Neurotic life, resilience and handling stress

I am probably a neurotic person.  For sure I react to stressors. Fortunately, I am also sufficiently intelligent to channel my anxieties in a constructive way. In this article, I share my personal ways to deal with neurotism backed up by scientific research. For more information check out here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here.

Neurotic personality

I quote some of the negative thought neurotic people often have:

• I dislike myself.
• I fear the worst.
• I change my mood a lot.
• I am easily disturbed.
• I get stressed out easily.
• I am full of doubt.
• I feel threatened easily.

If you have these thoughts, there is nothing wrong with you. Being neurotic is a personality trait, just like being an introvert, and like any personality trait it can be both an advantage and a disadvantage.

Neurotic tendencies have deep evolutionary reasons. If you fear the worst, you are less likely to be killed by your enemies, elements or disease. You simply avoid some of the risks your peers will take, and thus you increase your survival rate. You will survive to an old age but may experience psychological discomfort and die eventually from stress-related illnesses: cardiac disease, poor immune system, or gastric symptom complications. All in all, this was a great deal during most of the human history. Like any adaptation it has its own limitations:

• Not enjoying good times. Now we live in good times. There are very few threats and it pays off being optimistic.
• Sensitivity to stress. People with low neuroticism are much better handling the stress, and modern life is very stressful.
• Failing in catastrophic scenarios. If something catastrophic happens, it may be best to take chances for the small chance of success than to avoid taking chances and die.
• Reproductive issues. For a female, reproduction requires a certain degree of optimism. For a man, ladies will choose to hook up with risk-takers winners.
• Adapting to changes. It is natural to fear changes, however, we live in the age when the early adaptors flourish.

Since we live in good times, with high stress, plenty of reproductive issues [this is a subject for a separate article], and plenty of changes, being a neurotic person is a disadvantage. Fortunately, there are several highly effective ways to channel the neuroticism into a competitive advantage once again.

FOMO

Fear of missing out (FOMO) is a great motivator for any neurotic person. We live in the age when the early adaptors and risk takers flourish. If not taking any risks is more dangerous than taking some risks, we will have no choice but to choose the risks we can take. FOMO can be a great motivator. Any neurotic person will take his time to conduct the research, but once the research complete the change can be dramatic.

The research can take compulsive forms, with constant worrying and checking of the most recent news. Being guided by fear rather than excitement, a neurotic person needs to take special measures to avoid mass hysteria.

Anybody, but the most professional and disciplined investors, will lose their money when trading for a long period of time. The reason is simple: when everybody is leaving due to some major catastrophe the situation is probably already improving. When everybody tries to jump on a great deal, is it probably valued unsustainably high. Buying high and selling low is not a good idea for an investor. And we do not just invest our money. When choosing where we work and what we do we bet our time, our reputation and our mental health. If we make too many bad bets, our life can easily become unfulfilling.

We are very good at learning the stimuli associated with fear or aversion. While most stimuli require multiple exposures, fear or aversion related knowledge can be acquire by a single exposure. The same trick also works in animals, and Pavlov was probably the first to notice it.

Discipline

How do we practice discipline and avoid impulsive decisions? Applying willpower is not the best idea since it can increase the stress level. There are several simple and effective remedies.

• Waiting. If we are not sure about our response, taking a day to ruminate, think or sleep over the problem, is a great idea. Unfortunately, being neurotic and about to make a choice, we may find sleep or rest elusive.
• Mindfulness. Switching the focus from the issues we cannot solve to the sensations of the universe in us and around us is a great idea. We can meditate, walk, enjoy sports and social encounters – anything that takes our mind away from the nagging issues.
• Perspective. Distancing from the problematic issues, may include considering the situation from the perspectives of other people, past self or future self. Everything looks smaller in proper perspective
• Permission. Quite often we get stressed and make mistakes due to manipulations, social pressure or simply because we do not permit ourselves to relax. Permit yourself to flee the fights you do not want to be engaged in: delay, delegate, decrease priority or deny responsibility if you have to.
• Acceptance. There are certain benefits to religion, one of them is a firm belief that everything happens for a reason. If you are not religious, you can practice radical acceptance: accept things as they are and assume they are this way for the best.

ar changes, however, we live in the age when the early adaptors flourish.

The movie in our head

The reality is typically very different from our dreams, good or bad. It is natural to visualize various possible scenarios. This visualization is a sort of preparation or training for the threats and opportunities of the future. Each time we visualize ourselves handling a scenario, we will handle a similar scenario in real life a bit better. It is important not to run too far away with the imaginary scenarios: there is only so much we can predict. Whatever we visualize needs to be accepted without judgment as a mental exercise. The reality will probably be different and unpredictable. The visualizations typically require our full attention for a relatively short period of time and then they exhaust themselves. Then after some time, we will visualize new scenarios.

If we try to divert the attention, the visualizations will get persistent and haunt us. If we aks the visualization “what next” we will run into some very farfetched and irrelevant scenario. Anna usually describes this situation as living in a movie. We understand that the visualizations are not real, but cannot divert the attention.

Enjoying good times

This is something I am pathetically bad at, however, I do know the theory and slowly improve over time.

When I was a child and I came to my mother with my problems, she typically dismissed them saying: “All your troubles are rubbish. You should have fun and enjoy the good times”. Being a neurotic person, this is not a great advice: we cannot switch attention from the big problems in our head to the small joys around us that easily. Practicing mindfulness does help.

• Close your eyes. We are subject to too much light and too much noise. Simply allowing ourselves to rest and listen to the birds or feel our breath is a lot.
• Play the “I spy” game. Notice what you notice. This is a part of what we do anyway. The trick is enjoying what we discover: texture, colors, what it means to us and so on.
• Walk around. You can walk in the office or outdoors, drink something, check the news or have a watercooler conversation.
• Doodle. Have a creative outburst, without trying to control it. Some people doodle, some sing, some dance.
• Eat and drink. Fruits and vegetables, water and hot beverages – you can enjoy the smells, the tastes, and the textures.

Do not search for big things, focus instead on the small things, on details. Accept the imperfections as something that builds up more profound and real experience.

Still, having fun is probably the hardest thing for me to do.

Stay in control

Losing control can contribute to stress and stress-related issues. Controlling every aspect of the situation is another way to get stressed. Instead, choose what you can control and focus on controlling it. Sometimes all we can control is the small tasks we perform while a larger game is played without our presence, and sometimes we can control how we feel about the situation but not the situation itself. We do have more control over our present than we do in the past or the future, so maybe we need to reduce the focus. Or maybe, we need to widen the focus and introduce our future and better self into the picture. In some sense, the feeling of control is an illusion, yet this illusion is very good for our mental health.

Avoid substance abuse. Rats when stressed drink much more alcohol than relaxed rats. We are not sure why. Stressed people suffer from metabolic disorders, which can lead to reduced performance and increased stress.

Channel the energy

Neurotic traits can trigger fight or flight response. Thus we can become overly energetic or apathy. It may be hard to attribute the particular energy level to the stress-inducing it, but we can use the periods of mania to perform demanding activities and periods of apathy to ponder over the life’s big questions.

Summary

Being neurotic is not something we can control. We can control how we channel our neurotic impulses. Some exercises help to avoid impulsive responses, some channel the nervous energy into useful activities, and some allow to reduce stress. With so many great tools we can use, being neurotic is not that bad.