Default Mode

Coping with your coping skills.

It seems to me that in times of crisis, when we’re jerked into survival mode, we often revert to our original coping mechanisms. For those of us who’ve had less than ideal childhoods, these coping patterns may have served us well in our youth, but often in adulthood they become at best annoying, and at worst destructive and debilitating.

At the start of “shelter in place”, being one of the fortunate ones that’s been able to stay at home and collect unemployment, I felt excited for the possibility of so much extra time. I made a list of all the fun and creative things I could do during this time: paint, make a film, try a new recipe, write a song, organize my closet, do yoga every day, etc. The first week I did a little of all of that and I found myself feeling like I was on vacation and I could do whatever I wanted. I cherished getting to sleep in and spend more time cooking and reading and catching up with friends. With the work that I do as a full-time auditioning actor, I’ve never been able to have a stay-cation outside of a long weekend (I usually have to leave town to get a real break) so this was a breath of fresh air. It truly felt like the silver lining of this horrid pandemic and I knew I was extraordinarily lucky to be having such a positive experience during such a difficult time in our world. 

But over time, this joy started to dissipate. Old patterns of self-judgement crept back in, scornfully telling me that I needed to be productive and “doing something useful with my life” in order to be worthy of feeling good. Insisting that I really ought to suffer through this because it’s not fair for me to enjoy it while so many others are burdened. Making me feel like somehow having fun and being creative is a bad thing, and if I allow myself do that I will bear the punishment of my “irresponsible” actions.

Next thing I knew I was back to 10-hour work days, getting as busy as I could to make sure I was doing everything in my power to come out of this stronger, better, wiser and ahead of the curve. I was striving to be a responsible adult, planning out how to save money and how to be prepared for every possible future scenario to secure my future in this uncertain world. Meanwhile, my inner child was resentful, staring at me like my dog does when I haven’t played with him in a long time. I wasn’t doing the things I set out to do with my newfound freedom, instead I was squandering my opportunity of leisurely time for the false promise of a “safer” tomorrow. But what about today?

Then, one afternoon sitting on my front balcony, during a moment of fatigue, it dawned on me that this pandemic and all the uncertainty it brings had kicked in old coping skills that have hijacked me many times before.  Ways of dealing with stress that I developed in my early life that aren’t especially practical now. As I chatted with other friends about their experience and how they were feeling during this Covid-19 crisis, I silently wondered if a similar thing was happening to them, and if perhaps this reaction is not all that uncommon.

When difficult and unexpected things happen, fear triggers our automatic response to danger and unbeknownst to ourselves, we slide right back into the patterns of our past. Old problem-solving abilities so keenly developed in childhood come rushing back to the rescue. Perhaps you survived highly critical parents by becoming highly critical yourself to prevent them from being able to point out anything you did wrong. Perhaps you survived emotional or physical abandonment by becoming as pleasant to be around as possible to avoid the repeated rejection. Perhaps you survived neglect by learning to need and want less so as not to be a burden. For me it was all of the above. But whatever you survived there’s no denying it played a major role in shaping who you are and how you respond to the world. More specifically, it effectively chiseled neurological pathways in your brain to help you cope with your particular set of problems in early life. And that programing is what I call, your default mode.

For a few lucky ones these well establishes skills still serve them productively today. Perhaps they’ve even shaped their careers and lives around them and their default mode not only uplifts them personally, but it also helps those around them. I certainly think this is the ideal scenario; to make use of your early programing to define your purpose in life. However, for a great many of us our old coping mechanisms just don’t line up with our current reality anymore. The tools we purposed to escape abuse or neglect or enmeshment, or anything that squashed some part our true selves, are now just ancient and heavy armor burrowed into our skin, weighing down our hearts and minds.

And maybe, like I did at first, you think this doesn’t apply to you because you’ve done a lot of work on yourself:

-You’ve been to therapy and you’ve developed a strong awareness of the issues you picked in your family of origin.

-You’ve unraveled and addressed most of your problems through loving relationships with friends, with a partner or through your work/art.

-You practice Brazilian Jiu Jitsu or some other martial art to channel your energy in a healthier way.

