Five ways to turn down that stress radio

I was talking with a friend about his constant state of distraction during a very stressful time.

“It’s like having a radio on in the background,” he told me. “When I’m in a flow, I can get my work done just fine. But as soon as my concentration lapses even a bit, boom! All I can hear is that radio, and I just can’t get my focus back.”

We were talking about his pending divorce, but it could have been any all-consuming, stressful situation. Going through a layoff. Facing a cancer diagnosis. Caregiving for a sick parent or partner. Having your identity stolen.

I could relate. I answered, “Talk radio.”

He nodded. “All divorce, all the time.”

“Now let’s hear from our sponsors: Sadness, Loneliness, and Financial Hardship!”

There have been three truly all-consuming stressful situations in my life. The most difficult was when my young-adult child was going through suicidal depression.

There was little I could do about it. The ultimate outcome was beyond my control. She lived seven hours away, and we had done everything we could to support, cajole, demand, control… but we had no control. The ultimate outcome was up to her.

I went to work every day and mostly performed my job. My team did a lot to pick up my slack, like when I cut short a business trip because my kid called to say she was checking herself into the hospital. I’m grateful for the support they gave me.

There were also lots of times I was fully engaged in my work or was able to make progress on the novel I was writing. But then something would interrupt me, and when I tried to return to what I’d been working on…

“Welcome back to Depression Radio, where it’s all suicide talk, all the time! Our guest this hour is Powerlessness.”

I wish I could say I discovered a sure-fire prescription for overcoming the constant stress, anxiety, and distraction, but it’s different for each person, and it’s different from case to case. 

Here are a few things that that helped me in the middle of that time, as well as during two other times of such all-consuming stress and distraction in my life.

1. Acknowledge your limits, and do what you can.

First, you have to make sure you’re handling the actual problem to the extent you are able. This means getting clear on what you can and can’t control, and doing the things that will actually help. There is no way to guarantee a good outcome, but if you know you’ve done everything within your power to give the best odds of a good outcome, you will have less regret and more peace later.

When you find yourself worrying about something you have literally no control over, acknowledge that fact. Worrying is like the old medical practice of leeching for a fever: it sucks out your vital energy while doing nothing to solve the actual problem. In fact, it weakens your ability to do other productive things.

If there are things you can do that will actually help with the stressful situation, do them. My emphasis here is on “will actually help.” Being busy in meaningless activity in service to your anxiety is a bit like drawing a picture of food and eating the paper. It may seem to stop your hunger for a moment, but ultimately it does more harm than good.

2. Build yourself reliable on-ramps to your work.

You know the crisis radio will take over your mind at some point. Prepare for that by creating reliable pathways back into your work. When trying to work on my novel, I found that rereading the last chapter I’d written would get me back in a mindset to continue working on the next. It wasn’t easy because as I read, my mind would drag me back to that radio. Over time, though, the reading would gain more of my attention and the crisis thoughts would diminish, until I found that I was in flow again. Find similar pathways that work for you. Don’t expect it to work like a switch that will turn off that radio, but stick with the onramps and it will get easier over time.

3. Start in with the easiest task.

Every job involves some repetitive or mindless tasks that don’t take a lot of energy. Save these up for the times when you simply cannot get your mind off that crisis. Repetitive tasks use a different part of your brain than creative tasks and can have a soothing effect not unlike meditation. Like the onramps above, completing these types of tasks may turn down the crisis radio enough that you are back in control and can move on to more demanding work.

4. Start with a task that requires talking to someone.

It’s different when a person is demanding your attention than when a spreadsheet or report is demanding your attention. Open a document to a blank page, and you might still be looking at that blank page and listening to your crisis radio an hour later. But intentionally doing a task that requires interacting with someone else in real time can sometimes force you to concentrate. There were times when I would do this and then have to apologize and back out, but more often than not it helped me get back on track.

5. Turn on an actual radio.

Personally, I find it almost impossible to do creative work with music playing. Which means I also find it difficult to stay lost in pointless worry when there’s music playing, especially music that lifts me up. You can do other uplifting things that reset your perspective. Step outside and look up at the sky, and connect your sense of self to whatever Big Thing you believe in. Be grateful for the sun, stars, clouds, rain, or whatever hits your face. While this doesn’t work for everyone, I found it immensely comforting to think of the vastness of creation and the temporariness of everything. More often than not, it helped me be present in the now, rather than trap myself in an imagined disastrous future.

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