Last time we looked at the top 4 keys to Mental Health, Diet, Exercise, Medication Therapy and Talking Therapy. In this we recognised that most of mental health is biological and some is to do with knowledge and understanding your experience. This time we are going to focus on that old wisdom – balance aka everything in Moderation. The problem is that “balance” varies depending on your biology, situation and culture.

Let us explore that a bit more.

Goldilocks Balance

Hopefully, we all know about the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears, where a privileged blond girl break and enters into the Bear’s house, breaking a chair, stealing food and sleeping in their bed. Let’s focus on the food part. Mama Bear’s porridge was too cold and Goldilocks found it too hard and awful. Papa Bear’s porridge was too hot and burnt her mouth. Baby Bears porridge, on the other hand, was “just right”.

Was it? Or was any temperature that wasn’t too hot or too cold in the zone of “good enough”, and after the awful experience of too cold and too hot, it seemed like lovely? There is a zone of “good enough” that after horrible experiences can seem lovely.

As we approach the edge of the Goldilocks zone we need to compensate more and more for approaching the boundary, until we can’t compensate anymore. Those compensations can have noticeable effects on our ability to think, feel and act, which we can learn to recognise as Rumble Warning Signs that we aren’t doing okay anymore, and may need to take some action to deal with this as a more serious problem rather than just gritting our teeth and bearing it.

Not too much, not too little, everything in moderation

We can use this metaphor for more than just porridge, chairs and beds. We don’t want to eat too much of any one food, or too little. How much depends on what the food is and our biology. For example, I may be able to safely eat more fat than some people, and less than others. The dietary food guidelines are an average “good” for people who have no complicating biological conditions, and the optimal place in that zone for you may be higher or lower than the middle. I don’t have to eat the exact right optimal amount of fat in each meal either. I can average it out over a few days. If I have had half again more than I should have today, then I can decrease how much I have tomorrow and skim a little the day after to make the 3 day average about right.

That is, we are looking for moderation. Not too much sunlight, not too little, a moderate amount. If you have lighter coloured skin, you need less, while if you have darker coloured skin, you need more. If you have a medical condition, you may need to avoid sunlight and rely on supplementing your Vitamin D.

Speaking of sunlight, we also need to factor in environmental variables. In Australia, the amount of sunlight we are recommended if we live in the bottom half is significantly less than for most of the rest of the world, due to the hole in the ozone layer. Environmental factors may vary all kinds of definitions of moderation and where the Goldilocks Zone is for this particular circumstance.

For example, a joke that I heard at the pun last week may not go down very well as an ice breaker when I vitis my brother’s church. That joke may be fine for the pub, but not fine in a different environment.

Seeking the Midground

When we are struggling, we often boost our adrenaline to help us get through. This additional adrenaline leads to heightening the Freeze, Fawn, Flight and Fight Reflex, which can lead to Black and White Thinking.

Black and White Thinking is where we don’t feel like we have enough time to think things through, so we simplify problems into simple answers – prompted by our Survival Mode, we try to first reduce things to the freeze (don’t draw attention), fawn (make them happy / people pleasing), flight (get away) and fight (verbal or physical aggression or active action). If the situation feels more dire than that, we simplify to a dichotomy of Flight (anxiety) or Fight (anger).

If we are in an emergency, this makes sense. We don’t have time to come up with a thoughtful, understanding and creative solution, because the consequences will be dire!

Will they though?

If the problem does not have Clear and Present Danger to you or someone near you, then that sense of urgency is a mistake, the extra adrenaline surge may be clouding your mind and making you think that you have a genuine emergency on your hands instead of just a change you need to think about. The problem is, it can be hard to tell, because the feeling is the same. That is why checking for Clear and Present Danger is a good reality checking strategy.

When we notice that we are heading towards Black and White Thinking, we need to slow things down, retraining our brain, so that we can find a better solution. Generally, the better answer is in the Midground of the extremes we are drawn to, and when we have the option to freeze, fawn, flight or fight, we should use freeze to give us time to think it through – unless you are about to be hurt, temporarily freezing won’t hurt anyone. Once you have worked out your answer to the problem, you can check if it is an extreme answer or a midground answer, and if is more a miground answer, then it probably good enough.

