I learned a good night-time survival tip recently.
I've been reading DEEP SURVIVAL:WHO LIVES, WHO DIES AND WHY by Laurence Gonzales. It's an interesting, though totally meandering book, with lots of great insights about why some people survive extreme situations and others don't.
Here's one that hit home: Panic & anxiety in real life-or-death situations does not serve you at all.
A major premise presented by Gonzales is that people survive because of their training and experience, but also because the logical, thinking part of their brain (the neocortex)overrides the primitive, panicky part of their brain (the amygdala). In order to increase your chances of survival under extreme conditions, you must stay calm, be decisive and don't give up.
One reviewer, "Maffetina" from Hoboken, NJ said this:
"When you're able to quickly adapt to a new reality and make this new place--however frightening--your new home, you've a much better chance of surviving than the person who's in denial. For one thing, your sense of spirituality and wonder deepens, and this is a tremendous life force in and of itself. It helps you enjoy where you ARE, instead of frantically trying to get to where you think you should be."
Of course, the book is talking about people who pit their very lives against mountains, the sea, the sky and live to tell about it. Their lives are more fiercely and more fully lived than the rest of us--right?
Maybe. I still contend that most of us just have a much lower threshold for risk and excitement. They may need more risk to feel high. Their lives aren't "better"--just different.
Even so, I thought about the ramifications of this book in light of my own fevered state I enter when I take on new risks.
Panic and anxiety is a CHEMICAL REACTION in parts of my brain to a perceived threat or risk.
My panic & anxiety—waking in the middle of the night anxious about doing a new show or meeting a commitment or whatever—is totally out of proportion to the actual threat level. It may be scary, but it's hardly life-threatening.
If I want to be able to marshal my real strength for REAL emergencies, I cannot waste "bandwidth" & energy worrying about things that are not real threats.
A therapist friend talked about this tendency for some of us to overmagnify the threats in relatively benign situations. He had a patient who was worried about losing his job. He worried himself sick about the idea of not being able to provide for his family.
What would happen if he lost his job? Larry asked.
He would have no money.
What would happen if he had no money?
He would have to get another job, maybe one that paid less than he was making now.
What would happen if he made less money?
He couldn't afford his current house. Larry continued the questions til the guy had sold his current house, bought a smaller house with smaller rooms.
And the end result was, if the guy lost his job, his kids would have to have smaller bedrooms.
Is losing your job scary? Yes. Is sleeping in a small bedroom a life-or-death situation? No.
The last few nights I've tried revising my state of mind.
I woke up with the usual anxiety: A new show I don't know how to do, a new venture I'm not sure will work out, a new workshop I've never done before. A new audience I've never addressed, a new production problem I can't figure out. Everything that goes with the territory of getting your artwork out there into the world.
What was the worst that could happen? I finally realized the situation was simply not worthy of the panicked, flight-or-fight response I was feeling, not a life-or-death situation...just my mind playing tricks on me again...
and managed to get back to sleep within minutes.
Some people get mad when I share this. They feel I am trivializing others' hardships or depression.
I sincerely don't mean to do that. I'm trying to get a grip on MY state of mind--before it really DOES kill me, through accummulated stress, inertia, low energy and loss of sleep.
This state of mind kept me from making my art for YEARS--and that isn't ever going to happen again. It may slow me down from time to time, but it is now something to be worked through, not given into.
