Distress Tolerance
And (Prayerful) Mindfulness
One element of the current plague in Mental Health confronting our civilization is what is called a weakness in “Distress Tolerance.”
This is an inability for people to endure the challenges of social experience without being hit with bouts of anxiety.
We’re living in a challenging time, and most of us are caught up in atomized, isolated positions of ideological assumptions that work while we’re alone or surrounded with like-minded others, but which break when put in the company of those who disagree, or when placed in high-stress situations such as school or work.
I suffer from this as much as anyone else, and am writing this not from the position of virtue, but from one of confession.
Fortunately, I can also write about it from the perspective of evangelization. (Not in the sense of indoctrination that word sometimes connotes, but rather from its true source of “bringing good news.”)
Because there is good news.
Firstly, this is not the first time we’ve had a large-scale cultural shake-up. In the US, we’ve undergone two or three other major shake-ups before.
The complicating feature this time is, of course, a new sort of psychologically-driven technology — social media and artificial intelligence in particular.
I think that whatever your thesis about the nature of human history (I happen to think that we’re about 100,00+ years old and developed to thrive best in hunter-gatherer scenarios), we can all more or less agree that we’re not built to be our best in front of screens. We seem to do best when we have family and friends, mutual support, and an active lifestyle that includes the engagement of our bodies. (I’m not being ableist here — there are many ways to engage the body.)
From what I gather listening to and reading the people who seem most attentive to these issues, our best practice for healing is Meta-Cognition coupled with Mindful Awareness.
That is, the ability to notice our emotional fluctuations without judgment, and the ability to think about the thinking.
Wow, I’m really angry right now. That’s okay. I have just cause to be frustrated about what this other person is saying. Because I love myself, and value my health, I’m going to let this anger pass and look for the most proactive small things I can do so that I can feel I’m participant in a helpful way without being unnecessarily destructive.
If you’re like me, not doing this can be literally fatal. Three of these experiences in a day can lead me to have the sort of negative thinking that makes life seem absolutely unbearable. When this happens, I start looking for ways to escape.
But I don’t want to escape. And, beyond the DBT camp who is looking for a “life worth living,” I have a personal moral perspective that to lapse into this state of ingratitude is an insult to the One, whom I love.
That’s me. I’ve come to that perspective over a decade of meditating and praying, studying, thinking, and writing.
For me, that perspective is faster and more efficacious than attempting to rationalize everything. I can now notice the thinking and re-cognize it without a lot of additional verbiage.
When I try to rationalize everything, I hit “combinatorial explosion” — there are simply too many potential hypotheses to discern, and my cognition can’t handle the overload.
So I return to my secret mantra and realize that I am connected to a greater, ever-present consciousness which empowers me with the transcendent power of Love. I don’t “think” this, I re-cognize it by sensing the pulse of a phrase I’ve internalized over practice, which now comes automatically.
(As far as interacting with my human adversary, I’ve personally found that asking questions helps more than making statements.
to me is the Gold Standard for practicing this effectively.)Mindfulness has seen its faddish popularity rise and fade. John Vervaeke has made a compelling case for thinking of it slightly differently, translating the word “Sati” (from Vipassana and other forms of Buddhism) as meaning more “Remembering” or “Returning.”
To what do we return? I have an effusely personal and abstract answer to that, but one need not. One can simply return to the body.
I personally believe that your cognition is a magnificent phenomenon, and Beautiful. As I type this, I celebrate you prayerfully, longing for your continued health and happiness.
It is my greatest hope that you enjoy bouts of blissful psychic experience on this blessed Day.
Affectionately, Aaron