How to Cope With Negative Events
The Amplified Impact Podcast
August 12th, 2023
Today we’re going to delve into the art of navigating the tough times.
Now, I’m not here to peddle the “stay positive no matter what” spiel.
Reality can hit hard…and it’s essential to acknowledge those moments.
Whether it’s heartbreak, loss, or business woes, it’s okay to feel the weight of these situations.
So, what’s the game plan?
We’ll journey into the world of coping techniques and the surprising outcomes they deliver.
Because when the chips are down, we often adopt one of two methods: distraction or rumination.
And tough times are inevitable. It’s going to be how we deal with them that defines our journey.
TWEETABLE QUOTE:
“Your ability to deal with those negative things in life will largely dictate how you are able to move forward towards the good things in life.”- Anthony Vicino
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Episode Transcript:
Anthony Vicino:
So if you play this game of life long enough, you are eventually going to run into a scenario where something bad happens, something traumatic, something anxiety inducing. Life just has a way of kicking you in the shin sometimes. And there is no way to avoid this. And I’m not gonna sit here and preach the the positivity psychology, um, movement of, like, everything’s good. There is no such thing as good as bad. It’s all a matter of perspective. Whatever. Sometimes there are things in life that are going to happen to you that just maybe not objectively are bad, but to you, subjectively, in that moment, they feel bad.
Anthony Vicino:
Maybe that’s a loved one dies, somebody leaves you a business implodes. There’s going to be these things that you have to deal with. And your ability to deal with those negative things in life will largely dictate how you are able to move forward towards the good things in life. And so I want to share with you guys today one of the simple ideas that served me very, very well since I learned about it way back when I was studying an undergrad for my psychology degree. There was this interesting study where they looked at coping techniques between different individuals. Specifically, what they were looking at was the primary coping techniques of men versus women, because men and women, we are different in so many different ways. And what they found is that, in fact, men and women cope with traumatic events, anxiety, different events, negative events happening in our life in different ways. And so then they looked deeper at these coping mechanisms, and they said, okay, which one seems to have the best long term outcome? Like, which one leads to the quickest recovery, the quickest rebound, the quickest return to normal state or to a happy state or an elevated whatever state? And there was a clear, distinctive winner of these two coping styles.
Anthony Vicino:
And it was very interesting to read about this because the results were a little bit counterintuitive, like, on the face value. When you look at these two coping techniques, you would think the one that ended up being the most advantageous, you would look at it and think, that’s probably not a good it’s probably not a good strategy, right? But the other one, the one that you would look at and think that’s probably the better strategy turns out to actually have more negative ramifications than it does positive compared to the alternative. So what are these two coping techniques? Well, the first is distraction, and the other is rumination. So let me explain these. Distraction is the coping technique that revolves around just getting your mind off the thing and just kind of not unpacking it, not dealing with it just kind of putting your head in the sand, running away, and just doing other things to occupy your time in your mind and just kind of ignoring the thing. So maybe that you just go through a breakup and you decide, I’m just not going to deal with this, I’m going to go on vacation. Really interestingly. I went through a breakup when I was like 23 and I was really broken up about like when you’re young and you have your heart broken, you think it’s like the end all, be all of everything and that your life is going to end.
Anthony Vicino:
It feels really terrible, right? And I was just wallowing and my dad recognized that what I needed to do at that moment was just get my mind off of it. So he’s like, go away on a trip and then just immerse yourself in snowboarding. That was what I was doing at the time. And then come back in a week and let’s see how you feel then. And sure enough, I went away. And it was hard at first to kind of get my mind out of it, but then being in the mountains, being in that environment, doing an activity that was full body immersive, like, dominating my focus, made it so that I was thinking about the thing way, way less. And then when I came back, I was just in a different place than I was before I left. Just based off of that story, you would be right to conclude that distraction is the coping technique of most men.
Anthony Vicino:
It’s what we do, we distract. Whereas Rumination, on the other hand, is, hey, let’s talk about this, let’s work through the problem here. Let’s try and problem solve it or talk about our emotions and unpack it. And there’s a lot of benefit to talking through our issues and unpacking things. But rumination as a coping technique was shown in these studies to actually be a very poor technique for returning to a normal state and rebounding to that normal state of existence or to elevated happiness. And the reason for this is we think that by talking through the thing, we are going to come to some kind of resolution, some conclusion, and we’ll have closure, right. A lot of times when we looking for closure, really all we’re trying to do is keep talking about the thing. And what the science shows is that the more you talk about the thing, the fresher that wound becomes.
Anthony Vicino:
We don’t actually get closer to resolution and closure in that scenario. We just continue keeping the wound open. And so what they actually found is that it’s a combination of these two strategies that’s the most effective, leading with distraction, and then once you have that time and that distance, to be able to logically unpack the thing to go and ruminate on it. But the key here is that you have to have emotional distance from the thing, and that can take varying amounts of time depending on who you are and how emotionally driven you are. Right? But the key is that emotional rumination does not help. So when you’re going through something and it’s dominating your thoughts, you’re losing sleep at night, whatever it is. Maybe you have a big business problem, an investing issue, whatever. It’s best to try to distract yourself rather than ruminating on it until you can get enough distance to be able to objectively look at it and use that logical side of your brain.
Anthony Vicino:
And then when you do, what I find really helpful is to schedule time so that I only ruminate during the period of time that I’ve allotted for myself. That way it doesn’t spread outside of that and start to dominate everything else in my life. And this is very hard, especially when it’s like an emotional thing, but I find that just being able to say no right now, I’m not thinking about this, I’m not worrying about this problem. I’ve scheduled time to worry about it. Just doing that has been very, very beneficial as you’re going through difficult times, regardless of what that looks like in your life. So that is the coping techniques between rumination and distraction. I hope this brings you a little bit of value. If it did, let me know.
Anthony Vicino:
Shoot me a comment, shoot me a DM. I’d love to hear from you guys, but if I don’t hear from you, then I will just assume everything’s good, everything’s gucci, life is great, and I’m looking forward to seeing you back around these parts tomorrow. But until then, stay hyper focused, my friend.
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