For the first time in human history, through social media, news, TV, we are instantly brought all the problems of the whole world. These are problems you cannot physically control. Problems that cause huge stress and anxiety, especially to HSPs who have much deeper processing; cognitive, physically and emotionally.
Here I’ll share one approach for dealing with this onslaught of problems.
The blue zones
I was watching a series on Netflix called ‘Live to 100: Secrets of the Blue Zones’. These blue zones are specific areas around the world that have an unusually high percentage of centenarians. The series focused on each of the zones and explained the years of research has that has uncovered why each zone has such a high percentage of centenarians.
There were some high level, overarching findings that all 5 of the zones share such as:
- Eating a predominantly plant based diet
- Regular and natural movement
- Putting family and/or community first
However the one that stood out for me was something called ‘active coping’.
The various ways people cope with stress
Coping strategies are classified into active and avoidant coping strategies. Active coping strategies are either behavioural or psychological responses designed to change the nature of the stress itself or how you think about it, while avoidant coping strategies lead people into activities (such as alcohol use) or mental states (such as withdrawal) that keep them from directly addressing stressful events. Active coping is considered a better way to deal with stress, while avoidant coping is considered as a psychological risk factor for adverse responses to stressful life events.
Active coping means taking action or exerting efforts to remove or get around the stressor, such as:
- Planning – thinking about how to confront the stress and planning your coping efforts
- Acceptance – accepting the fact that the stressful event has occurred and is real
- Positive reframing – making the best of the situation by growing from it or seeing it in a more positive light
Avoidant coping strategies include:
- Denial – rejecting the reality of the stressful event
- Behavioural disengagement – giving up or withdrawing efforts from the attempt to attain the goal with which the stressor is interfering
- Venting – an increased awareness of one’s emotional distress coupled with an attempt discharge those feelings
- Humour – making jokes about the stressor
Back to the blue zones
Here’s why active coping stood out for me.
Many of the centenarians still had jobs or were living their lives where they could directly resolve their problems. They could see or touch the problems within their own proximity. They were not working, like many of us today, in a head-based industry, sitting behind a computer screen all day grappling with concepts and abstract issues.
Some of the Mediterranean men had been, and some still were, goatherders. They could directly resolve the problems that arose. They could control how they treated their goats to make sure their flock was healthy.
This sense of active coping is a very important part of mental health, cognitive longevity and stress resilience.
What can you do?
With the dire news from around the world it is very hard to apply the ‘positive reframing’ aspect of active coping. My advice here is to severely limit the amount and frequency of news and social media you consume. So, let’s think about the other two approaches.
HSPs find it hard to turn away and deny so accepting the fact that the stressful event has occurred and is real, is a powerful approach. Of course, this invariably means staying with your emotions which can be painful, however there is a freedom that comes from allowing emotional responses. You may not notice this freedom and sense of being calmer until after the emotional turmoil, but it often comes if you’re able to accept and ride with the emotions rather than resisting them.
Planning, which HSPs are often masters at, and thinking about how to confront the stress and planning coping efforts can afford you a sense of agency. This is one of the drivers behind the direct action of activists; they are confronting the stress and planning actions that may have an influence on stopping or mitigating the cause.
Take some time to think about your default coping strategies. How might you shift towards more active coping, even though you don’t have a goat?