How To Take Control Of Your Health In Times Of Turmoil
Fear & vulnerability are inevitable; how you cope is up to you
ICYMI 👉
Over 400 of you joined my live Q&A on Friday (recording here), and over 500 of you joined me live last night (recording here). It was clear from the comments and reactions to these conversations that people are looking for ways to find calm amidst chaos. I get it. Regardless of your politics, the national news is distressing at best and causing serious harm for many. The air in the nation's capital feels like it's vibrating. The mood is akin to the early days of the pandemic, rooted in a collective sense of helplessness as headlines come fast and furious.
Again, this is not a political statement, but rather a commentary on the natural human response to uncertainty on a national level. As was the case in the spring of 2020, I am witnessing in my office the physical, emotional, and behavioral manifestations of sustained vulnerability, unease over the unknown, and even fear.
I feel it, too.
So, how do we begin to quiet our bodies and minds when the outside world feels chaotic? How can we start to reclaim agency when we're feeling out of control?
The good news is it’s possible. The bad news is that it takes work. Indeed, it's a lot harder to feel calm and centered than it is to ride the roller coaster of distress.
To be clear: it is completely normal to feel heightened anxiety when your employment status, immigration status, or sense of safety and/or security is at stake. The problem is when the normal fear response reaches a fever pitch—and when feelings of uncertainty are so pronounced that fear itself takes on a life of its own and it starts directing our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors.
Take, for example, an adult who drinks too much alcohol during times of stress. Or take my patients who overeat during times of distress. They don’t need a lecture from me about the risks of sugar and the benefits of broccoli or the harms of alcohol. What they need is to understand the root causes of the distress that got them here in the first place. They need to recognize the relevance of parts of their biology, personal story, and current life situation that make alcohol or stress eating the default pathway when under duress. They need to understand the bio-psycho-social roots of substance use plus the myriad ways in which alcohol’s legality and ubiquitousness can make cutting back on it extremely difficult. They need to recognize the invisible ways in which diet culture, thinness bias, and the fitness and wellness industries tend to deepen body shame and rob people of their internal cues around hunger and satiety, agitation and calm.
The challenge is that most human beings under duress will gravitate toward self-soothing behaviors. Unfortunately, the effects of these behaviors can show up in everything from blood pressure readings and sleep quality to daily functioning and a sense of control. I see this pattern in my patients—and in myself. We are so comfortable with our discomfort that it’s easier to default to factory settings than to carve new pathways of thought, feeling, and behavior. Especially during times of heightened anxiety, it’s normal to revert to old habits.
So, my first step in helping you manage the current moment is to practice self compassion—to ditch the judgement and shame—and to start getting to work on the difficult process of understanding your core beliefs about yourself, fact-checking these beliefs against reality and facts, and then recognizing when narratives you've written about yourself either are a) not serving you or b) simply aren't true. In other words, it would be overly simplistic for me as a doctor to simply say, “Quit drinking,” or “Stop eating when you’re stressed.”
The solution is not to shame ourselves for habits that don’t serve us but to understand the thoughts and feelings that drive them and to make sure we are meeting our basic biological needs first and foremost.
Take a common scenario I see all the time: someone whose wobbly sense of self worth stems from some trauma or lack of nurturing when they were a child may hold an underlying core belief that they are unlovable or unworthy of things like praise or happiness. They may have even spent decades living out a narrative such that they tend to overcompensate for their insecurities in relationships—for example they might seek an unusual amount of validation from other people or rely on external achievements as a proxy for self-worth. This person may also experience distress when they don't get their needs for validation met—for example they might turn to alcohol to self-soothe after a breakup or overeat when someone gives them feedback at work. Over time they develop insomnia and stress or alcohol dependence or obesity or prediabetes. The key to unlocking this person's health problems isn't to shame them or to lecture them. It's to uncover their faulty core belief and the narratives that accompany it, and to fact-check them against reality. Only then can this person begin to take control of their health in a sustainable and meaningful way.
The problem is that doing this kind of self-analysis and work is significantly more difficult to do than it is to simply keep telling yourself to do better or be better. And if you've ever been in a doctor's office, you know that doctors can also dish out prescriptive and blatantly obvious advice with aplomb! But if doctors and patients themselves aren't curious about the reasons why it is difficult for the person to execute on their best intentions—that is, to understand the root causes of their non-ideal habits—behavioral change is exceedingly unlikely. It also won't stick for the long term.
