As I write this, I’m sitting and reflecting upon a very long, very difficult two-week span. My clients are struggling with the general chaos in the world. My students are struggling with the general chaos in the world. My friends and family are struggling with the general chaos in the world. Do you sense a recurring theme here?
People seem to be having a really hard time.
And I’m no exception—I’m people too! Whenever I feel like I can come up for some breathing room, something else drops onto my head and shoves me back underwater. It’s pretty remarkable how consistent that dynamic has been, actually. Being present for myself, for my family, and for everyone else who relies on me, has been more of a chore this week than usual. That isn’t because people are asking too much of me, either—they’ve just got their own regular needs. Everything just feels that much heavier than usual for a great many of us.
It’s pretty ironic that I wrote about trying to find peace two weeks ago, immediately before many folks felt like a lot of their peace had gone right out the window.
There’s a concept in psychology, going back to the 1950s, that’s called locus of control. You can read more about it here, if you’d like. Those of us who have an internal locus of control are capable of knowing who we are, what we care about, and our moods and general peace of mind are less-dependent upon things around us and stressors within our environment. We feel like the choices we make are capable of changing our outcomes, and like we have a strong say in what those choices or outcomes may be.
Those of us who have an external locus of control, the theory goes, are buffeted here and there by the winds of everything going on in the world outside our heads. When work is stressful, we get stressed. When people are mean to us, we get upset. You get the picture. I feel as though many of us have reverted into being very externally-focused over the past few weeks or past few months, and that sense of power and control in our lives has become much less of an internal locus of control. Which, this theory says, sucks for our mental health.
I don’t know why this is happening, besides the obvious culprits, but I do know that it isn’t making us feel good. A client told me this week that they’re spending all their time scrolling on their phone, and looking for something (but that they’re not sure what) and that when they don’t find that mythical “something”, they just keep scrolling until they get so tired they end up going to bed instead. Are you spending more time on your phone lately for no good reason? I’m not demonizing phones, mind you—I will fight anyone who says that technology is inherently good or inherently bad (other than AI-controlled robot dogs with flamethrowers—those are unequivocally bad). Phones aren’t bad things. Social media’s not a bad thing either! Screens aren’t bad, and neither is “screen time”, whatever that means to you. Don’t believe anyone who tells you that one factor is responsible for declining mental health outcomes of everyone—they’re probably just trying to sell their book. (Yes, I’m looking at you two in particular, Dr. Jean Twenge and Jonathan Haidt.)
Are you in the same place as all those other people I’ve heard from? Struggle seems to be the status quo for so many folks, and I really wish it weren’t. I keep having people tell me that they’re just so…tired…and that they don’t see a lot of prospects for getting less-so anytime soon. I’ve spoken previously about some of the complications facing those of us in higher education in Ohio this academic year. Republicans in our state have made the disastrous decision to force state universities to not take a stand on “divisive topics”, along with telling us we must stop “indoctrinating students” by making sure that any student can express any opinion in class, no matter how outlandish. The stated intent of this law is to make sure that all students have an atmosphere free from ideological pressure, but the actual result that’s shaping up is that conservatives feel emboldened to say whatever they want and that liberals need to keep their mouths shut. The same has already been true of colleges not “taking a stance”, as we’ve seen the President of Ohio State University making statements about all kinds of controversial topics in violation of the new state law, which conservatives have stayed silent about). Certain types of people must keep their mouths shut, not every person, which I don’t need to point out is hypocritical and gross.
So how are my students taking all of this? Well, they have less support than they ever have. State institutions of higher learning have been forced by the new law to close down our Women’s Centers, Multicultural Centers, LGBTQ+ Centers, etc. So students don’t have the support from targeted, specialized sources that are designed to offer that support. State legislators didn’t want students to be supported in that way, so they ended those sources of support. Students are also being squeezed financially—with the economy being as terrible as it is, they’re having to work more hours to afford food and gas. They also don’t have the availability of scholarships geared toward diversity or equity-related aspects of their identities anymore, since Ohio Republicans ended them all as well. In addition, recent federal legislation has made many changes to the way that student loans are administered and offered, so education is getting much more expensive (especially for graduate students). Students are told that they need to get a college degree to be successful, but actually getting those degrees has to happen with fewer sources of emotional and financial support, which seems ridiculously counterproductive to me. The law forces schools to end degree programs that don’t meet the Republican-created threshold for number of graduates (which means they won’t be graduating ANYONE from those programs, since they’re now closed down). Some colleges have had to get rid of dozens of programs already, with more to come. This means that a whole lot of specialized degree programs will just no longer exist in this state within a few months to a few years—that’s really bad when you look at an economy which increasingly relies upon niche people with specific skillsets to overcome bottlenecks across a lot of different industries.
Meanwhile, our governor made a statement this week stating that colleges need to do a better job of recruiting students and making them feel accepted and supported on campuses. Yes, I’m serious. You can read more about that here. He’s the head of a party that has done their best to destroy sources of support for our students, and is now blaming the colleges for declining enrollment, of all things.
I’ve heard that college students across the state have been more scared to speak up about their political values and beliefs since the new law went into effect, too, out of fear that they’ll get into trouble or get their instructors in trouble. I’ll be honest and say here that this has not been my experience in the slightest—my students have been just as engaged in the thorny issues facing future social workers, and have not lapsed into silence or frozen watchfulness. Yet. But I know that they’re stressed. My students care about the world around them, and they’re worried to see the direction everything feels like it’s moving (pretty uniformly badly).
In the midst of all this chaos and upset, we just don’t always know what to do to just make it from day to day. And I’m here to tell you that there isn’t any one strategy that’s going to fix this for me, for you, or for any of us. The concept of self-care has been weaponized over the past few years, and that’s a huge shame. We could have normalized wellness as a society, but we didn’t. Instead, we choose to make burnout about each individual person who’s struggling. We choose to have a pizza party and assume that’ll make people feel better about their impossible workload. We choose to point fingers at people and say “You—go take care of yourself better”. When a workload is unsustainable, it is inhumane to expect us to deal with it on an individual level. There are systemic changes that need to happen in our society and our jobs and our lives, and as individuals we should not be gaslit into believing that those systemic issues are our fault. Don’t get me started about companies that prioritize profits over people—that’s another whole topic.
But this week I’m spending a lot of time thinking about the extra cognitive load all of us are currently carrying around. If you’re feeling just fine, you’re not paying attention, and I don’t think that’s any healthier. Opting out of what’s going on in the world is not a solution for me and shouldn’t be a solution for any of us. So if we need to be present in the world, and we need to be able to keep learning and up-to-date about what’s happening, and we also need to be spending time advocating for things that are important to us, then how the heck do we find the energy to do all of that?
I’m going to suggest that part of the answer to that question relies upon us being selective about what we care about and when we care about it. We cannot just keep our emotional aperture open all the way, all the time. The funnel needs to be a bit narrower when we need it to be, and a lot narrower when that needs to happen. I think that it’s just a capacity issue, often. Sometimes, we can do more and sometimes we don’t have the ability to do as much. I know I’m not saying anything hugely innovative here, but maybe try and control the flow of information into your brain when you just don’t have the ability to handle a lot?
Don’t mistake me for saying you have the luxury to “not care about politics”. The things we refer to as politics are going to affect your life and the lives of those you care about, and it’s pretty silly to not have any opinions about that. But having an opinion isn’t the same as immersing yourself to a degree that’s unhealthy. I’d like to interject here that folks who have marginalized identities often have even less of an ability to avoid political issues, since they themselves have been politicized to an enormous degree. If your existence is seen as a political issue, then it’s problematic for anyone to say you should care less about politics.
For most of us, we do have the freedom and privilege to able to take a breath from time to time, turn off our phone notifications, and seek out something that might bring us a little bit of joy. I’ll remind you that hopescrolling is a thing too—we aren’t bound to only doomscroll. We always have a choice.
As for me, the thing that’s helping me find more than a few moments of joy is little Coco (shown here).
Coco is eight weeks old and came home to us today, and watching her play or sleep or exist in the world is already providing me with a great model of the way we all COULD be living. I mean, she does stuff that she wants to do, that she expects will make her happy, and more often than not she’s right. Coco tries to nibble my ear when she feels like chewing on an ear, and doesn’t need to spend a lot of time pondering the epic challenges facing the world today. So be like Coco—find joy where you can, nibble an ear or two, always save room for treats, and don’t forget to hydrate.
Take care of yourself, and I’ll see you back here next week.
Matt