Coping With Difficulty
Living With Maladaptive Stress
A reader writes:
Can you talk more about maladaptive stress and simple replacements? Especially in terms of family context. We have a high-functioning autistic child1 who can just make it through the day. We are the support to put the pieces back together at the end of the day, which requires us to reserve a lot of energy.
Hands down, the toughest part of living with three little kids was the seemingly inevitable end-of-day meltdown.
These end-of-day disruptions had a profound impact on my:
Nervous System
Mood
Capacity to Recover
Hearing
Emotional Wellbeing
I found myself in a negative spiral where I thought I’d been unhappy for years.
So the first positive action I took was testing that hypothesis.
Was I truly unhappy in my life?
Was my life that difficult?
I used a simple technique.
Get a calendar
Score each day ⬆️, ⬇️ or ↔️ (great, miserable, ok)
What I learned:
My life was great.
My difficulties were moments
Those moments could be very difficult.
I had a habit of carrying past moments around.
When I am in a negative spiral:
I don’t see the moments as moments - they are always with me.
This constant barrage of internal negativity is exhausting and depressing.
The source of my problems is not the problem.
The problem, itself, is simply a moment.
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Do you see what I did above?
I made a system for making the good parts of my life more salient.
Another option is to take photos of the good moments, or write them down in a notepad. Review before bed and remind yourself of the good in every day.
“Pain at the end” is highly memorable.
Some of us have life situations where this is a common occurrence.
If our living situation means we finish our day with “pain” then it’s going to skew our perception of our entire life.
Pain Points
Now I have context about the difficult moments of my life:
Most my life is not difficult.
Some of my life is difficult.
Is there a pattern to my difficulties?
Absolutely.
End of the day.
I am tired.
I end up making the situation worse.
My lack of skillfulness turns a potential “victory of patience & tolerance” into a “loss”
How can I tilt the game in my favor?
I focused on:
Sleep
Never Get Tired Together
Adrenal Reset
Remove Single-Points of Failure
Relentless Simplification
Let’s run through each of these. My approach may sound extreme. So was my quiet depression and a desire to escape a perception of misery.
1/. Sleep
My #1 priority was sleep.
I said “no” to many things that might disrupt my sleep. I should have stopped drinking alcohol sooner as it has a negative impact on sleep quality - even though it’s quite pleasant in the short-term to knock one’s self out.
2/. Never Get Tired Together
Every time my wife and I took our little ones out as a family. It was exhausting. It remains exhausting to hang around (simultaneously) with my two Alpha kids. Their low-level sniping wears me out.
Realizing the only person I control is myself… I stopped agreeing to participate in those situations.
I was willing to get tired but only in service to my spouse. As a former elite athlete, this required a complete change in mindset. Why?
Because endurance sport is a game where we get tired in service to our sport.
With “our sport” actually being a cover story for our ego.
It’s exactly the same for “our job” “our career” “our family”
There is no end of stories I concocted to try to convince myself to avoid dealing with the problem (of my moments of difficulty).
We are in the most challenging period of our marriage. I know you think it would be nice for us to do this “as a family” but I’m not willing to participate in getting tired together.
3/. Adrenal Resets
The thought of getting yelled at every night for the next 500 days weighed heavily on me.
The way our minds work… several hundred days appears to be forever.
I realized I could break it up and greatly improve my mindset.
Alternate which parent faces the difficulty.
Train, and pay, other adults to face the difficulty.
Have the wisdom to step-back when it isn’t my turn.
Stay well back from The Limit - beyond which, I quickly make things worse for everyone.
Two nights a week, I was out of the house. That’s 100 nights a year. The misery of forever had been broken into bite-sized chunks => not more than five moments a week, plus whatever went down on the weekend.
4/. Remove Single Points of Failure
Generally…
Never let the state of my mental health rely on the actions of another person.
Specifically…
Support my spouse.
Support the people supporting my spouse.
Build redundancy into the system I created to get my nights off.
5/. Relentless Simplification
From 42 to 52 years old…
Shut down my consulting business.
Stopped racing.
Stopped swimming and running.
Cut my training volume in half.
Everything in my life was scrutinized. Many aspects were quietly wound down.
The Price We Pay
All of these choices brought time and energy back into my life.
At a cost.
The cost was my individual goals.2
The cost was NOT my health.3
The cost was NOT my marriage.
My kids “paid” in money they will need to earn for their adult selves.
It’s tempting to tell myself I acted for the benefit of others (kids, spouse, family).
I think that’s my ego speaking.
In the difficult moments, I was seeking a way out from the pain of being overwhelmed, tired and unskilled.
When I was thinking more clearly, I had a desire to avoid future regret and not repeat the choices that led my younger self to a divorce.
All this probably sounds a little crazy just to get two-nights off a week and a decent night’s sleep.
Thing is… I realized those were the critical success factors for NOT going crazy and keeping my marriage strong. It was worth whatever it took (time, money, effort) to make those happen.
I was right… all around us were couples who chose poorly. They made other aspects a priority. Their marriages and families paid a different price.
Spring Break next week, True Wealth will return in April.
My DMs are open on X and Instagram. Got a topic, or question? Reach out. I’ll write you an article or point you to something I’ve already written.
A good read on this subject is Far From The Tree, by Andrew Solomon.
Eventually, “you” will get-the-time-back. It will be your future self who gets the time. One way to know if we’re truly meant to live a certain way is the stickiness of our drives. At 55, I’m getting a chance to rediscover my true self.
I discovered maintaining my health & body composition took a fraction of the time/energy I spent on athletic performance as an elite athlete. This surprised me. It’s a common belief system among the chronic exercisers of my demographic.