Case by Case Flexibility, not one size fits all

No two situations are identical, but many are similar enough to each other that we can use a similar answer. This saves time in re-inventing yet another similar solution to a similar problem. When this works, it is great.

When the solution we are trying isn’t working, that means that we have missed something about why this situation isn’t being solved by that solution. We need to get flexible in how we see the situation, and what we are going to do about it.

We need to let go of what we thought was true and re-examine what the situation is. While it may resemble another experience, clearly it is different in some aspect. We need to deal with this as a possible exception to the trend and look at this Case by Case.

When looking at a thing as Case by Case, we don’t have to pretend we know nothing about the similar cases. We need to recognise that our assumptions can be misleading and that what we think we know about this case may be wrong, so that we prime ourselves for noticing what is different such that we need a different solution.

It is not uncommon for bureaucracies and organisations to treat us like we are the problem when their generic “one size fits all” solutions to not work for us. It is important to ensure that we don’t do the same mistake to other people and look with compassion, empathy and understanding at their discomfort. We can then start to look at why their situation is different to the generic case where that solution works, so that we can get a better solution for them, or recognise that we can’t help.

Life is Dynamic, allowing for change

Even when we have a good grasp on what a situation is, and what we can do about it, this big ol’ universe that we find ourselves in is constantly changing in interesting ways. We need to recognise that change can occur midway through the execution of our plans, which may require us to pause, figure things out and make a new plan, AKA, the next section.

Assess, Accept, Adapt, Act, Achieve, Overcome.

When we have come across an unexpected situation, we may not have a pre-existing solution for it, or we may be part way through enacting a solution when an unexpected change occurs. We need to come up with a brand new solution.

Assess, Accept, Adapt, Act, Achieve and Overcome is our mantra.

Assess

First of all, we need to perceive the situation. If our current solution isn’t working, then we need to re-perceive it. Perception is a combination of what our senses tell us and our past experiences combining to bring us understanding. We can lean into the Freeze reflex to pause what we are doing and give ourselves time to assess what is really going on.

Part of the Assessment is recognising what we do know and also what we don’t know. We make up a narrative to link facts and assumptions into a story to explain what is happening and why. Unfortunately, we run the risk of an erroneous story from faulty assumptions leading to reinforcing worse assumptions and misleading us about what is happening. This is why reality checking is important. What do you actually know about this situation that is a fact? What are the assumptions? What other assumptions could be valid? How will you check those?

Assess aligns with the “Surprise” part of the Phases of Change & Grief.

Accept

Once we have determined what the facts are, we need to accept that this is the situation that we have.

Mechanism of acceptance of the situation is the reality checking and conclusion of the “Denial” Phase of Change & Grief. It allows us to dismiss what isn’t correct and put our efforts into what is correct. If we continue with denial when presented with evidence that it is true, our lack of acceptance stunts our ability to make suitable plans and adaptations. By the same token, if we have faultily accepted a narrative that turns out to be false, then we need to find that error in the reality checking methods (Change & Grief , Solving Problems).

Adapt

Adapt means making changes. To make changes, you need to know what the situation is that you are adapting to. We have covered in the steps above the importance of getting a good reality check so you know what you are dealing with.

For Adapt, we now need to work out what target outcome we are looking to achieve. What outcome do you want, that is good for you and good for others? Here are some guidelines for “good outcomes”:

• If there is an adversarial conflict, then we want to be somewhat fair to the other person, but their good outcome is only to be considered a bonus, not the goal.
• Sacrificing yourself should be a rare decisions, not the the common trend.
• A good outcome should be good for you, as well as good for most people.
• A good outcome is something you can be proud of afterwards.
• A good outcome is what you would like someone else to do if it was them, except it happens to be you. That is, if the same situation happened to a friend, what would you think would be good and fair for them to do? If you are saying to yourself “but that’s different”, no it isn’t. Go talk to a therapist about that, because this is not a healthy thinking pattern.

If small changes can be done to resolve the situation, then the adaptation is minimal and cheap. So long as the outcome is good enough, then this will do. Not all problems require huge costly solutions.

