These are unprecedented times. Many of us have not seen a war, let alone a pandemic. The closest equivalent would have been perhaps 9/11 or the global financial crisis of 2007/8. But these events were of short duration, with a long tail of course. We probably had a sense, within a few months, that the worst has passed.

This time around, we are not sure. We are in the tunnel, but are not sure how long the tunnel is. And normal social activity has ceased in India and all over the globe. There is a sense of helplessness. If you are all by yourself, there is anxiety as well. The more you tune in, fear engulfs. Tension builds up in every conversation. What can you do?

Here are two strategies, which I find immensely helpful. For each one, I will explain the science, illustrate it with a few examples and also provide a guide on how to use it practically.

Counterfactual Thinking

Daniel Kahneman, the well know psychology professor and Nobel laureate, explains this concept through a personal experience. His nephew was enrolled in the Israeli military service – airforce to be precise. Conscription is mandatory in Israel. Less than a week before his service expiry, the boy was killed. The family was in despair. He says that for many years after the unfortunate incident, the family members discussed a number of what if scenarios – for eg: What if the boy was born a week earlier? What if he was enrolled in the army instead of the airforce? What if the boy had a deformity which prevented him from active service? and so on.

Here is another example. Imagine you leave home to attend a job interview. Your bike does not start. You take an auto after walking for about five minutes. On the way, the auto is waylaid by a group of people. A pregnant lady needs to be taken to the hospital urgently. They request you to drop her and then proceed. You are a kind hearted person and you agree. Since she is alone, you had to help her with the registration at the reception as well. This eats up another hour of your time. Back in the auto, you hope against hope that you are able to make it on time. But a VIP convoy creates a traffic snarl, and you reach your destination two hours behind. Unfortunately, by this time, the interview process is over and you have lost your chance. You are shattered. On your way home, you imagine many what ifs. What if the auto had taken a different route? What if you had given the bike for service which was in any case overdue for a month? What if a few of the other candidates failed to turn up due to their own hurdles and so on…

Generating these artificial or imagined thoughts, which are not reality or factual [so the term counter – factual] is known as counterfactual thought. Any thought, is effectively the power to imagine and is very unique to our species, the Homo Sapiens (the wise one!). Clearly, a Lion does not imagine that he will rule over other animals as the King of the Jungle!
Yuval Harari in his book SAPIENS described this human capacity in his own eloquent way.

“It is the ability to transmit information about the things that do not exist at all. As far as we know, only Sapiens can talk about entire kinds of entities that they have never seen, touched or smelled”.  He also describes this ability as “Fiction” or “Imagined Realities”.

So, we as humans have the power to imagine things which do not exist. And things which we imagine, which are removed from reality can be generally called as counterfactuals.

Let us see how we can use this to manage worries or anxiety. In order to do that we need to first understand two types of counterfactual thought – upward and downward.

– Upward counterfactuals are imagined realities that are better than what actually happened. For example in the above example, if the auto that you took had taken a different route you might have made it on time for the interview

– Downward counterfactuals are realities that are worse than what actually happened. Again in the above example, if the auto had taken a different route you could have met with a crippling accident or the job you landed would have made life miserable for you because of an inconsiderate boss.

Imagine that you have won the silver medal in the Olympics 800 meters. If you engage in upward counterfactual thought, your mind will imagine all the things that went wrong, you started a wee bit late, you ran your first lap really fast etc. This kind of imagination diminishes the joy of winning the silver. However, if on the other hand if you imagine tripping and falling at the start and therefore not being able to finish the race, then you are engaged in downward counterfactual thinking and this makes you savour the moment of the Olympic Silver Medal.

As Barry Schwartz describes in his book THE PARADOX OF CHOICE – ” Generating downward counterfactuals might engender not only a sense of satisfaction, but a sense of gratitude that things did not turn out worse.  ..people rarely produce downward counterfactuals unless asked specifically to do so”.

So how do we use this insight in a crisis? In any situation, think of all the things that could have happened worse than what they actually are.

[a] Compared to many countries, my country is better, my city is better. We have less cases today than yesterday.

[b] Even though I am unable to go out every weekend, I am able to have a home cooked meal every day. This is definitely healthy.

[c] There are many who live in cramped housing. I am in a comfortable place and have good neighbours to help me in case of need.

[d] While my family is split up and in different places, thanks to technology I am able to talk to them every day.

I hope you get the drift. However, only downward counterfactual thinking can lead to complacency and inertia. A balance is required as to what to use when.

Back to Barry Schwartz again, ” While upward counterfactual thinking may inspire us to do better the next time, downward counterfactual thinking may induce us to be grateful for how well we did this time. The right balance of upward and downward counterfactual thinking may enable us to avoid spiralling into a state of misery while at the same time inspiring us to improve our performance”
Happy imagination!

Regaining our sense of control

We live in a democratic country, with freedom and autonomy as fundamental tenets. Did you know that the fact that you have autonomy is a contributor to happiness? It is not important whether you use it or not – just the fact that you have that freedom is good enough. On the contrary, loss of autonomy can lead to diminishing joy and despair.

Lockdowns have effectively killed our autonomy. Suddenly, we are not in control. More importantly, we are reasonably sure that the old normal may not return for a while. We are in a sense like the third group of mice in the below experiment.

In the 1960s, psychologist Martin Seligman performed an experiment with three groups of mice. All of them were subject to a small electric shock and there was a small hurdle at the end of the corridor through which they can jump to safety. The first group had no prior exposure to such experiments. The second  group had been exposed to shocks in a different setting, but had avenues to escape. The third group on the other hand were exposed in a similar setting but had no avenues for escape. In the experiment, while the first two groups were able to escape the shock, the third group failed to learn that there is an escape path, were passive and made no effort! They became helpless from previous conditioning – a phenomenon called learned helplessness. Of course the experiment had to be stopped.

Psychologists have conducted innumerable research on this concept of this “loss of control” and they seem to conclude that this can lead to depression. How do we regain a sense of control then?

The trick is to set yourself small tasks and complete them. As simple as that. Here is a sample list of what I have heard from some of my friends:

[a] Learn to sit cross legged on the floor

[b] Cooking a few dishes even if you are a novice

[c] Understanding the technique and attempting cross word puzzles

[d] Decluttering your room and labelling important stuff

[e] Recording a song and sending it to friends

There could be many more depending upon your creativity.

However, for this tactic to be effective you need to follow a few simple rules.

[a] The task must be not out of bounds and must be within the hitting range. Do not chose something which is too difficult or too easy. The right choice would create Flow

[b] You should be able to make tangible progress in less than a week or so. Make sure there is a clear deadline and schedule. Drop this activity in the calendar.

[c] Do not pick a task where you have no interest at all.

Attempting and completing a set of tasks or winning these small battles, gets back the feeling of control and contributes to well being. Achieving certain tasks also activates the flow of dopamine, one of the happiness hormones.

I leave you with this inspirational quote by Karen Salmansohn

If you are interested in human psychology in general, here are three recommendations

1] The Paradox of Choice – Barry Schwartz

2] Thinking, Fast and Slow – Daniel Kahneman

3] Flow – Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi