Preparing for the Worst Makes Things Worse
Why the secret to getting through any stressful period is embracing uncertainty
Right now, we’re somehow both a few short months and an eternity away from the next election. And whatever your political persuasion, it can be tempting — especially in this bitter, fractious time — to assume a defensive crouch against disaster by assuming the worst.
Imagining catastrophes, and preparing for them, is our evolutionary heritage. It’s what makes us human. When we feel threatened, our brain needs fast-track mechanisms to determine how to act quickly, and “better safe than sorry” is certainly an effective one. Throughout our history, the people who prepared for the worst were often the ones who survived.
But in this case, your evolutionary heritage can come back to bite you. Preparing for the worst isn’t a way to manage your distress over the state of the world; it’s an exacerbating factor. Emotional reactivity generated by the news, politics, and your neighbors can warp reality and leave your brain stuck on high alert. And the high-alert function in your brain is notoriously uncreative — when it’s on, you usually fight, flee, freeze, or fret. You don’t process in a healthy way. You don’t feel get to a place of feeling better.