Sometimes good outcomes do require large and expensive solutions. If that is the case, what will get you going for now so that you can invest in that more complex long term solution later, or do you need to commit to the process right now?

This ties in with the “Bargaining” part of the Phases of Change & Grief.

Act

Do or do not, there is no try…

To do, or not to do, that is the question. And by do, we mean do an action. It is lovely to come up with a plan on how you will solve the problem before you, but if you don’t do anything about it, then you will not change the course of the future and you will get the default.

That isn’t always bad, the default can be fine. So long as things progress how you expected them to go, you can sit back and watch. Often, this is all we actually have to do. Monitoring the progress is an action in and of itself. It is also useful to have some ideas what it will look like if things stop going along the good default outcome so that you can tell that the plan has become derailed. It is useful to also have some plans about what you can do to get it back on track, or whether you need to re-assess the situation.

If the default isn’t so good, then you will have to act – do something to change the default outcome. For that we want a plan, which we cover in Solving Problems.

The Act part aligns with the purpose why we get Adrenaline in the “Anger” part of the Phases of Change & Grief. Adrenaline may be interpreted as anger, but the purpose of it is to help empower you to act to make changes.

Achieve

Achieve is about recognising when the actions of your plan have worked… or not worked. If they haven’t worked, it is time to go back and figure out where you went wrong and start again (if the outcome is bad enough).

If it has worked well enough, congratulate yourself on making the changes you needed to. Review the things that worked, the things that could have gone better and then let it all go. Next time you are in a similar situation, your brain will refer back to this success.

Remember, perfection is impossible, so we want to acknowledge our good progress, not criticise a lack of perfection.

Overcome

Overcome recognises that we were able to overcome a problem. We survived, and hopefully we survived well, whether the plan worked really well, or if the plan didn’t work out quite how we had wanted it to. We overcame the problem.

This can seem similar to the Achieve step above, but it is importantly different. The Achieve step above is recognising and assessing the specific outcome of our adaptation, while Overcome is about beating the problem.

Overcome is a celebration of achievement that cements a positive behaviour and survival pathway in our brains for future reference. Too often we downplay our success, and Overcome recognises this with positive feelings.

Growth

We all make mistakes, for none of us are perfect.

This is about how we grow.

Are we Humble enough to acknowledge our mistakes, learn from them and become better? If so, then we can grow.

For us to grow from an error, we must understand what happened, how that led us away from a good outcome and what we can reasonably do in the future to change a situation from ending up in a similar situation. For that, we need to be honest and accurate about the facts and our part in it.

This comes down to honest, recollection, insight, cognition and judgement. If any of these are faulty, it can significantly impede your growth.

Honest

Honest is strongly related to the reality checking we have discussed above. It is about looking at the facts and finding the explanation that fits those. If you distort facts to fit your narrative, then you have stopped being honest about the situation.

We need to listen to the views of other people, who may have facts that we are unaware of, and trust in good dependable friends, and query the truth of people who are less reliable.

Recollection

Memory is key to learning. If we cannot recall the past, we cannot learn from the past, and we are powerless to change the course of the future.

If you have troubles remembering the details fairly and honestly, then write them down and refer to them.

Humans have highly fallible memories. When humans developed writing, we created a means of preserving truth. Humans tend to reconstruct our memories from clues, and it is not hard to distort what we think happened based on some poorly recalled information. If this seems to be you, then write it down.

An abusive partner or work colleague can gas light you into thinking that what is true is fiction and vice versa. Often their tactic is to erode your confidence over time. If you have written down what happened in a timely fashion, and why you think that is what happened (the facts), then you can refresh your memory and have confidence that the other person is attempting to gas light you.

Insight

In this context, we are referring to Insight as the capacity to gain an accurate and deep understanding of your actions and how they have affected you, someone else and your environment.

That is, how did your actions affect others?

Cognition

Cognition is about your ability to understand the world around you and solve problems. We have talked about problem solving quite a bit in this page. For more, take a look at Solving Problems.

Judgement

Judgement is about the ability to make a decision about what is right and wrong. That can be applied to the situation you are in, someone else’s actions, your own actions and the future actions you are planning. Just because you can doesn’t mean you should.