-You practice breathing and meditation and you’ve learned that vulnerability won’t kill you (thank you, Brene Brown).

-Or you have a dog (best therapy I’ve ever gotten).

One way or another you’ve gradually released negative patterns from the past and learned to be kinder to yourself, more patient, more in touch with your needs/wants and to breathe before you react. Maybe you’re even at the point where you are grateful for the pain you endured in your past and everything it’s taught you. You know that you are who you are not in spite of your childhood, but because of it.  Well, that’s great! And believe me, I commend you. But the sucky thing is that even when you’ve done all of this incredible work, even when you’ve built new neural pathways to better handle adversity, even then, when the ground of change suddenly shakes beneath you, before you even have time to think, your brain resets to default mode.

Default mode can be intricately tied to early trauma, or it can just be negative parental voices replaying like a broken record. For each person it will be a completely unique spider web. Some of us can unstick ourselves better than others, having found good ways to cope with our coping mechanisms.  For others, when our default mode has won, depression can follow, and the things that usually bring you joy and comfort now feel soggy and ineffective. Default mode is when some part of you just cannot relax and you can’t reason yourself out of this feeling of unrest or even understand exactly why it showed up. It feels like there’s some a short circuit in your brain and you can’t talk, exercise or sleep your way out of it. Sometimes deep breathing helps, but when it’s really bad, even that doesn’t crack the code. You’re functioning just below the surface, like you know how to swim but even as you go through the motions, you can barely keep yourself from drowning.

And boom. Here came the Covid-19 pandemic and without even realizing it, you’re back to being 5 years old and feeling like you’re going to die. You’re “triggered”, as they say, and your mind starts replaying old dialogue you’ve heard so many times before. “You suck”, “you don’t belong”, “you should should should should”. Negative thoughts playing on loop.

Default mode says:

-Forget kindness, criticism and self-judgement work faster.

-Screw your needs and wants, what about everyone else’s needs and wants? You should be helping them even at the expense of your own health and sanity.

-Fuck being vulnerable, it’s time to brace yourself for the punches and fight back when they come.

Sometimes these default voices are loud and overwhelmingly clear, but other times they whisper. You might not even notice they’re there. Perhaps they’re quietly chattering in the background like high school girls spreading nasty rumors. Or they’re stealthily draining energy to fight demons now long dead and gone. You might not even realize you’re swinging a sword because it feels so familiar. You did it for so many years and it worked, it protected you, so why shouldn’t it work now? Until you realize that though you’re highly skilled at self-defense, right now you need to put out a fire, and no amount of fencing will stop oxygen from feeding the flame.

And suddenly you’re exhausted. Your energy has been depleted while you’ve been grasping at straws, trying to fight off something you’ve never encountered before: this invisible monster of a virus lurking nearby. Fear has awakened your internal army now braced for a fight and even the blasted turncoat soldiers are ready to attack, but you’ve spent more time trying to get them in line than actually fighting a worthy battle.

Does anybody know what I’m talking about?

Maybe it’s just me and my crazy psychological theories about how much our childhood steers our lives. Maybe I’m trying to explain away thoughts and feelings that can’t be named. Maybe I’m just speaking of a natural fear and resistance to change. But for me, I couldn’t help but notice that my early programing got louder as the severity of our world situation sunk in. As I increasingly worried about my family, my career and my future, I found myself falling back into the patterns I’ve been breaking down my whole life, caught by in web tailor-made to protect me, that now just binds me down and keeps me stuck.

I don’t know about you, but I was taught to conform, to draw inside the line and follow the rules, because that’s how “good things happen” in your life. I learned to sit down and be quiet and do my homework, because that’s how “You’ll get rewarded”. Be predictable, controlled and well behaved.  Squelch your curiosity and uncontrollable feelings and anything that cannot be contained and labeled or you will bear the consequences.  You must subdue your aliveness or you will be rejected from the pack, abandoned, and left to crinkle in your own demise.

