You've been training for this

Sensitive Sentinels! Graham here.

This issue, how being a sensitive cat may make you uniquely prepared for what’s happening right now (just not in the way you might think).

Plus, the latest Big Feels podcast.

We’re good at uncertainty, us sensitive types. 

We’ve had a lot of practice. When you live with a mind that can turn on you so completely without warning, you learn to sit with uncertainty. 

It’s not comfortable, it’s not easy. But you learn.

The ability to sit with uncertainty is an extremely useful skill right now.

The pandemic news spiral: a fruitless search for certainty

You know the pandemic news spiral? That thing where you cycle through each one of your favoured news sources, hungry for updates, only to find yourself back at the start 15 minutes later?

I think at the heart of this spiral is a search for some kind of certainty. ‘If I can just get enough information, I’ll know what happens next.’

But of course the end result is usually the opposite. The more opinions and analysis you engage with, the more uncertain you feel.

So what is there to be done? 

For the vast majority of us: nothing.

Nothing but sitting at home, wondering if our jobs will exist on the other side of this. Wondering what lasting impact the crisis will have on our institutions, on our families, on our brains. 

And this not-knowing can feel very uncomfortable.

Two paths, each paved with doubt

A friend of mine runs a much-loved cafe that has been closed for weeks because he didn’t want to risk the health of his clients. His lease is up for renewal, and he now needs to decide between two equally unappealing options: give up the lease and risk losing the space, or keep the lease and risk going under.

Two paths, each paved with doubt, and not enough information to make anything like an informed decision.

Uncertainty.

But this friend, he happens to be someone who’s lived with the uncertainty of his own brain for years. He’s the sensitive type. So he has a plan. 

‘Walk the dogs, potter in the garden. That’s my plan.’

We’re used to not having the answer

Now, to be clear, this isn’t a plan to deal with the decision. It’s a plan to deal with the discomfort that comes from having to make this decision with nowhere near enough information.

The decision looms, and he’ll have to make it soon. But in the meantime he’s drawing on everything he’s learned from life as a sensitive cat, to sit with the uncertainty this situation brings.

Maybe you read this and think, ‘Ha! Not me, friend. I don’t know how to sit with uncertainty. My life is overwhelming at the best of times.’ 

But that’s what I’m getting at. I’m not saying we are ready for this moment because we have our shit together. I’m saying we are ready for this moment because we are used to not being ready for anything. 

We’re used to not having the answer.

A different kind of 'sensitivity training'

Does this sound familiar? Life (or your brain) throws some obstacle in your path, and you spend months - often years - feeling completely stuck by that obstacle. Seeing no way around it, thinking ‘life can surely never be good again with this obstacle in my path’, and yet finding a way to live anyway.

We learn how to live without an answer (because we have to).

What we bring to this moment

That’s what we are bringing to this moment. And each subsequent, equally uncertain moment. 

Sure, there’s the baggage, the feeling of being burnt out before this crisis even began, because you’ve spent so long dealing with your own personal existential crisis, year on year. But there’s also what we’ve learned from all that. The hard-won ability to sit with discomfort. The willingness to not (or at least not always) have an answer to that question, ‘what happens now?’

So, will all that be enough to get you through if things get really tough? 

I don’t know. It’s uncertain. 

Will this drag on long past your ability to cope? 

I don’t know. It’s uncertain. 

Will this experience break you or make you, or both?

I don’t know. It’s uncertain.

Yep. 

Looks like it's time for another walk.

For more on this topic, check out this week’s listening: ‘Will isolation make me depressed?’

In this week’s Big Feels pod, I had a special guest join me - one of our long-time Big Feels Clubbers!

We talked about what to do when staying indoors and avoiding people starts to feel a little too much like just being depressed. Plus, why most of the COVID-19 mental health advice sucks.

Click this big pink button to listen, or search 'big feels club' in most podcast players.