. This PBS article on solitary confinement illustrates some of the psychological consequences of isolation. There is clearly something about social interactions that is necessary to the health of the human psyche.

    Let’s think about social interactions as a muscle. You have to exercise it in order to stay in shape. There is a minimum level of activity required to keep it from atrophying altogether. On the other hand, as any weightlifter will tell you, a key part of building muscle is rest. Constant social interaction doesn’t leave you time to rest your brain. This time alone is when your brain moves things from short to long term memory, and when you have a chance at some introspection. Whenever you’re in a social situation, you choose some public persona: your work self, your hanging out with friends self, your family self, etc. This is just a form of code switching. It’s good to spend time by yourself, learning who you are beneath your social personas.

    It’s also possible to isolate a community. The Galapagos Islands are a famous example of isolated species, and how they changed from their parent species. The many and varied human cultures are partly due to community isolation. In modern society we also now have isolated online communities added to the mix. Under increasingly adverse conditions, isolated communities and individuals can feel pushed to radicalize.

    Isolation vs. Loneliness

    While isolation is the state of being alone, loneliness is the state of feeling alone. It’s an emotional reaction to insufficient social interaction. You can be isolated without feeling lonely, and you can feel lonely without being alone; however, I believe there is always an element of isolation in loneliness.

    I personally am a raging introvert. I love my friends and family, I even enjoy interacting with strangers, but if I don’t get my time alone I start to get hilariously grumpy (my description, definitely not anyone who’s with me at the time’s description). I’m not sure I’ve ever felt lonely when I’m by myself. Instead, I feel most lonely when I’m in a social situation and I feel isolated from the group.

    Loneliness requires that there are people you would like to be with, and for whatever reason can’t be with. Recent studies suggest that loneliness is a widespread and increasing problem, especially in the United States.

    American Isolationism?

    Americans traditionally pride themselves on rugged individualism, a belief that an individual is entirely capable of complete self-reliance. This is of course a nonsense philosophy. Especially as modern society develops, there is simply no way to completely isolate yourself from the rest of society without reverting to a primitive lifestyle. It is a very seductive idea though, that you can be clever and powerful enough to not require any assistance from other people. It’s especially seductive when you’re already alone, to fantasize about not needing anyone instead of going through the work and pain of finding people to be with.

    However, humans are social creatures. Wherever we go, we build societies so we don’t have to be alone. As our societies grow, we create governments to structure them. Sometimes the governments create their own governments. We create complex systems of communication. Humans need other humans.

    Having a society means that you can rely on other people to do some things for you, so you don’t have to worry about it. This ranges from trusting that Gorb will stay awake to keep the fire and you alive through the night, to trusting that engineers know what they’re doing enough to keep your house/office/roads from collapsing. The bigger and more complex a society gets, the more individuals can specialize.

    Isolation and Self-Care

    But we’re getting away from isolation and self-care, aren’t we? Or are we? Self-care is all about staying alive physically and mentally. Social interactions seem to be a big part of mental health. Isolation (from social interactions) is therefore also a big part of mental health, and therefore also of self-care. So where does American Isolationism come into play?

    The theory of rugged individualism has become pervasive in our society. Take care of yourself, because no one else will. To quote from two paragraphs ago, having a society means that you can rely on other people, or in other words, societies run on trust. If you don’t trust anyone around you to help, are you really still part of that society? If everyone in a society is expected to be self-reliant, then is that really a society? Or is it just a loose collection of people living roughly in the same area?

    Self-care exists to deal with stress. One of the main stressors is resources, which in modern times is mostly money. (Because we trust the supply chain of goods.) Our main expenses are housing (plus utilities, etc), food, transportation, children (if applicable), retirement (theoretically), education, and healthcare. American society has unfortunately decided that rampant inequality is just how life works, which has the effect of making people despondent, and erodes their trust in society. And now we’re to every man for himself. That billionaire needs to keep their money to create jobs? Looks like keeping people alive is a business now. Grandma’s too old to outrun that cave lion? Guess we’ll see you in the next life, Nana. You shouldn’t have gotten so old.

    Society and Self-Care

    None of this is exclusive to the United States (we’re not that special, friends), but some of it we do “better” than most. Other societies have dedicated resources to reducing some of those financial stresses for its citizens. As Americans (and welcome to the pool party, Brits, we see you dipping your toes), we just have to work a little harder at self-care.

    For the sake of your brain, don’t check out of society. But also for the sake of your brain, take some time for yourself, alone, without your phone or the TV. As my good pal Hesiod once said, “Moderation is best in all things,” and that applies to isolation too.

    What do you think about isolation? What are your opinions on self-care? Comment below, because I love more thoughts! Subscribe by email in the sidebar if you want to stay up-to-date on my blog, and check out some older posts if you’re new or behind.

