Saturday, February 7, 2009

Fight, Flight, or Freakout?

In emergencies - immediate, in-your-face crises - I tend to do okay. When a situation arises that needs action, a solution, NOW, I can usually handle it.

If, however, the issue cannot be addressed by immediate action, or when I get bad news about a situation that will require (painful) action in the future, I don't do as well. In fact, I do really poorly. If something needs to be done in the next five seconds or minutes, I'm good. Five days or five weeks, though, and I'm a mess. In those cases I have time to go over all the horrible things that could happen - the number of people who could be inconvenienced or hurt, painful consequences, long-term effects. I have a very well-developed imagination when it comes to this kind of thing - in two minutes I can be a year ahead, mired in something really shitty you haven't even considered.

This is not a particularly productive way to be, seeing as the majority of crises I face are not the five-minute time frame ones. I've got to figure out a way to transform my response to immediate events to one that I can apply to those with longer time frames.

1 comment:

Cammy said...

I hope everything is ok! Whatever the situation is, hang in there remember that whatever your imagination cooks up is almost inevitably much worse than the actual result...
Take care,
C.