With that kind of messaging it’s no wonder that I became highly skilled at repressing all of my natural impulses, stopping them in their tracks and questioning their intention, cutting off their rhythm and flow. A willing servant to my own acquired self-judgement, egging myself on to follow these mental commands, always trying to hit an invisible mark and doing whatever I have to do to satiate those voices that tell me I need to “have a purpose” and be “useful” and have “tangible  results”. And needless to say, as a creative person, this can be incredibly stifling.

So there I was, sitting on my balcony, realizing for the thousandth time how often the choices I make reflect my need to appease those “parental voices” in my mind. The voices that get too loud when I step out of line, the ones that insist they know better, telling me they’re only scolding me for my own good.  Being free and flowy is too loose and immeasurable to pacify these voices that demand to know the exact “end purpose” of my endeavors. And many times the negative feedback my mind shouts at me feels like too much of a burden to bear for the momentary joy of doing something purposeless. But of course, this leaves me torn because creativity requires you to jump into the abyss. It demands that you enter a space of “not knowing” and it invites you to release expectations and play. But for me, having internalized the lesson that being spontaneous is “bad and dangerous”, I feel obliged to follow the rules and the fun is literally been sucked out of playing, sucked out of life.

It makes me think of a game my nieces like to play, where they pretend there is lava on the floor and the only way to save yourself is to hop from one thing to another; from the rug, to the sofa, to the coffee table, to a chair. Whoever steps on the floor gets burned. I began to imagine how boring this game would be if everyone just followed the rules and never touched the floor. I mean all you have to do is not move, right? Stay on your chair or your piece of rug or sit on the kitchen counter. But the joy is in trying to hop from one thing to another, in the danger of falling and getting burned, in the excitement of survival, and the laughter of someone else trying so hard not to dip their toes, only to slip and fall to their death. That’s where the giggles come from, the belly laughs, and the game.

Beyond my sudden plunge into default mode, it struck me that I’ve learned to predict and control even my own fun and enjoyment, I’ve lost my child-like connection to the “game”. If I keep living my life to please the parental voices in my head, I’m likely to live a fairly miserable existence. And if this is adulthood, then I disagree with the mold. I think there is a way to stay safe and procure survival, while still drawing outside the lines. I think most of us admire people who do exactly that, who think and act outside the box because they follow the beat of their own drum. And I think it’s possible to crack that mold and say, I’m not falling for the lie that I’m better or more deserving when I’m a “good girl” or “good boy”. Instead, I choose to allow space for the parts of myself I learned to deny, connecting to my own feeling and flow, and speaking my truth loud and clear. I’m the adult now, and if I want to roll around on the floor and play like a jackass, ain’t nobody gonna stop me!

It’s true that our default mode may never completely leave us. It will likely be there knocking on our doors offering all kinds of advice at every big turning event or new experience throughout our entire lives. Sometimes it will prove to be useful, and other times, just a pain in the ass. But one way or another it seems to be a part of us, a part we have to learn to live with ideally without letting it control us. To be aware of the parts that still serve us, that we want to bring forth, and to notice the parts that weigh us down, that perhaps we can stop giving power to. The way I see it is if I have to struggle with fear and “negative voices”, it may as well be to untangle them, progressively unblocking my creative freedom and sense of play.

And now, for one piece of good news, your default mode has made you precisely who you are. And that uniqueness informs your art, your one-of-a-kind voice and the very distinct set of gifts you have to offer the world. Default mode is not your enemy, however much it may feel so, it is not something to be cut off or get rid of. It can actually fuel you if you learn how not to let it drain you. The key is to realize that you don’t have to be a victim to your default mode. It will make you think that it’s in the driver’s seat, but really it’s just grabbing the whee and you have to grab it back. Hopefully over time you can learn to befriend your default mode, to laugh at the fear-based suggestions and the critical voice, and the scenarios it likes to posture, and just respond with “thank you but no thank you”, choosing to plug into this moment, and honor yourself fully in a way that only you can.

By Ellie Araiza

Barcelona afternoon stroll

 

Back To The Essentials

THE SILVER LINING OF THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC:

I had a strange fantasy while on a long flight a few years back. I started to imagine what life would be like if it was simpler. What if I had to live without electricity, without my phone, and even, without money? What would my life be like, reading by candle light, having to leave my house to speak to someone and having to ask for help without the currency to exchange cash for service?