  • Intro to Self-Care

    It’s the hot button issue that’s sweeping the internet: Self-Care! Buy this book and you too can learn Self-Care! Read this list of 45 easy steps to achieving Self-Care! #TREATYOSELF! There’s a lot of literature out there on how to care for yourself, but not a lot on why it’s important (or not?). Therefore here’s my intro to self-care, and why it has become an issue in my humble opinion.

    What is Self-Care?

    Ok, so, first off we need to establish what self-care is. At the core of it, it’s literally everything you need to do to take care of yourself to stay alive. It’s also, crucially, what you need to do to stay mentally alive (am I hearing THOUGHTS??). This article does the best job that I’ve found of explaining the different facets of self-care, so I’ll let that do it for me.

    Why is Self-Care?

    Why does self-care suddenly seem to be such a big deal now? Humans have survived for hundreds of thousands of years, modern humans have been trucking along for tens of thousands of years, so why should we care so much now? (Prepare to clutch your pearls, anthropologists, there’s some potential pseudoscience incoming.)

    Perhaps you’ve noticed, but modern life is stressful. Of course our ancestors had it pretty rough running from lions and having to track down their next meal for days, but those were problems that we’re relatively well equipped to deal with. We’re good at covering large distances, we’re great at using our hands, we’re exceptional at communicating, we kind of suck at dealing with existential fears. As a society, we have moved past the hunter-gatherer stage and zipped right into a world dominated by incredibly fast-paced technology, while our brains are still reacting to office job stresses like they’re a pack of cave lions.

    This of course sets off a chain reaction of chemical responses, the good old fight-or-flight as we like to call it. This was intended to help us fight off another angry human or run away from an exciting nest of cobras. It was not intended to help us deal with the long term issues that we face now: worrying about making rent, wondering if we’ll ever succeed at our professions, climate change, whatever your particular brand of stressor is. Therefore we need to find some way of calming that constant influx of stress-reaction-inducing stimuli. Enter self-care.

    How Do We Self-Care?

    First, some depressing news: self-care is about reducing stress of various kinds, not all of which are under our individual control. These are stresses like lack of access to healthcare, lack of a social safety net, inadequate access to healthy food, worries about the stock market, concern about Mother Earth getting tired of our shenanigans and yeeting us off (I unironically love this term, FIGHT ME)… and so on. You know, existential stresses. Some societies do a better job than others at mitigating some of these concerns. An American has a far smaller social safety net than, say, a Dane. There is stress that is under your control, though, and this is easier to address. You can also address your stress responses.

    This is only an intro to self-care, so I’m not going to get into any nitty gritties just yet. But I want to get you started thinking on self-care. It is essentially individual, so you have to find what works for you. The end goal, though, is to reduce your stress. Why does this matter? Because stress can make you sick, reducing your quality of life significantly. It can also make you angry, and then you might end up as a bitter old person who’s really just scared of everything.

    Intro to Self-Care

    There are plenty of articles out there that will tell you how to self-care (I wasn’t joking about the 45 Easy Steps), and to be fair these can be a good starting point if you’re starting from scratch. You can absolutely do self-care wrong: it’s not all about indulging yourself, and it never comes at the cost of anyone else. It’s about taking care of your body and mind in a deliberate way.

    Start by identifying the things that make you most stressed. Then think about things that make you feel good. In some ways this is like banishing a boggart: how can you make those big stresses less stressful?

    More on this anon. I have more thoughts, but they’re not congealing today. You can sign up for email updates if you don’t want to miss out on what’s to come, or check out some past thoughts! In the meantime, I will provide a spot for you to sit while you think about your version of self-care.

    Intro self care bench
    Wood bench in the Alps, perfect for self-reflection

  • Theme of the Week: Standards

    I’m trying something different this week, so bear with me: it might be a little rough. My idea for Theme of the Week is to take a word or short phrase, put it under a microscope, and suck all the meaning out of it that I can. (If you’re thinking, hey that sounds suspiciously like Harry Potter and the Sacred Text… you’re not wrong. If you’re thinking I don’t remember that book! Do yourself a favor and check it out. If you’re thinking that in no way sounds like Harry Potter and the Sacred Text, you’re probably not wrong either.) So buckle up, put your thinking cap on, and join me in thinking about standards.

    What are Standards?

    Ok so I can already hear you saying Emory what on Earth are you asking? You know what standards are. This isn’t a mystery. You’ve got high standards, low standards, standards of excellence, standards of care, slipping standards, etc etc, whateverwhocares. Standards are what we use to judge the world around us.

    So in a way you can think of standards as the lens you use to view the world. You walk into a new restaurant, you put on your restaurant standards glasses; you meet someone new, you put on your persons standards glasses; or you are looking for a new job, you put on your job standards glasses. We are constantly assessing and judging, and standards are the tipping point at which we approve or disapprove.

