Your entire family is about to act like a total asshole. Here’s one thing you can do.

First, I will tell you three stories that may or may not have happened to me.

Then I will tell you what they have to do with each other, and as such, what they have to do with you.

Thing That May Or May Not Have Happened # 1

Once upon a time, I was talking to my mother about my concern for my oldest son’s mental health – you know, anxiety, depression, that kind of thing.

There were a few reasons for my concern.

One, parents and grandparents on both sides are a freaking fun pack of mental illnesses. We’re like those 8-packs of mini-cereals with Frosted Flakes and Corn Pops and Froot Loops and such.

Two, he was young and full of all those hormones that make even normal people crazy.

Three, he was in prison at the time.

So I’m telling my mother this – my mother with the lifetime of clinical depression and bipolar disorder, daughter of her mother, who spent the last miserable years of her short miserable life high off her face on Lithium?

You know what she says to me?

“What the hell does he have to be depressed about?”

In case you were skimming, he was incarcerated.

Thing That May Or May Not Have Happened # 2

This morning, as I was getting ready to make a coaching call, I couldn’t find my phone. I looked everywhere. EVERYWHERE. The more I looked, the more stressed I became until finally, I flipped.

Me: “Where the ****ing **** is my ****ing ******* phone! Jesus ****ing Christ!”

Jack: “It’s in your hand.”

Me: “ARRRRRRRRRRRRGH!!!” [only half hearing him, tossing contents of both hands down in impotent rage]

Jack: “Well, now it’s on the counter.”

Thing That May Or May Not Have Happened # 3

Once upon a time I was in a McDonald’s to get a coffee. The man in front of me – a well-enough-dressed gentleman in his late 40s or early 50s – had a question. He couldn’t understand the way their new menu was laid out. He saw bulk pricing for the chicken nuggets, but he wanted to know how much they cost on a per-nugget basis.

Like, he didn’t need or want six nuggets or 10 nuggets or 20 nuggets. He wanted two nuggets. How much would that cost? And why wasn’t that information easily available?

The girl behind the counter was about 16 and looked like she was passed over for a part in Clueless on the grounds of being too dumb to be believable. She tried, God bless her. But she was no match for this guy.

Over the course of their exchange, he became so angry, so quickly, that spittle was forming in the corners of his mouth. Why was she hiding the information from him? It was price gouging! It was false advertising! He was going to call the sheriff! She thought she could pull one over on him! She was treating him like an idiot!

I don’t know what happened after. The manager was coming and I was getting the hell out of Dodge. I’m going to guess it was something like early-onset Alzheimers, dementia, or similar.

People are going NUTS

According to Dr. Sonia Lupien – scientific researcher, founder/director of the Centre for Studies on Human Stress, and all around total hottie – there are four major components to stress. In order for something to be considered stressful, one of the following four factors must be present:

Novelty:: You must learn a new computer software program from scratch and it completely changes your work habits. Or you are expecting your first child.

Unpredictability: You learn that daycare workers and teachers will go on strike but you have no clue when. Or you have a moody boss with new demands every day.

Threat to the ego: A new employee keeps asking you why you do things a certain way as if doubting your methods. Or you are meeting your child’s teacher who asks you how much time you spend helping your child with homework.

Sense of Low Control: You are in a hurry to get to an important meeting and you get caught in a huge traffic jam. Or your child is diagnosed with a serious illness that leaves you powerless to help ease his/her suffering.

If one – ONE!!! – of those factors is present, the situation is likely to be processed as stressful to the body, even if the brain isn’t consciously aware of it. So if you’re ever stressed and wondering why, you can use this as a rubric or flowchart to see where the stress might be.

(A motivated and dutiful straight-A student could even try and find solutions to the factors, but that might be a little much to ask at the moment.)

The State Of The World At Present – hereafter referred to as SOTWAP because I find it hilarious – contains at least three of these for every single person on the planet.

To wit:

Is it novel? HAHAHAHAHA! Yes. I would say that the NOVEL CORONAVIRUS is, in fact, quite novel, what with it being in the name and all.

Is it unpredictable? Regardless of what your conspiracy theorist brother-in-law says about Bill Gates knowing about the virus in 2015, yes, it is unpredictable. Even though some components of the SOTWAP were predicted by some, even those who predicted this do not know what’s coming next, or when. Anvils and time bombs and Wile E. Coyote, oh my! This is like the worst Looney Toons episode ever.

Is it a threat to the ego? This one depends on the person. Anyone who gets their ego out of their income? Or their ability to provide for their family? Or their ability to prepare for things? Anybody who thought this would blow over? Anybody who tried to predict or pontificate and has now been proven woefully, horrifically, tragically wrong? Yeah, they’re in for a Prozac Party alright.

Does it have a sense of low control? I really don’t know what to say here, so let’s just go with “Yes” before we all start weeping.

Literally everyone, everywhere in the world, is experiencing three out of the four stress contributors. Most people are experiencing all four.

God: This is NUTS, yo. NUTS.

