Distraction
Apparently I’m a repressor.
According to the Repression-Sensitization school of thought there are two reactions to stress and/or threat. Those linked to the former extreme, repression, ignore threats and seek distraction, or even deny the threats exist at all. Sensitizers do the opposite, seeking as much knowledge and insight about threats as possible to better counter them. According to some, neither method is inherently worse than the other.
I’m not so sure.
As someone whose reaction to a problem is to hope it goes away, the idea of possessing a natural impulse to face things head on is aspirational to say the least. I can certainly understand the idea of over-analysing a problem to the point of catastrophication but it still seems a valid alternative to the psychological impulse of hiding beneath the covers until the scary thing goes away.
And make no mistake, this is something I do on an almost daily basis. I mean, I’m doing it right now. I have a private English lesson to plan, a large party to organise, I have plans tonight that I’ve not entirely locked down and yet here I am doodling away writing a piece about the perils of escapism.
But at least writing is productive. More often than not denial comes in forms far less studious. Usually it’s me jumping into a game. In fact that was the original pitch for this entry; a rumination on the benefits of disappearing into fictional worlds as a temporary alleviation of stress. About 2 minutes of googling dispelled that idea and worse, suggested that my wanting to write about the positive effects of distraction was in fact a distraction from the idea of distraction.
Does it feel good, leaving this world to immerse myself in another over which I have almost complete control? Certainly. Revisiting unfinished open-world RPGs and seeing tasks fall away with the minimum amount of effort provides a sense of progress and achievement that is often lacking back in the real world, where the markers of both are far more abstract. My original plan was to argue the benefits of this escapism, to present this denying of self as a healthy way to forget the stressors and anxieties of my current life. Apparently this is not an unacceptable response and such distraction is healthy. But only as an opposing force for those predisposed to sensitization. For a repressor like me: “permission to distract themselves further is not a good idea, as it may encourage unhealthy levels of escapism and denial.”*
That this statement provoked nothing but a begrudging sense of agreement was depressing to say the least. It’s not a complex idea, nor a particularly deep one, but the fact I had to see it written down to acknowledge its truth speaks to how deeply ingrained my habit of denial actually runs.
So if the point here is not to laud the benefits of distractions and relief from stress, what replaced it?
I think it’s a more personal one than I’d intended. I wanted to write about my renewed love of Skyrim, perhaps with a short nod to its helping me temporarily escape my anxieties. I wanted to write about NPC barks and clunky AI. I wanted to write about how, after countless hours of wandering, my character had become something I had not intended but something new and exciting and inspiring all the same.
But perhaps the point is just one of acknowledgement. To recognise that distraction itself is not unhealthy but that, like everything, it’s a method that must be used in moderation.
I don’t know if it’s possible for me to become a ‘sensitzer’, an inherently pro-active agent of circumstance. But at least I know the alternative is not entirely terrible.
- Distraction and Humour in Stress Mills, Reiss, Dombeck
This is the fifteenth entry in my ongoing series of freewritten doodlings. The rational behind this is here: https://goo.gl/hi9Ub7
