Introspection During Quarantine
How COVID-19 lock down helped me with my self worth
24th March 2020- the honorable Prime Minister of India announces the commencement of a 21 day nationwide lock-down in order to curb the spread of the infamous Corona virus on a community level and combat the pandemic as much as possible. This grand announcement leads to a cascade of panic filled reactions-Media houses go haywire, offices and multinational cooperations in Delhi-NCR shutdown as the employees are asked by their bosses to work from their respective “homes” in the upcoming days. Shopping malls, restaurants, and all the possible places where public can accumulate close down as the owners chit chat about the catastrophe of world economies , and the masses lose their calm as they rush to their nearest grocery stores for a terror stricken shopping spree in order to hoard the kitchens with the so called “essentials” , whilst a daily wage earner, glued to the television tries to think of how he would fill his belly with food in the forthcoming days…
Amidst this chaos, my buddies and I try to figure out a plan to go out on a cycling trip to India Gate, oblivious of the seriousness of the situation(which eventually gets cancelled anyway)
Lockdown 2020 might have took a toll on majority of the population as well as the leading economies of the world, but somehow this period helped me understand my true potential and resort my mind for the better.
The process of unraveling my mind has always been a pretty hefty task, but this time I decided to really commit to it. You see, I am 22 and soon would be graduating with an engineering degree in Biotechnology, and I have took the heavy decision of pursing masters, instead of going for the easier option of doing a regular job. I am extremely anxious about my decision but the decision is based on a lot of careful thinking and hours of endless discussions with my parents and my imaginary friends(and my 2 close friends as well).
For most of my adult life, I have dealt with major low self esteem and self worth issues, and it has hampered on a number of spheres of my life- be it academics, extracurricular or even dating life. Even though I have successfully skipped the so called “body image” based issues(thanks to my parents for that), I have always been highly insecure about how my brain is perceived by the world. This also includes my insecurity regarding my grades because in India your grades dictate your well being and your overall future(which is so not true), and because my high school board marks and my pre-med entrance exam marks were not exactly as expected, it affected the way I view myself and my self worth(thanking the Indian education system for that “anchored” ideology) and till date it somewhat affects me, somewhat.
Now, in the past four years of rigorous self evaluation and rumination, I have somewhat been able to get over this constant need for feeling validated by people, but there are always newer, rather more undiscovered parts of my personality that I tend to elucidate every now and then which take a bit of time for correction. But, when the newer issues get conglomerated with the unresolved deep seated issues, it creates a ruckus, which results in anxiety based panic attacks.
So, after a few days of binge-watching and snacking and mopping(I have been actively helping my mother with the household chores!) , I decided to fully commit to untangle these so called “deep seated” issues once and for all (at least try my best) so as to actually enhance my productivity in the best possible manner and rediscover my hidden potential and improve my self worth.
Now, what exactly triggered me to actually resolve all of these issues? Well frankly speaking, it was not a single trigger but a series of triggers(think of it like the complement system of your immune system) that led me to reach this pivotal point. But the series of stimuli had one thing in common- lack of self esteem, self control and self worth. All this while I thought that I had magically gotten over all these issues but frankly speaking, when I was pushed back to similar stressful situation after a considerable period of time, I cracked. My patterned behavior of self defense got activated and I was somewhat back to square one. I acted exactly the way I reacted when I first experienced such stimuli.
The human mind is extremely complex and highly sophisticated when it comes to learning new tasks and adapting to new environments, but it is also very lazy. The human mind tries to make any learnt behavior a habit, so that the brain has to spend the least amount of ATP. In this way, it saves up the grey matter for more complex tasks. This is exactly what happened in my case.
Hence, after carefully analyzing my repetitive reactions, I committed to changing them, or at least try to be more aware about them.
1. Understanding the inception of the Anchored Behavior
I started of by first digging deep into the first moment when the so called Anchoring Effect took place(thanks to Dan Areily’s book Predictably Irrational for that term). The anchor sort of acts like a stencil for the upcoming behavioral reflexes which later on take the shape of a patterned response. Every human reaction to a certain action is based upon an initial anchored behavior. Let me give you an example- let us say you decide to buy something online, maybe a pair of Nike shoes from an online retail portal for the very first time in your life. You do your thorough research based on the design and price point and decide to buy it from Myntra.com. Now the next time, you again decide to buy a certain shoe, your subconscious mind would take you to that same site because your initial behavior of buying that product from Myntra got “anchored”. Simple, isn’t it?
2. Assessment of the Pattern
Once, the root cause has been elucidated, I tried to list down all those moments of weakness when I behaved in the similar fashion to that of the anchored behavior. In my case, my constant need of feeling validated by prospective sexual partners who tend to be emotionally unavailable, my habit of procrastination, hypochondriac tendencies and my habit of comparing myself to others and getting work done out of shear fear and not positive motivational force were some of the instances which I elucidated to be highly redundant.
3. Targeting the Bubble
Now that I was well aware of both the key elements, another problem popped up. We all know that every stimuli has a reflex, but in the cases of stressful situations, the human mind tries to protect itself as much as possible. So ladies and gentlemen, let me introduce you to my self defense mechanism effect that gets activated very often during these redundant times. I have termed this effect as-The Bubble Blanket Effect.
During stressful situations, I escape into this warm and cozy, almost blanket like bubble and start imagining scenarios that have little to no connection to reality. The problem with this bubble is that its pretty thick, and it doesn't burst very easily. But, once I am out of this bubble, into the cold weather of reality, it is already too late.
4. So what is the Solution?
Now that I am well aware of all the possible aspects of my personality traits which can cause hindrance to my general productivity output, it was time to think of solutions.
The problem was that there was no one stop solution shop to all of my issues, (stating the obvious are we?).
Every sphere of my life will need constant involvement, and constant awareness, an active approach to dealing with everything. Merely being aware of how you could react to certain type of situations can make your job of taking care of your mental health astronomically simple.
This quarantine has been a blessing to me, and this blog post marks the beginning of a fresh start in the way I do things in life. Let us all come out of this lock-down healthy and hearty, with greater vigor and awareness about the world, our families and our very own selves!
