Failure and Guilt in the Pandemic
This is the transcript from the vlog/podcast published on the 28th of November 2020
Podcast episode:
Full Vlog: https://youtu.be/kfL3gmRUl94
References and resources are at the end.
So today I decided to talk about failure in a pandemic and the way we are feeling right now in a pandemic. And in general, the fear of failure and how we can handle that feeling right now.
So, first of all, we all have been going through failure in our lives. And that's basically happening quite a lot on a regular basis if you've been learning and trying to implement new things in your life. What I wanted to touch base on is the construct and conditioning behind the failure first.
Contextual fear conditioning is basically something that has been studied in behavioural neuroscience, how you get conditioned in your brain patterns, how it affects your life, and how it affects your brain functions, right. The American Psychological Association, has written papers on this in the journal, where they discuss that, if you can complete a memory pattern of fear conditioning, you are going to keep that fear and reproduce it for the rest of your life. Unless you basically un-condition this, so when you have for example a memory of failure and you were told off because you failed as a child that memory sticks to your brain. And you remember this in your adult life so failure feels really embarrassing and failure gives you that sense of guilt and shame. This comes from this conditioning that you've been having as a child so if every time you fail, you've been told that you should be feeling embarrassed and ashamed. Then as an adult, you're going to be struggling with this a lot more. On top of this, if you also have come across experiences where your family has had issues, and they've failed to do something or you've come across a huge amount of struggles you know maybe one of your parents losing a job and you've had less money, or you one of your parents, you know your parents got divorced it's a “failed” marriage. Technically, you know that there can be a lot of experiences as a child that conditioned us to make us feel that failure shouldn't be allowed. This is the neuroscience part of failure, we're being conditioned basically to think that failure is not good, and that we should feel embarrassed and ashamed of it.
The next thing I want to approach is, we all have gone through experiences of failure.
I have for one have had my fair share of failures. So, as a self employed person as an entrepreneur this has happened many many times. So, just as an example. Back in 2008 2007 2008 I decided to start a performing career, and yet. I didn't actually gauge and manage how many ups and downs, this was going to have. So I ended up quitting my job. A bit too abruptly and I've been going through lots of ups and downs financially. I didn't have any savings or all the savings I had I invested in equipment for my company and in my marketing. So there have been a lot of trials and failures to be where I am today and you know, even in a pandemic, we all go through our different struggles and different issues that we have to manage but just so you know. I've had so many failures in my life that I could actually write a book about it, and quite funny one, sometimes. Some decisions when you just kind of look back in retrospect, you kind of look at yourself and be like, How were you that dumb. Right? But I survived! I survived.
So, what I want to discuss next is why we feel like we are failing in this pandemic right now. So, I've been doing my bit of research as well just to see because I also get strong feelings at times that I am actually failing. And I feel like a lot of us are going through these sensations, these emotions on a daily basis. So there is a real thing that is called pandemic guilt, and according to some doctors, Dr. Mahato, medical doctor for the centre of behavioural health at Hackensack meridian JFK Medical Centre. Yeah, so I went out and searched. This doctor said there are many types of guilt people may feel because of the pandemic. Some are normal, and can be managed through coping techniques and some may be prolonged and require medical attention if they get in the way of daily functioning. Alright, so the one I wanted to kind of touch base on which is this sort of middle one right so the first one is the one that we spoke a little bit earlier, is the sort of general guilt that we have when we fail, we feel embarrassed and feel slightly ashamed, but that kind of subsides after a while.
The one that we kind of feel right now as a “normal” person (in comparison to key workers), is kind of what is called what they qualify as free floating or toxic guilt. So this kind comes from a sense of not being a good person and feeling like you're failing right now, or that you let other people down as well. So right now we're in a pandemic, we feel like we can't really handle the situation, we don't really understand what's happening. And we have no sense of control, there is literally no sense of control for any of us we have no idea where this is going. I have no idea how or when this is going to be over. We have no idea how the world is going to be like when this is over. This is probably the end of the world as we know it and we all have obvious fear of the unknown. We have to remember again so when we go back to that conditioning, the conditioning of fear, the conditioning of experiencing struggle and shame and embarrassment through experiencing failure in our childhood, or seeing and experiencing the struggles the difficulty of instability that we might have perceived through the struggles in our family throughout our childhood again, we get to relive this through the pandemic. This kind of really unravels back into our subconscious minds. And because of this, we kind of really start letting it take over and feel like we are currently feeling. Okay, this is a very unstable time for all of us. We are essentially bringing back all these memories and these subconscious feelings and emotions and patterns that we've created in our mind. And this is because we are all in a pandemic and we don't actually know what is happening.
So I had a look as well, in some other article on the New York Times there was a beautiful article which is very nice. So, there will be a transcript of this podcast in this video. You can go on the link and you will be able to see my reference list so the articles that I have used and the journals that I've used to help create this podcast. And so in the New York Times, it was very quite poignant, the experience that people were saying they were literally, they have this real sense of loss of control, and it's very very, it's been very difficult for them, it has been extremely difficult to cope. Someone was saying things like, my life has suddenly started to feel like it's spiralling out of control. Fight or Flight responses kicked in with a vengeance full fledged crisis mode or some people feeling guilty for not being productive you know we've been discussing this before I've been discussing that on my social media we've been like really, we're glorifying hustling and grinding all the time. And this, you know, also makes us feel even more of a failure because during this pandemic, a lot of people are getting shit done, and some of us can't. So all of this really has a big impact on mental health, but what you've got to remember is this important fact:
We're just trying to survive. We can't really thrive in a world that is unstable, a world we are constantly trying to adapt to.
