July 10, 2024
“There are more things to alarm us than to harm us, and we suffer more often in apprehension than reality.” Seneca the Younger, 1st century CE
Are you living your work day three times over? Many of us compound the real stress we experience by spending our off-hours anticipating it, then by revisiting and rehashing it - either in our heads or via venting sessions with friends and loved ones.
Our brains don't distinguish well between the mental representation of something, and the thing itself. This is why visualisation works. On the flipside, when you’re constantly mulling over something stressful, your brain doesn’t know that it’s not really imminent. It’s constantly readying your body to deal with that stressor. And then it can get meta: recognising that you’re feeling anxious, and then judging those anxious feelings as “bad” can compound the negative impact on your wellbeing.
Often when we talk about rumination and worry (and worry’s more focused counterpart dread), we isolate them from the bigger energy picture they belong to. They’re not just an unpleasant time sink that distracts us from being present, which is already bad enough. They’re also a tax that unmanaged stress puts on your energy reserves. They affect more than your experience of the present moment; they exhaust you for the ones that follow.
Stress-tax minimisation
Processing what’s happened in the day and preparing for what’s ahead are both great things to do. To get the most out of them though, you need to contain the time they take, and manage the emotions that come with them.
Here are some strategies to try:
- Block out end-of-day transition time: this could be on your commute or via a change of scene if you’re working from home (even shifting rooms can help). Make it part of the routine to dump the day’s difficulties and whatever’s outstanding for tomorrow in a single place, then leave it there for the rest of the evening. Open loops are more likely to stay front-of-mind - note whatever you need to note, but avoid getting into problem-solving mode.
- When you catch yourself worrying or ruminating, call it - kindly: as soon as you’re aware of you’re doing, naming it helps your brain get some distance and stand down the defenses. Be nice to yourself when you do this: there’s a growing body of research linking self-compassion with long-term performance and wellbeing.
- Notice what you’re feeling, give it a name, let it go: while worry and rumination have physical effects on your body, feeling stressed can also lead back to worry and rumination. Interrupt the feedback loop by exploring whatever’s going on in your body. Curiosity is a great antidote to stress. Recognise what’s happening (“I’m feeling really wound up”), and let it pass in its own time. If you’re feeling particularly jittery, this is also a good point to go for a walk or do some other form of exercise.
- Indulge in some high-quality distraction: this one comes last for a reason - if you’re trying to distract yourself from open loops or a body that’s still primed for action, you’re going to be swimming upstream. But once those are addressed, immerse yourself in social or family time, a creative activity, a good book - anything that occupies your full attention without tipping you back into flight-or-fight.
Playing the long game
Our working lives are getting longer, our jobs have more and more ways of expanding, and the institutions that used to help us protect non-work time are declining. That leaves us with the challenge of managing our own energy for the long term - energy to go after what we want to achieve, and to give to the people and causes we care about.
That makes efficiency important. Eliminating energy wasted on worry and rumination is a great place to start.
