How to learn to stop worrying and love the downward spiral.

Note: this article took me about one month to publish. Below is a mix of the original text and structure, along with changes made recently. If editing has taught me anything, it’s that I make way too many references for my own good.

A lot of my work is squarely in the financial services space. Compared to many, I operate in a thickly-insulated environment full of people in business-casual carrying around company-issued laptops, who circle back to points made per their earlier emails, and purse their lips when angered in lieu of settling with fisticuffs. But I also often think about worlds existing within other worlds, and how my professional world exists within my own world, which exists in the world of a big city, in that of a: state, country, continent, planet, universe, and C- third-grade science experiment sitting on a shelf in an alien child’s bedroom. If only they knew what they created, I’d give them an F.

But yeah, worlds. We live in many and cross into many, often with no barriers. They’re all in various states of disrepair. Some can be fixed up pretty quickly, though. Take a small disagreement with a teammate in your work world. It gets patched up over a cup of coffee and a croissant. You’re clinking beers together a few hours later at a happy hour. Finis. Okay, low hanging fruit (we call those quick-wins). And too white-collar. But the point stands; an easy conflict with a reasonable solution. Professional world repaired. Now let’s say you cut someone close off for being shitty. The weeks and months before, you’re plagued with indecision. The weeks and months after, you’re plagued with guilt, even if the actual execution was easy enough. Therapy is on the horizon but may be unattainable. It’s a struggle to tell your closest friends and coworkers what you’re going through not because you’re guarding a deep secret but because you’re worried about their initial reaction and ensuing perception of you. You become the personification of the “This is Fine” meme and contrary to popular belief, that is not, in fact, fine. You will likely heal, but overcoming the barriers of shame is probably the only way to do it. And battling shame involves asking for help.

Which brings me back to the concept of worlds. Suffering has been a shared experience since the dawn of time. Suffering isn’t just an idea that a man with a ratty Gaulois hanging from the side of his mouth writes about because he had a shitty childhood in postwar France. It transcends, and seeps into, every world out there, and none are immune. If one of your worlds suck, then the rest will follow suit. For example: we talk about work-life balance in the corporate world as if it’s something to aspire to; Hell, I still do. I want time to go to the gym, to cook pasta the Roman way, to read, paint, and eventually find someone who makes life a little more bearable. But that doesn’t happen when at least one of my worlds: Work, Personal, Los Angeles, California, USA, North America, Gaia, etc. gives out due to exhaustion, or tragedy, or trauma.

My worlds have always collided, sometimes in a frenetic way. I’ll think things are fine, and then boom: unprecedented work tasks. Personal life disappointments. Good things, or things I thought were good, slipping through my grasp. Inflation leaving nothing unaffected in its wake except my salary. Everything in disrepair. Me not getting to the point of this article swiftly enough.

A friend once told me (read: August 6, 2022), that it was okay not to care about everything. That sometimes, peace comes from acceptance of where you are now, and not where you think you’ll end up. I tend to oppose fantastical, magical thinking; not because I’m rational or soulless, but because it’s an easy drug to overdose on. After all, in 2022, we microdose…and that applies to this, as well. Say you’re disappointed with how something turned out (specific, I know). You can enter the realm of magical thinking and assume that if you did it differently, things would be different. Or if you acted earlier. Or that things will eventually work out. In that process, you lose yourself to a fantasy that rarely plays out in real life and sounds a bit too suspiciously like the plot of Bridgerton. Magical, fantastical thinking is also a great way to temporarily assuage your anxiety, only for it to (mostly) come back as even worse. I think the drug metaphor is apt, here; take a drug, experience a high, return to normal. Only normal isn’t normal and the goalposts have moved. You need a higher dose or a more potent strain to achieve that same high. Just as drugs are addictive (and I’m so glad I have the least addictive personality, like, ever), magical thinking is heady. It can help you cope with the disrepair in your worlds. Nothing bad is happening! Things are actually great! It’s just a bad dream, and you always wake up from those, right?

Magical thinking moonlights as help. It slows that downward spiral a bit, but it’s not an effective stopgap measure. It purports that the only one who can control the worlds you exist in is you. Never mind the fact that most of them have more than one resident–if you do everything juuuust right, it’ll work out. Magical thinking eschews their real-life footprints and turns them into puppets you control the strings of. Except this isn’t real and it isn’t actionable. You know what we call people who take action on their magical thoughts? Crazies. Or the guy from romcoms who stands outside the house of the woman who spurned him for pretty solid reasons and tries to win her back with several signs professing his love for her–same thing. It’s selfish, it’s unrealistic, and it can be downright harmful if done too often and for too long. Moreover, it can make one believe that what they’re doing is genuinely good for them. That they’re repairing their life, one thought at a time. It’s the opposite of acceptance; it’s delusion.

To accept that things are they way they are because they are requires embracing the “suck”. For whatever reason, they suck. Maybe you had something to do with it. Maybe you didn’t, this time; an Act of God, perhaps. Point is, it’s not great, and probably deserves a few rounds of tears. Calling your friends and venting to them in the hopes they say something insightful–but a simple “gee, that sucks. I’m sorry to hear that” is the LBD of basic empathy. So your personal world sucks. Work does as well. City under lockdown? Check, check, check. Take it from someone who loved to engage in magical, wishful thinking because she read way too much Mahabharata as a kid (and those guys had flying chariots!); the hardest part of accepting the “suck” is getting to that stage in the first place.

It’s almost like, and if you learn your lesson like I did (…eventually), downward spirals can be a bit predictable. You might resist them, but you’ll slide downwards anyway, ’cause gravity. Also, life. Most people will hit that plateau in the process, assuming they also got external help and support. I cannot stress this enough: plateauing here is GOOD. Athletes might be a bit unnerved at this realization, but it works here. Honestly, I think we all try to avoid pain. I see no pride in gritting my teeth through something painful, but sometimes, and like in the exhibit and my word vomit above, acceptance might be painful. I and you will fight it, but that downward slide might be exactly what we need to come to terms with what happened. You know the saying “things will get worse before they get better?” I always hated it, but it works here. Things will get worse (things might not actually get worse but the reality setting in is painful) until they get better (acceptance doesn’t necessarily feel good, but it can give you renewed hope).

So if a world sucks, accept it, friend. Maybe you had something to do with it. Maybe you didn’t. If it takes a bit of that magical thinking to get you to that realization, then go for it. Microdosing, remember?

Controlled fires that burn through forests renew their fertility and life. Very Californian, I know. Love the spiral a bit more. Backslide a bit. Ugly cry, get a bit drunk, and dance to eighties hits. Accept the “suck”. You might just find that it lights your fire a bit more when you do come around to the idea that this ‘mortal curse’ you call life, can usually get better.