So we are basically playing catch up. We are basically playing catch up with life right now we're catching up with whatever the world is throwing at us. Sometimes it's a lot more difficult than we can handle, and it's fine, it's not failure, it's just we try to survive. And in environments such as what we're going through in 2020 we are surviving we're not thriving. It's very hard to thrive in such an environment. You gotta remind yourself of that, right.
Obviously the symptoms that can appear with anxiety, stress, depression, and resulting from that guilt, you have, obviously you change it to sleep, inability to sleep your insomnia, appetite, either lack of appetite, stress, stress eating which, you know, I think a lot of us have had issues with, lack of interest in activities you previously enjoyed.
(I've had, like, I'm a fitness coach, and I haven't actually really been feeling like training that much. And yes, that kind of almost made me feel like a failure as a fitness coach. I haven't actually been wanting to do much fitness, apart from doing yoga and mobility.
So, this is like my little.
Yeah, my little secret.
it's coming out.
But, you know, this has happened, this has happened with me.)
cont. Inability to concentrate, focus fatigue, lack of energy that I've seen with many, many people, a lot of my clients we have to manage those symptoms, really bad and feeling disconnected and withdrawing from social interaction. This is completely normal as well. So what you need to be careful with, is when you try and implement your tips to try and cope, evaluate how long this feeling really sticks. And if it does, that's when we need to start actually searching for help, right this is quite important, and I know that right now. We are a bit under pressure with mental health and the NHS is under pressure, but there are free tools to help you cope with this and I really really invite you to go and check them out. I will put some of the links as well in the transcript for you to have a look at, and make sure that you can access free help such as free CBT or some help on the, on some of their mental health charity so please, please make sure that you go and seek help any way you can.
Don't stay in this pit, and really seek out friends and family if they can help you if you know they can help you. Just make sure as well that you know that you can still also send me a direct message and just ask and I can probably maybe direct you to some help that I use myself, and you know maybe just if you need a little bit of moral support, I'm there for you because I totally understand what you're going through right now.
So just a few tips as well is just be aware of how you are feeling, keep monitoring how your emotions are really taking over your daily life. Many reactions are normal, under the current circumstances. However, you just need to be mindful of when it becomes really really dangerous for yourself. There is a point where you know is going a little bit too far and it can become detrimental to the rest of your health. You need to accept how you are feeling. It's normal. It may be difficult, and as I said, even people like me. We have all this sensation of failure, this sensation of guilt. I don't think there is one person who doesn't feel this way right now because this world is uncontrollable. We have little control over much of what's happening right now. If you want to share and express how you are feeling, my inbox is open. Talk to family, talk to your friends, even if it can't be in person. Connect with other people, try to connect, as much as you can. Take a break from the news, please this is essential take a break from the news try and go for a walk try and listen to a podcast that is a bit uplifting watch some stuff that is uplifting for you, but really try and stay away from whatever is going to bring you even further down you know if social media, if your feed is made of people and conspiracies and politics and things like that just try to take a step back and and maintain as much of a healthy diet, exercise routine, just do things that will help boost your mood.
And finally, just remember that we are all wrestling with these feelings, due to loss of control, wondering what's gonna happen, what more we can do, what we should be doing. We don't really know. Just keep yourself aware if this feeling persists. And don't be afraid to seek care. Remember that this is all a learning process guys we are all learning right now we're all learning to be adaptable to adapt to change very quickly. You know, it's, it's very it's all very up in the air we were all in the same situation right now. We don't really know where this is going. So remember that this is a learning process and we are all going to come out of it for the better, much stronger and much more resilient, and we are going to gain such a bigger sense of clarity when we are going to get out of it because we are going to know exactly what we want to get out of life as soon as this is all over. But you have all my love. And as I said my inbox is open. I hope that you enjoyed this podcast or this vlog, if you're watching the video and I will see you very soon.
Bye.
This transcript was generated by https://otter.ai
References:
Rudy, J. W., & O'Reilly, R. C. (1999). Contextual fear conditioning, conjunctive representations, pattern completion, and the hippocampus. Behavioral Neuroscience, 113(5), 867–880. https://doi.org/10.1037/0735-7044.113.5.867
Rudy, J. W., & O'Reilly, R. C. (2001). Conjunctive representations, the hippocampus, and contextual fear conditioning. Cognitive, Affective & Behavioral Neuroscience, 1(1), 66–82. https://doi.org/10.3758/CABN.1.1.66
Opinion | ‘I Feel Like I’m Finally Cracking and I Don’t Even Know Why’
Resources:
https://www.mind.org.uk/information-support/coronavirus/
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/20553738-this-book-will-make-you-happy
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/20553708-this-book-will-make-you-calm
https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/stress-anxiety-depression/mental-health-helplines/