    The question now is, how do we form standards? They seem to be a pretty integral part of our lives, but is it a conscious process or something that just happens? I think that, while that’s a little more science-y than I am qualified to answer, we can definitely pseudo-science our way towards some theories. Step one: let’s go digging into the backstory of standards. Part of assessing things is comparing them against previous experiences. In this way, we can form expectations for future experiences, which then pave the way for forming standards.

    Vs. Expectations

    I’m going to assume for my own ego that you agree with the progression from expectations to standards, because I feel that it’s a brilliant point (I’m setting the standards low here). So if we assume that standards are the crystallization of expectations, forming standards seems to be at its core forming expectations. Alright, cool. Why do we care again?

    Expectations have enormous power over our mental states. For a better take by an actual psychologist read this article. Basically this states that there are realistic and unrealistic expectations, and the latter leads pretty directly to unhappiness. Wait, what? How did we get to happiness from expectations?

    You smarty pants already know this one: happiness is what happens when your expectations are met (no we don’t quote Wicked here, our standards are higher than that). When your expectations aren’t met, then you are disappointed.

    Butters is disappointed because he expects more food than he gets.

    Managing Expectations

    You’ve heard this before. Don’t expect the moon, because it doesn’t even know you exist. (I definitely just made up that phrase, but I’m running with it.) Expectations should be grounded in reality.

    If this is something that you struggle with, there are endless articles on how to manage expectations in all kinds of situations. Most likely, there is a method out there that can work for you. One key point here though is that the phrase is managing expectations, not lowering expectations. There is a minimum level of expectation that you really should have, just for the sake of self-preservation. If you have zero expectations from any interpersonal relationships, then you’re going to accept being treated terribly just the same as being treated well, and you’re worth more than that.

    So we need to find a balance between unrealistic and enough. That’s going to look different for each person, so you’ll have to decide for yourself what your standard of happiness is. HOLD UP – standards again?

    Managing Standards?

    Now this isn’t a phrase you’ve heard before. If you search this term, Google tries to redirect you. But should it be a thing? If you manage expectations, and standards progress from expectations, can you manage standards? I’m going to argue no.

    As I said earlier, standards are a crystallization of expectations, meaning that they become set from expectations, so in order to manage them you have to start back with managing expectations. Therefore, standards are not immutable, but they can be hard to change. Should we care about changing them though?

    Vs. Principles

    Let’s go one step further then. Is there another progression point that standards can develop towards? If you read headings then you can guess that I’m going to say yes! I like metaphors, so let’s build one. If expectations are minerals, over time (and pressure and stuff) they can crystallize and form into gems. Then we cut and polish the gems and put them in pretty settings and show them off to our friends and say, “Look at my beautiful jewelry!” And BAM, you’ve got principles.

    So what did we add to the mix to get principles? Just a small heap of morality and belief. Principles are what you can display and show off and make big deals about their immutability. You can be a principled person, and that makes you just a little bit better than everyone else. You’ve taken expectations and made them into beliefs.

    Of course there’s nothing inherently wrong with principles and morals and beliefs, those are great to have, right? … Yeah, sure. It’s important to believe in things, and it’s important to have a moral compass. And yes, it’s important to have lines that you won’t cross. Why the disdain then? Because I’m a pacifist, and principles can be weaponized.

    Ouch, my feelings!

    Yes, I’m being dramatic. But only a little. Principles become a problem when you expect other people to abide by your personal ones. Everyone has different life experiences, so even with fairly similar morals (I think that’s the gem setting in the metaphor) the resultant principles can look wildly different. That seems reasonable, right?

    Expecting other people to live up to your principles is like expecting them to have the same life experiences as you, and then giving yourself free rein to be disappointed with their inevitable failure. How is this weaponizing? For starters, is there a worse feeling than disappointing someone you look up to? People know when you’re disappointed with them, and if you’re disappointed for reasons outside their control, all you’re doing is breeding ill feelings and resentment.

    It’s also hurting you too. You’re choosing to be constantly disappointed, which can have real physiological and psychological ramifications. Having such strong and public principles can also lead to them becoming an integral part of your identity, at which point any personal development becomes much harder to achieve.

    In the modern era, this principles as identity problem is magnified by online interactions. These are facilitated by setting up online profiles with facts about yourself, and finding other people with the same fun facts and self-identity. In this way we end up with globalized village ladies looking in and judging everyone outside of their tea circle and then maybe you’ve found a group to hang out with but you’re never challenged, are you?

    Anyway. Standards.

    I think I got off track a little bit. Maybe. My brain power is running low. I only said this was thoughts, I never said coherent thoughts. Overall though we’ve looked at a gradient of expectations-standards-principles, and my personal conclusion is that as useful as they are, it’s dangerous for them to be set in stone.

    I have definitely ignored/forgotten/left out aspects of standards, so do comment any thoughts that you have! If you’ve made it this far, maybe unwind with some quality cat or plant entertainment, or learn about standards of behavior in orchestra rehearsals!