In the words of The Hitchhikers’ Guide to the Galaxy: "Don’t panic!"
I love this advice. Some people are panic prone but panic is never the best way to deal with a crisis. Check that, panic is never a good way to respond to anything! Whether the stock market is tanking, you receive bad news about a friend, you are lost in the woods, or you can't find your keys and are late for work . . . panicking won't do you one iota of good. So stop it. Just stop it!
Think about it, all of the effects of panic are bad ones. You mind get's overwhelmed and you can't think clearly. Your panic upsets those around you. Paralysis sets in or you make rash decisions that often make the situation worse. Worse of all, panic hinders wisdom and discretion, the two things most needed in a crisis situation. So the question then is, if panic doesn't seem to ever help us, why do we do it? I have a few theories:
- 1. We panic because that's what we've be "taught" to do. Our role models (parents, siblings, friends, movies, etc) included panickers and we unconsciously picked up on it. Are you a panicker? Look at your role models, any of them panickers too?
- 2. We panic because of unhelpful beliefs we hold onto. Albert Ellis, the founder of rational emotive behavior therapy talks about how our unhelpful or irrational beliefs determine our emotions and actions. Examples of beliefs that would promote panic include "panicking is the only thing to do when I can't think of a solution," "the fact that this crisis has happened is a catastrophe (what Ellis calls 'catastrophizing')," "I can't stand my present circumstances," or even "The world isn't supposed to work like this." None of these are rational (or true) but once internalized and believed they easily lead to panic. This is why panic seems uncontrollable - you can't just change bad feelings unless you change the unhelpful beliefs they are based on.
- 3. We panic because panicking feels good. Panicking is kind of an emotional rush, a surrender to intense feelings. For some it's a pleasant state to be in and much more appealing then the hard work of calming oneself, challenging beliefs, and looking for solutions.
- 4. We panic because we want to avoid reality. Panicking is often just avoiding; an escape from the reality presently before you. For many, panic is pure escapism. Adios crisis, hello panic!
- 5. We panic because we don't want to take responsibility. Many crisis are the direct result of our choices. Accepting this is sometimes seen as too difficult so we choose to panic instead of accepting the results of our choices and our responsiblity to look for solutions.
- 6. We panic because others are panicking. Panic is contagious. (See point 1). The more people that are panicking (say like 10 thousand people in a stadium that is on fire) the more pressure there is on us to panic as well.
- 7. We panic because we doubt (or forget) God's sovereignty. God is good and in control we say, until someone close to us ends up in the hospital/divorces/is molested/etc. We forget that the world is a beautiful but also a place of suffering and sudden reminders of this challenge our beliefs about God (see #2), sending us into a panic.
There is hope even for the most addicted panickers among us. Irrational thoughts can be challenged. Habits can be changed. People can be weaned off of panic-induced emotional rushes. Men and women can learn to stop escaping reality and choose to accept responsibility for what they've gotten themselves into (and to finding solutions). All of will fall into panic at some point in our lives . . . it's pretty much inevitable. But the more we remind ourselves of it's futility, the more we fix those ornery beliefs that get us there . . . the more useful we can be in the crises that will eventually come our way.
May Light increase!