My 23-year-old son and I had an interesting conversation this weekend about America’s fascination with wearable tech devices. I wrote about this recently. It seems to me that people’s obsession with collecting personal data—steps, sleep, grams of carbs and protein—lays bare how deeply disconnected people feel from their natural bodily cues—and, perhaps more concerning, how readily we override those cues. Not feeling well? Go to work anyway. Tired and worn out? Get your exercise regardless. Hungry at lunchtime? No time to sit down. Apparently we need a device to tell us we’re hungry, tired, thirsty, or stressed.
In other words, the allure of wearable devices seems to be a commentary on modern life—how hustle culture, the fitness industry, and societal pressures at large have caused mass dissociation between body and mind. It is the best evidence I've seen that modern society wants to detach us from our basic biological cues and rob us of intuition. How does this relate to this moment in American history? The steady diet of information, outrage, and fear we’re consuming further conspires to dissociate our body and mind and to keep us from tuning in to what we need most.
At the risk of sounding like a conspiracy theorist, I am starting to believe this is actually the point.
Reclaiming agency does not require a certain socioeconomic status. It does not require any fancy device or gizmo. Having agency over your health simply requires access to what already lives inside you:
Curiosity about your interior life—understanding what's going on under the hood. What thoughts and feelings drive your behaviors and emotional state.
Awareness that we all have core beliefs—some of which are true, and some of which are not. Write them down and fact check them.
Recognition that the stories we tell ourselves—shaped by those core beliefs—are sometimes false or need to be challenged. Make sure that the author of your life story is you.
The ability to connect the dots—between your thoughts, feelings, and behaviors in your relationships, your eating and drinking habits, your work, and your overall ability to care for your basic needs.
A recommitment to yourself to treat your body and mind with the care it deserves—by meeting your basic needs first: prioritizing sleep, eating on a regular cadence, moving your body, getting outside in nature, connecting with loved ones, investing in your community no matter how small, and finding ways to get out of your own head such as journaling, volunteering, snuggling with a pet, or making conversation with the grocery store clerk. (Everything else is gravy, I promise.)
Of course, I don't judge anyone who needs an Oura ring to tell them they slept poorly after drinking a few glasses of wine. I don't begrudge someone who needs a step tracker to motivate them to take a walk. Fitbits and Oura rings serve a specific purpose. I also don't blame you for somehow believing that compiling just enough news media will suddenly quiet your racing mind.
But sometimes the data we’re searching for is right there in front of us. So ask yourself this today: Do you need more accumulated headlines—or do you just need a decent lunch? Do you need to track your dietary carb intake—or do you just need permission to sleep an extra hour? Do you even need to keep tracking your hours of sleep—or do you need a little self-compassion for what’s going on around you? Listening to the stories you tell yourself and to your own bodily signals might provide all the data you need.
Particularly in this moment in history, it's incumbent upon us to understand that consuming and collecting limitless amounts of data—regardless of its biometric or political veracity—runs the risk of further dissociating the body and mind, further distracting us from our most basic needs and bodily cues, and further riding the wave of the human body’s natural stress response instead of consciously grabbing the reins.
So, to the extent it's possible, do whatever you can not to fall victim to your own fear response. It's not your fault that you are upset or afraid. It’s not your fault that you are human. It is up to you, however, to normalize the feelings and decide what you want to do with them.
Agency is the birthplace of health. What are YOU doing to reclaim it? I’m all ears.
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I have turned off all news notifications. That way I go and find the news when I wish to read it and it puts me in control of when I absorb the good and the bad. I also subscribe to good news newsletters. There are many out there and they really lift my spirits because the corporate media is not reporting good news these days. In addition, I do the Wendy McNaughton 30 days of drawing 10 minutes a day and I subscribe to Happier, the Dan Harris meditation app. Both of those have proven very helpful Finally, when I find myself sinking into despair, I take an action. I call a friend, I call a Congress person, I write an email for a cause I support, I go for a brisk walk, I swim laps, etc..
I was at a cardiologist this morning trying to determine why twice in the last year I have had a pain wrap around my chest like a thick rubber band. "0" calcium score, low blood pressure, low heart rate, cholesterol in check with statins. No testing has told any sort of story I need to be worried about - so I'm not. My background is in physical education and exercise physiology. I eat healthy, have exercised regularly forever and have spent a blessed life with two parents and extended family and friends who I love and who love me. I can't think of a time that I didn't feel loved. My husband is calm, cool and easy to be with. My son - well, he is 22 and not where he would like to be but we are giving him space because it's "tough" out there. I feel so fortunate, and yet, often find it incredibly hard to stay balanced. Even when everything including the sunshine is working in my favour, moments and days can be unsettling. Part of being centred in my choices is realizing that I might not be tomorrow. People can ask too much of themselves and I think that you have done an exceptional job of speaking to that. Thank you for your wise words.