When the mind goes offline: Navigating crisis and self-preservation

I recently received bad news about a loved one that has become a series of daily crises within an unfolding catastrophe.

I have noticed that as the days go on, my mind has started to protect itself. I went for a walk last night in the pouring rain to decompress after a long day of intricate complex decisions, progress reports and chasing medics 3,000 miles away. My husband asked me to pick up milk if my walk brought me past Tesco’s supermarket.

On a normal day I would juggle this milk request with a million other thoughts in my head, probably adding bits and bobs to the mental shopping list.

But now my brain is in survival mode, it’s like a sheath has encased it: anything extraneous to the current crisis or to basic survival is dealt with at arm’s length.

I can still manage family life, work-load, child care, social interactions, and, indeed, it is healthy to do so, but now things are happening in a more perfunctory manner. I am relying on the strength of my existing neural networks, built for life’s mundanity, to keep firing without supervision.

My mind has wrapped itself around the core essence of who I am, my spirit, my chi, my sense of self, and is focusing energies on keeping my soul intact.

The request for milk from the supermarket became a post-it note stuck to the outside of my brain. I was aware leaving the house that there was a mental note, but I couldn’t assimilate it. My focus was to walk in the rain, with a podcast playing in the background about American politics. The podcast was a distraction, interesting enough to pull strands of my attention, but inconsequential to my existence if I only half-listened.

I walked until I was tired and turned back. I was aware of the neurological post-it note, and glanced at it, seeing the word ‘Tesco’. I didn’t want to read on and find out why I was going there, I just knew that was step one, that was enough to know.

Once inside the store I allowed myself to peek at the note once more, ‘Milk’. I found myself staring into the cold fridge, my eyeballs rolled over yoghurts and cheese, asking myself each time ‘Is this milk? No’ until I found the milk.

Perhaps to an onlooker I looked like a simpleton, staring blankly at different shades of dairy, a look of uncertainty on my face as I chose a litre of generic milk. It is officially the most boring thing a human can buy in a shop, they are made with handles so you can literally grab one as you swing by, giving it zero thought. Unless you are someone who thrives on the angst of full fat, versus low fat, versus no fat, versus nut – I’m personally soy all the way, but my family ardently refuse to step away from the cow.

This recent activation of ego self-preservation reminded me of the time sixteen years ago when my mother passed away suddenly. I was woken in the night to a phone call announcing my worst nightmare. I recall a similar sense in the weeks after my mum’s passing of my brain building a protection around itself during the period of immense stress.

Around that time, I read about grief and found an interesting article that said when we experience a profound loss we can’t learn anything new for nine months. The well-intenders who suggest you take up a new hobby, (e.g. distract yourself by learning a language or take up a class to meet people), are not wrong in terms of the benefit of social support, but knowledge growth during that period is an uphill battle. The article suggested that instead of assimilating new information, the nine months should be used to heal, in whatever format that may take for the individual.

This resonated with me, I also found the timeline of nine months a curious one, especially as it takes a human nine months to gestate a new life. Is there some link between loss and gain, a rebalancing of life force/energy. Or did the author of the article pull the timeline out of the air because nine is the last single digit number that neatly represents the end of a cycle.

The concept of surviving, through a scaled down focus on the core, is reflected in the body’s physiological response to the famous fight-or-flight mode that is triggered during trauma. A body in extreme shock will expend all of its energy on keeping the vital organs and muscles supplied with blood and warmth, things like digestion grind to a halt, there is a systemic scale-down to keep the heart and lungs going above all else…because that’s what you’ll need to fight, or run away.

It makes sense to me that a person’s mind would go through a similar shutdown experience during a shock. It’s like when you see a bus going around its route, it looks operational, it’s got the lights on and the gormless driver peering out the window, sometimes it will even slow down as it approaches the stop. However, just as you shuffle to the edge of the pavement, the self proclaimed winner of the waiting game, giving remaining contestants a look of pity and contempt, the bus speeds up and flies by, with ‘Out of Service’ flashing in LED.

I am out of service.

But there is a comfort in my neural protection. I understand getting stuck in a stress response is not good for anyone, chronic stress takes a notorious toll on the body and mind. I am not a neuroscientist or a psychologist, however, I have experienced my share of traumas, I have confidence in my mental strength, my brain giving itself a protective hug is OK with me.

I am also very aware and practice many of the documented ways to dampen down the stress response.

There are books on trauma that recommend yoga as a practice that works to physically calm your autonomic nervous system through movements and breathing, which in turn will switch off the chemical triggers that keep you on high alert. Exercise, even a walk, can help release tension. Arguably, most important of all, good old fashioned talking and support provides a social safety net. To completely contradict myself, not talking is OK too

Perhaps a person’s needs when under stress will change from day to day. A consistent approach, that will not depend on others reading your mind, is self care. Self-care is important, even within a crisis.

I know that eventually even the bus will come back into service, but for now I’ll embrace the quiet strength of my inner self and take refuge in the rocks that surround me. Nobody cares about milk, not even the cows, it’s time to focus on what truly matters.