I’ve been living in some sort of crisis mode for at least twenty years now. I find it very difficult to take time off. Which is not to say that I’m always working. That’s one of the paradoxes of ADHD: It’s entirely possible to accomplish nothing while not relaxing or having fun at all.

At any rate, I’m trying to deal with this stress the way I usually approach mental challenges: through the power of metacognition. I try to think about how my brain works, so when I run up against the challenge I can make choices rather than just running through the same script every time. I’ve never done cognitive behavioral therapy, but I understand there’s some overlap there.

So I’ve been journaling about the concept of crisis and being in crisis, and as long as I have a blog, I might as well share it.

What is a Crisis?

For our purposes, a crisis is the lack of one or more necessary resources. Because we’re talking about personal stress levels and not global justice, “necessary” is subjective. For instance, my wife and I could adapt our lives to go without a car if we needed to, but for the sake of stability and security in the moment, a car is a necessity, and having it
towed would be a crisis.

Life requires a certain amount of foresight and a certain amount of resources, so it’s natural to be concerned about crises before they happen. The question is, how much concern is appropriate, and how much is just unnecessary stress?

I’ve spent most of the past twenty years in “crisis mode,” feeling like I don’t have time to pursue a hobby, go on vacations, or, sometimes, even deal with “lesser” responsibilities like decluttering, because “I can’t deal with that right now.” There’s this idea that someday I’ll have my act together and I’ll be able to do the things I put off.

My thought is that having an external gauge for the level of crisis in my life might help me temper my anxiety with a reality check. And, being the person I am, I’m trying to approach it methodically.

Pre-Crisis

If I’m saying that a crisis is the lack of necessary resources, and I don’t currently lack necessary resources, what’s stressing me out? The curse of foresight.

Maintaining a resource itself requires resources; for the purpose of my stress levels, this usually means money. Keeping the lights on, our cell phones connected, food in the kitchen, and so forth; that takes money. Money may be a secondary resource, but I still feel stress when I don’t have any.

Of course, merely having money in the bank doesn’t end my stress. I received a small inheritance from my grandparents, which left us flush for a while, but it certainly didn’t make me feel like I could take a vacation without stress.

That’s because money, the secondary resource, requires a sort of resource to require: an income. If we don’t enough money coming in, then having some money currently in the bank doesn’t alleviate my stress very much.

So if the electricity getting shut off puts us in crisis, then not having money to pay the electricity bill puts us at crisis minus one; we’re one step away from crisis. And not having income puts us at crisis minus two; we’re one step away from being one step away from crisis.

To put it in concrete terms, I’m thinking something like this:

CRISIS: Electricity being shut off, car being towed, out of food
C-1:    Not having money
C-2:    Not having enough income
C-3:    Not having a steady source of income (aka freelancing)
C-4:    Not having a savings

I look at having an emergency fund as a resource separate from just having money in the bank. Because enough money could substitute for a steady source of income in a pinch, having a savings counts as a buffer against C-3.

In theory, we could continue to C-5 and further along. Maybe if I had a few months on income in the bank, my concern might be interest rates or retirement or something. But, since I haven’t had any savings to speak of in over a decade, I’ll stop there.

At any rate, if I have a steady income and a savings, then I can clearly afford to take a day or three off, even if my anxiety says otherwise.

But I’m not at C-4. Right now I’m probably at C-2: I just finished a project and I don’t have any others lined up, so we have money in the bank but I don’t have enough income to cover the gap between Jenny’s income and our expenses.

If I land another temporary project through Upwork, then I’ll be back at C-3. If I can build up enough clientele to keep me busy, I can start saving up and get to C-4. And so it goes.

Living With Stress

One of the challenges of ADHD is that it’s difficult for me to feel an appropriate amount of stress over something. I tend to either ignore a problem or obsess about it. Without much emotional regulation, I’m trying to approach the question of “appropriate concern” intellectually instead. When you have ADHD, sometimes you need to complicate something in order to understand it.

Intellectually, being at C-2 is an entirely rational cause for concern. I do need an income, and without one my life will inevitably get worse. But what’s an appropriate level of concern? Would taking even one day off from looking for work be a bad idea? Should I be doing anything other than looking for work? That’s my next question to address.