Quiet the Disturbance

When I am disturbed, the first order of business is to quiet the disturbance.

Let’s start from the beginning. What is an emotional disturbance?

· You fear something

· You resent someone

· You are anxious

· You are depressed

· You have racing thoughts

· Etc.

If any of these things is happening to me, the first thing you must do, the very first thing, is to quiet the disturbance. Sometimes this is as simple as closing your eyes, breathing deeply, and concentrating on your breathing, blocking out all other thoughts. Something approaching meditation, but not quite. Breathe in, breathe out, breathe in, breathe out. If you can do that for 30 seconds, without any negative thoughts intruding, open your eyes, and how do you feel? Probably a bit better.

I will tell you something that will not quiet the disturbance: the internet.

Pretend you posted something mildly controversial on social media. Your reliably liberal/conservative friend attempts to dunk on you. You are pissed. You are sitting there staring at the screen, heart pounding, trying to think of the ultimate riposte.

Tip: go for a walk. Don’t reply at all. You know what will happen if you reply? He will reply back! Trolls are always last word freaks, and you’ll be stuck in this do-loop for the next six hours. Let it go. I spend a lot of time letting it go on X. It wouldn’t be a good use of my time to reply to every dickhead. Be gracious, and let them feel smug. This is about your emotional well-being, not theirs.

Or, let’s say (very dumb example) that you found $100 on the sidewalk, just laying there, and you pick it up. An hour later, you start to think that might have been someone else’s money, that you were caught on camera somewhere stealing it, and the cops are going to find you and throw you in jail. So you spend hours looking up the statues around theft and googling defense attorneys and going down some paranoid rabbit hole that is going to lead nowhere, but will leave you exhausted, and full of fear.

Tip: go for a walk. Get off the internet.

You have seen the charts of mental health outcomes over the last 20 years, like, much higher incidences of anxiety, depression, and even suicide. What happened in the last 20 years? The internet. Social media. Smartphones. There is a one-to-one inverse correlation between technology and mental health. I have a philosopher friend (who I happen to like a lot) who drops bombs on Twitter. The communists are all over him in the replies. I asked him, how do you handle it? He doesn’t even read the replies. He just drops the bomb and walks away in slow motion like some Jason Statham action movie. I remember finding Kat Timpf on Instagram a few years back. She’s the libertarian Fox News personality who goes on Gutfeld a lot. She’s easy on the eyes. Anyway, in her Instagram profile, she writes: “I don’t read the comments.” You can only imagine some of the stuff she gets in the comments. Then, you look at some of these Instragam models, and they’re absolute perfection, and in the comments there are people telling them that they’re ugly or fat, and the models actually get in fights with the commenters. Man, that is a recipe for disaster. Get off the internet. Go for a walk. I hate to say it, but watch TV, turn your brain off for a while! People used to be worried about the effects of too much TV-watching, but the internet is a million times worse.

You want to know what my least favorite time of day is? When I go to bed at night. There are a million things flying around my brain, like, all the things I forgot to do that day, all the things I have to do tomorrow, and every single cringe moment I’ve ever had in my life. My first order of business is to quiet the disturbance, if I ever want to go to sleep. I’ll do the breathing thing. I’ll meditate. I’ll pray. Sometimes it takes 3 minutes, sometimes it takes an hour. I’ll tell you what not to do: get out of bed and go get back on the internet. This is what I used to do, in my 20s! And I’d be up until 2 in the morning and the next day I’d be a disaster. The internet is not going to help you get to sleep. However bad you’re feeling right now, the internet is going to make it worse. If you have a good night of untroubled sleep, it will reboot your brain, and you’ll feel better in the morning, and you’ll have completely forgotten about how anxious you were. Most of my problems go away after a good night’s sleep. If I have a problem that doesn’t go away after a good night’s sleep, it means that I need to take some action on it, and then I take some action on it, and then it goes away. Thinking and worrying about problems never makes them go away. Let’s say you have to deal with some regulatory thing at work. You are worried about it, maybe even a little bit paranoid. Well, instead of sitting around worrying about it, you prepare as well as you can, and leave the results up to God. You accept the things you cannot change, you have the courage to change the things you can, and the rest of it, well, fuck it. It wasn’t worth worrying about.

Imagine going through life without ever feeling any anxiety at all. Ever. Impossible, right? No, it absolutely is possible. When I was 31, I was a mess. One of the most anxiety-ridden people you will ever meet. At age 51, there are a few occasions where I will get off the beam, and I’ll experience a little anxiety, but the first order of business is to quiet the disturbance. There are two courses of action. One: there is no action to take, and you’re just being an idiot by worrying about it. Stop worrying about it, it is entirely out of your control. Two: there are some things you can do to make it better, so you do the things, and the rest of it you can’t control, so you leave it alone. I will say the serenity prayer a hundred times over the course of a day. And the amazing thing about the serenity prayer is that the more you say it, the further away you get from understanding what it means. It’s one of the most mind-bogglingly profound things I’ve ever heard in my life, and I’m not any closer to figuring it out.

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change

So far, so good. But can you really accept the things you cannot change? You’ve been sentenced to three years in prison. Your wife died. Your dog has cancer. You’re supposed to accept these things?

Wait, it gets better.

The courage to change the things I can

Let’s say you’ve been audited by the IRS (though that won’t be happening much anymore). You are dreading going into the file cabinet and getting three years of tax records out. You don’t know where you put it. You’re going to have to fish around. You’re procrastinating on doing this. You need the courage to change the things you can. Just go do it!

And the wisdom to know the difference

Gee whiz. How do you know the difference between the things you can’t change and the things you can? You see, anxiety is all about the illusion of control, the idea that if you spend enough time on the internet looking stuff up, that you can actually change the course of history. Or that you have telepathy and you can make someone like you that doesn’t like you. The longer I do this, the more I realize that actually very little is within my control. Like, practically nothing. So accept it!

There are exceptions. You get fired from work. You don’t have a job. Are you supposed to just accept that you don’t have a job? Of course not, idiot, you’re supposed to go get a job. Sitting around wishing that you’re going to get a job is not going to get you a job. Some things you have partial control over. Sick dog? Take it to the vet, and then, accept the results. And some things you have no control over whatsoever, like that tax audit. There is absolutely nothing you can do about it. Shit happens, and by the way, when shit happens, it does not mean that you are cursed or unlucky or God hates you. On the contrary, God isn’t going to give you anything you can’t handle. This is an opportunity to grow as a person and handle the situation with grace and dignity.

But the first order of business is to quiet the disturbance. Breathe in, breathe out.

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