I lost myself in this vision, and funny enough, the thought of it made me so happy. I know it might sound crazy or strange, but the idea of living life with nothing but my body, my breath and my ability to connect with others, really excited me. It made me feel connected to the most essential parts of being alive. And now that it’s 2020, and COVID-19 is sweeping the world, I guess I can’t help but feel that this quarantine time can offer us an opportunity to get back to basics, to what’s really important in life.

We’ve been asked to stay home as much as humanly possible, in order to slow the spread of the virus, for who knows how many weeks. We are to shut down all unnecessary gatherings, work and travel, and only go out if absolutely necessary. Some people’s work doesn’t allow them to stay home, and for them, perhaps not much has changed. Some people have even more work due to the toll the virus is taking, or due to the confinement of others. Many, are genuinely busy and still working full time or helping others or taking care of small children inevitably dictating their lives. But it’s the people who get to stay home in particular, the fortunate ones who have more free time than usual, that I’d like to address now.

We’ve been granted full authority to do as little as possible and yet I am astounded at how quickly we’ve all scrambled to fill our schedules.  As soon as the mandate went through I started getting emails and calls about what to do during this time, how to fill my schedule, how to keep structure in my day, how to keep socializing and meetings going. It feels like people are grasping to keep their lives as they were, in an attempt to push away the discomfort of the unknown.

What will I do with extra time if I have it? What will I do without my email constantly buzzing and without my weekly errands keeping me checking things off the to-do list and satiating my need to feel productive? How will I manage my time when it’s no longer dictated by appointments, commutes, clocks and deadlines?

Things have stopped, and many of us are privileged enough to sit back and enjoy it to some degree, yet we can’t fight the urge to busy ourselves as much as possible and try to re-create or simulate our lives as it they were before, fiercely resisting the slow down.

Ok, ok. I get it.  We all need to maintain some semblance of normality. We all have things we can’t just drop and ignore and there are important things to keep up, like exercise, and human connection and any life management things you are still able to do. But I’m speaking of the compulsive need to fill your day with anything possible just to avoid boredom, or downtime, or even rest. I understand people want to maintain some normalacy, but dare I say, this is abnormal. So why fight it?

My Mom who lives in Mexico, told me that last week a young man rang her doorbell and asked if he could sweep her front street for a glass of water. My Mom obliged, and while he worked away, she also made him some quesadillas. When he saw she made him a meal, he swept even harder and longer. He ate his food, drank his water, and went on his way.  I thought this was such a beautiful example of living life simply. An exchange that didn’t involve money, but a simple exchange of goods for services.

The awesome part is, I’m hearing about this happening in neighborhoods across the world. Even in Los Angeles neighbors are cooperating with each other with food and grocery runs. Before Covid-19, you wouldn’t dream in this day and age of asking your neighbor for a cup of sugar, because you can just get it yourself. And being the self-sufficient, individualistic society that we are, “You shouldn’t ask for a favor unless it’s an absolute emergency”. Well guess what? It’s definitely an emergency. It’s a worldwide pandemic that threatens people we know and love and the full extent of the consequences is yet to be known. As scary as that is, the silver lining is that this crisis brings us all closer together, reminding us that we are all interconnected, and that we rely entirely upon on each other for survival.  It’s a reminder that we are all equal. Equally mortal at least, as death does not discriminate.

This situation may not be as extreme as my fantasy of living without technology and money, but still, it’s one that affords us the time to really recognize and reconnect to what’s most important. What do you really need to be alive and OK? What do your kids really need? Your husband/wife? Your parents?

Most of what you think you need you don’t need it all. We need oxygen, food, water, a warm place to sleep and rest (and apparently, toilet paper).  We need social interaction, absolutely. And as much as we need time to engage and be active and challenged and work, we also need time without stimulus. And being the workaholic culture that we are, it seems to me, even before this pandemic, we didn’t get enough of that. Our society tends to dictate that we remain in constant “doing mode”, moving, rushing and trying to catch up. And now that we are going through this crisis, forcing us to hunker down and moving us over to the slow lane, most of us, are terrified to look outside the window. To see what normally passes by in a blur, now in full focus. But dare I ask, why not take a look? Why not slow down enough to see your life clearly and where it’s headed? And really, what is so wrong with doing less?

