Mental hygiene and the economic crisis

[nancylebov]

Both my therapist and my life coach strongly recommend not paying attention to the financial news. This is obviously not a completely awful idea-- there isn't much I can do to protect myself.

Still, I wonder about more sophisticated strategies. Do any of you need to pay attention to the financial news and are getting professional psychological advice on how to maintain your focus and happiness? If so, what's the advice? If you're dealing with the markets without professional psychological help, are you doing anything in particular to hold your head together?

Comments

[osewalrus.livejournal.com]

If you're dealing with the markets without professional psychological help, are you doing anything in particular to hold your head together?

My brain seems to be constructed differently.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

My brain seems to be constructed differently.

I have no doubt, but I'd be interested in any details you've noticed about how it's different.

[interactiveleaf.livejournal.com]

I just don't worry much about things I can't control. And the more I remember how very little I can actually control, the calmer I get about life.

[osewalrus.livejournal.com]

I don't know if I can describe it. I see patterns and project forward. If you've read Dune, it's sort of a Mentat thing. As Becky can tell you, one of my more annoying habits is that I may suddenly stop in mid-conversation as pieces suddenly fall into place. I may start uttering to myself and getting excited as connections suddenly jell and become clear. But it is why I am extremely good in my field.

It's a logical projection based on known data, so it can be wrong -- and often has been, but usually in ways that are clear after the fact. It gives me a sense of confidence that I know where I am going. Sometimes it is multiple patterns, but I can see how they branch. And I feel I can effect outcomes. Call it hubris. Call it a functional self-delusion. But "I shall deliver 500 troops to the sacred cause by the next chow call" works for me.

And when it doesn't, I get all upset and dejected and pissed off and irrational for about a day. I through a huge violent tantrum. But it doesn't bother me, because I know I'm going to do it. I know when I will lose control, and try to structure my life to lose control effectively. Then I get up, shake myself off, and do it again. Because the alternative to forward momentum is death.

Mind you, it can scare the blue devils out of me when I can't project forward or when the universe seems to go completely haywire. But that is usually just disorientation that passes, and it is pretty rare.

[osewalrus.livejournal.com]

I will add that one of the worst things is when I can't slow it down or shut it off. That's sort of an ADD thing. It makes the rest of the world really annoying sometime.

[terriwells.livejournal.com]

All of that sounds terribly Miles Vorkosigan of you.

[osewalrus.livejournal.com]

There are an awful lot of similarities -- which is horribly conceited and every fanboy thinks they are Miles Vorkosigan/Kirk/Sherridan whoever.

Nevertheless, I read stuff in the Vorkosigan books and go "yeah -- that's how it works, including the banging your head against the wall parts."

[siderea]

Standard disclaimer: I am not your therapist. Nothing in this message establishes a client/clinician relationship between us. Any psychological information in this message is strictly for informational and/or entertainment purposes.

In my opinion, the best attitude I've been introduced to I learned from an accountant. He was a private practice CPA who only worked part time and wasn't particularly wealthy. On one occasion, he was recounting how he had just learned he was going to have to replace the roof of his house to the tune of $10k. He related this, then sighed and shrugged and said, "Oh, well. It's only money."

[holzman.livejournal.com]

I keep my investment goals firmly in my mind: If the market improves any time in the next 20 years, I'm golden. Dollar cost averaging is my friend.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

And over 20 years, you can pretty much count on it that it will.

In the 1987 market crash, I calculated that if someone had invested $10,000 at the height of the market before the crash in 1929, and half the companies had gone down totally, at the depth of the 1987 crash it would have been worth some huge amount of money with lots of zeroes. In the long term, the invisible hand does a pretty good job.

[sethg]

Yeah, what he said.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

I... live in a country with a social safety net, and I always have.

I've always been able to say "What's the worst that can happen: the worst that can happen is that I'd have to rent somewhere and live on benefits and eat a lot of soup and read only from the library." More recently I've been able to say "Oh, that's what I had to do in 1998, and it wasn't that bad."

I think living in a country without a social safety net would be incredibly scary. That's why when offered a job in the US when I was unemployed in Britain I didn't take it -- even if I'd personally have been OK, I couldn't see living somewhere where other people were perpetually skating over a gulf or falling into it.

Almost every year since I've been online and had friends in the US, I've loaned/given (never got any of it back, don't expect to, not a problem) money I could only barely afford to friends in the US who were having crises and had no social safety net -- most recently baldanders, in the past other people you may or may not know, starting with Gary. I know that a lot of my friends in the US have also done this for their friends. If you were having a crisis I'm sure I'd send you $300 or $500 or whatever I could afford right then. But if you think about Gary, I know people like him in Britain and they still have friends, because they haven't had to beg and not repay in the same way, because the social safety net is there. There's something really weird about the US on all this. A lot of individual people are very generous to other individuals, more so than I'm used to, but there's no sense of wide community. A little while ago, a badly worded survey in Britain and the US asked whether people would pay more tax "so Americans can get health care" instead of "so people in your country can..." and more people in Britain answered that they would pay more for Americans to get health care than Americans did. What happens to people like Scraps if they don't have friends to send money and organize benefits?

If I were you, I'd listen to my mental health professionals and try not to fret unnecessarily about things out of my control. Also, I'd move to Canada, but moving to Canada is slow and expensive and stressful.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

Lis Riba has an interesting link that suggests thinking about things faster can be cheering. I don't know if it's true, but it might be worth considering, if you're going to read the financial news, only allot a small time and do it as fast as you can to see if it helps.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

Thanks. That's possibly worth a try, though I think my mind doesn't slow down much when I'm depressed. I just obsess about depressing things.

Also, I've seen someone else do what looked to me like depression on fastforward. I asked afterward, and was told it was anxiety.

[terriwells.livejournal.com]

Having had both depression and anxiety at the same time...well, anxiety isn't ACTUALLY depression on fast forward, but it can certainly look like it.

Me, I try to take comfort in the security of the things I have, and the things I can (mostly) control. And I remember that I'm in much better shape now, in a lot of ways, than I was the last time the economy went off the deep end (about 2001), and managed to come through that with some help from friends. So...I'm probably less worried than a lot of people. I might even be less worried than I need to be, but I kind of doubt it (anyone who knows me knows that I worry at the drop of a hat).