When my mother expressed incredulity at the very idea my son might be experiencing tough times on the mental health front, I’m guessing she wasn’t trying to be a bitch. I choose to believe that she was in a situation where she was experiencing novelty, unpredictability, a hit to the ego, and a sense of low control.

When I shouted and frothed and raged about my phone, I wasn’t trying to be a banshee. I was in a stressful situation to begin with – the SOTWAP – and then one small stresser tipped me over the edge into Loco-Town, population 1.

When Nugget Man lost his shit in McDonald’s, he just wanted to get himself a small portion of 100% chicken breast meat in a deliciously crispy coating. He wasn’t trying to lose his mind on some poor child too young to vote. But it was out of his control, and hugely embarrassing, and unpredictable and confusing.

We’re All At Risk Of Becoming Nugget Man

I’m going to guess that you know some people. You probably are related to some people. You may even live with some people.

Every single person you know and/or love – including you – is about two bad days away from becoming Nugget Man.

This is why we must all – radically and immediately – learn to empathize.

Not sympathize. Empathize.

First, watch this. It’s three minutes. You want it. There’s a cute bear. And a fox. And half a sandwich.

Empathy is putting yourself in someone else’s shoes.

Empathy is feeling what they feel.

Empathy is airlifting yourself out of your head, where your struggles and your fears and your dramas live, and into THEIR head, where their struggles and their fears and their dramas live.

In times of extreme stress, we tend to think our reactions make perfect sense, and deserve compassion and foot rubs and fudge. We’re in pain! We’re stressed! We’re worried! We’re doing the best we can! “I can’t find my phone and when the world is falling apart, I think I should be able to find one goddamn thing. I’m a minimalist, for God’s sake. I don’t own things!”

When it comes to our loved ones’ reactions, though, we’re not so quick to rationalize. We don’t think of them as in pain or stressed or worried or doing the best they can. We think they should stop being such an asshole and flipping out about nothing.

When the lockdown first started in Italy, long before I really grounded myself enough to grasp the seriousness of the situation, I texted my friend Jenna with this:

It didn’t take long before I realized that too much sex and the resulting infants was probably not the biggest problem the Italians were about to suffer.

Tiny spaces full of people who are used to privacy and sovereignty and, I don’t know, ROOM TO MOVE?!?! Nobody knows where money is coming from. Everybody knows somebody who’s died or may die soon. Children are cooped up, supplies are running low, and all of life has somehow changed and screeched to a halt at the same time.

I have a feeling some of them are acting like bitches at the moment.

Some empathy resources

Some of us have more natural empathy skills than others.

If you are naturally empathetic, your greatest risk is forgetting that empathy applies in a given situation.

Like, pretend your partner were to open up to you in a vulnerable, non-violent communication kind of way, saying something productive and transparent. Something like:

“You know, sweetie cakes, I’m really feeling the stress of this Coronavirus thing. The unpredictability of this situation, in tandem with its associated ego hit and sense of low control, is starting to make me feel yucky inside.”

If they said that, well, of course we’d feel empathetic. We’re empaths. We’re all about the empathy.

The problem is, they don’t talk like that. They probably didn’t talk like that to begin with, and if they did, they sure as hell don’t in the greatest public health crisis in 102 years. Instead, they show their emotions by flipping out, stonewalling, or being passive aggressive. They flip out when they can’t find their phone, or they spilled hot sauce, or their kid didn’t get their pajamas on when they said they would.

Those are the times that need empathy. Those are the times that we need to put ourselves in our loved ones’ shoes, imagine what they’re going through, and, at the very least, try to give them what we would want.

(Keep in mind, the way they want support is not going to be the same way we would want support. But everyone can use compassion, attention, and care.)

If you are NOT naturally empathetic, this is really a Learn Or Bust situation. You’ll never get a better opportunity to learn.

If you’re not empathetic, you’re going to need a crash course or someone you love is going to start hitting you with things very soon. For some, those “things” are going to be “divorce papers”.

Here are some places to start:

How To Really Empathize With Someone

Six Habits Of Highly Empathic People

Stop Trying To Fix Your Partner’s Feelings (From the Gottman Institute)

Want to be More Empathetic? Avoid These 7 Responses These seven? You gotta read these seven, if only to make you hate your mother-in-law just a little more than you did already.

Last but not least, have empathy for yourself.

If you are on the more empathic end of the human spectrum – if you are a human sponge, or Narcissus’ Echo – you probably have a huge amount of empathy, and you probably beat yourself up if you don’t show it enough.

That’s very understandable. I do that too. (See? That was totally empathy. RIGHT THERE. IN MY BLOG POST.)

But you must have empathy for yourself, as well.

If you put yourself in YOUR shoes, you might find a lot of NUTS in yourself. So while you’re climbing down into everybody else’s holes, remember that you’re in a hole, too. 

Don’t beat yourself up, okay?

You need love, too.

Especially if you’re supposed to be handing it out to all of us assholes, screaming about chicken nuggets and throwing our phones.

xx Naomi