For so many of us our self-worth is wrapped up in this idea we have of being “productive” and yielding results. We forgot to honor and value ourselves for just being. You’d never stare at a sleeping baby and call it “useless” and “lazy”, and yet when you decide to take a break and relax, suddenly your self-judgment turns up the volume with all sorts of speculations about what that means about you and why it makes you an asshole.

Call me crazy, but I think it’s time to challenge our values as a society. I think it’s time to re-examine our quality of life, any how we approach our day. How much time do we actually spend with our kids? How does our community or government support or not support this? How much time do you have to do things you enjoy? How much of your work is actually, truly productive, and not just “busy work” designed to satiate your inner critic? And right now, I ask, if your current life circumstance allows it, what is so terribly wrong with doing less? With letting our minds and bodies unwind and restore themselves after years of being ruled by a schedule full of places and times to be somewhere doing something. For those who spend 1-3 hours commuting to work every day, how does it feel to have extra time in the morning to sip your coffee and read? How does it feel to have time for an evening stroll after dinner? To have more time to cook, to garden, to tackle that home project you’ve been wanting to do for so long?

One of the best parts of this quarantine so far, in my view, is seeing how many people are losing track of the time. People don’t know what day it is, and I find that incredibly refreshing. I think it’s wonderful because connects us to a different part of the brain, the part of the brain that loses itself in time. That’s the part of the brain that we use when are immersed in music, or dancing, or any kind of playing. And I’m seeing more playing.

I’m seeing people riding their bikes, going on long walks or roller blading for what looks like the first time in a long time. I’m seeing both Mom and Dad out with their kids playing games, finding creative ways to stay entertained, wearing costumes and leaving chalk messages on the sidewalk for the rest of us to see. I’m seeing people take time away from their phones, enjoying fresh air and arriving to this moment (not always looking to the next). People engaging with one another in a way that we normally don’t do when we are on a schedule and rushing from one thing to the other.

I don’t know about you, but for me it’s been a relief. It’s been nice to not have to constantly rush from one errand, appointment or meeting to another.  It’s been great to get a little more sleep. To connect with friends and family more often, and to have the time and space in my day to be more present with them. I feel like the world has been moving so fast for so long, that I’ve personally been wanting to slow down for quite some time now. The sudden extra time in my day has allowed me room to expand, to remember parts of myself I may have left behind in the hustle and bustle, to remember what’s really important both in the big picture and in my daily existence. For all of this, I find myself effortlessly grateful. As though I was designed to move at a slower pace, and for years I’ve been going against my nature, to keep up with the world around me.

So maybe after you take care of the basics, like caring for yourself and your family, maybe after you do your part to help, even just by donating to a charity providing meals or much needed PPE, maybe after all that, try giving yourself permission to do a little of nothing.  To approach artistic ventures you’ve always wanted to try, to learn something new or to read that book you keep setting aside for when you have time. To reconnect to what you love about life and who you love in your life. And even, to do something as purposeless as playing or dancing or listening to music. Something that yields no results, no answers, no productivity.

One of the gifts that this pandemic can yield is that we find ourselves with no choice but to simplify our lives. To get back to the meat and potatoes of what it means to be alive. I think that’s what every crisis comes to remind us. By bringing us uncomfortably close to the possibility of losing what we have, and/or to the possibility of death, it inevitably puts us more in touch with our aliveness, giving us a heightened sense of awareness of just how precious every moment we have really is.

And I for one, am grateful for this perspective. I hope that through the uncertainty and fear and pain, we can also find a way to bring forward all the positive things that can and will come from this event. Our connectedness and interdependence, how what’s good for you is what’s good for everyone, how much each and every one of our lives matter, and how to squeeze the sweetness out of every moment we are afforded another breath.

By Ellie Araiza