The Art of Manliness - How to Deal With the Worry of Waiting

00:00:00.000 Brett McKay here, and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast.

00:00:11.420 If you've ever waited, and perhaps are now currently waiting, to hear whether or not

00:00:15.260 you've tested positive for disease, passed medical boards, or got the job you interviewed

00:00:19.460 for, you know that this period of uncertainty can be filled with tension and anxiety.

00:00:24.300 My guest today, Kate Sweeney, a professor of psychology, has studied the dynamics of

00:00:28.480 this human experience and how we can best deal with it.

00:00:31.440 We first discuss why the stress of waiting for uncertain news feels particularly uncomfortable

00:00:35.860 and what types of people are more likely to worry while waiting.

00:00:39.360 Kate then shares tactics that can help alleviate some of the worry of waiting, including leaning 1.00

00:00:43.660 into being a pessimist as you approach the moment of truth and finding flow, even by doing something

00:00:49.040 like playing Tetris.

00:00:50.540 She also explains at what point the social support for people who are waiting for news

00:00:54.500 tends to wane, so you can better support those around you who are currently stuck in the

00:00:58.780 state of mind-burdening limbo.

00:01:00.840 After the show's over, check out our show notes at aom.is slash waiting.

00:01:19.160 All right, Kate Sweeney, welcome to the show.

00:01:21.960 Thanks for having me.

00:01:22.800 So you're a professor of psychology who has spent her career researching about waiting

00:01:27.560 for uncertain news.

00:01:29.380 How did you end up researching that topic?

00:01:31.820 Yeah, so there's sort of two parts to the story.

00:01:34.300 In part, the answer is that I found a great professor to work with in grad school, and

00:01:38.160 he was interested in expectations and waiting.

00:01:41.040 And so I kind of got my start that way.

00:01:42.680 But I really dove into this topic after I finished graduate school, had gone on the job market,

00:01:48.000 and had a pretty difficult waiting experience trying to find a job.

00:01:51.760 And so when I got to my new job here in California, and I thought, what do I want to research now?

00:01:56.380 That was fresh in my mind.

00:01:57.660 And so the light trauma of the academic job market was really an inspiration for a lot

00:02:02.200 of my work.

00:02:02.660 So when you're researching waiting for uncertain news, like what are the common types of waiting

00:02:07.660 experiences you encountered in your research?

00:02:10.500 So you mentioned, you know, you mentioned a personal one there, applying for a job and

00:02:14.600 trying to figure out, well, you know, am I going to get the job?

00:02:17.540 Am I not going to get the job?

00:02:18.960 What are some other common waiting experiences you encounter?

00:02:21.600 There are tons of waiting experiences in our lives.

00:02:24.660 So actually, the hard thing as a researcher is to find ones that you can see that people

00:02:28.500 are going through and, and be able to research these experiences as they're happening.

00:02:32.500 We've done that in lots of different ways.

00:02:34.180 We have actually studied academics on the job market.

00:02:36.560 So me and my collaborators kind of did a self study on that one.

00:02:39.420 But we've also looked at the experience of women undergoing a biopsy, and waiting to find

00:02:43.860 out if they have breast cancer.

00:02:45.100 So that's on the kind of high stakes end of things.

00:02:47.060 We have asked questions of voters waiting for election outcomes and students waiting

00:02:52.180 for paper grades.

00:02:53.480 Pretty much anytime we find a waiting period that we can study, we study it.

00:02:56.780 We've also done a lot of work with people taking the bar exam in California to see if

00:03:00.620 they can become lawyers.

00:03:02.240 Yeah, no.

00:03:02.580 So in law school, the worst part for me was waiting for my grades to get back after exam.

00:03:09.260 So, you know, you take the exam, and then it'd be like three weeks before you get your

00:03:13.400 grade back.

00:03:13.960 But during that time, you know, you start doing, you know, I'd start doing this post-mortem

00:03:18.380 in my head, like, oh my gosh, I missed that issue.

00:03:21.300 I missed that thing.

00:03:22.560 And then you start texting your friends, and you're like, well, did you see that issue?

00:03:26.520 And then did I miss that one?

00:03:29.420 It's just awful.

00:03:30.480 You feel terrible.

00:03:32.480 Yeah, that kind of co-rumination doesn't usually make anyone feel much better.

00:03:35.860 So why does the stress of waiting feel so awful?

00:03:39.220 I mean, how is it different from other types of stress?

00:03:42.100 That's really the question that kind of captivated me at the start of this research project or

00:03:45.840 program even at this point.

00:03:47.320 I've always suspected that this was a very different kind of stress, the waiting stress,

00:03:51.400 from other kinds of stressors where you kind of know what you're dealing with.

00:03:54.940 It might not be any fun at all, but at least you kind of know what's in front of you.

00:03:58.160 You can take some action.

00:03:59.580 The kind of paralysis that waiting entails seems to really uniquely bother us.

00:04:04.260 And although it's a little bit hard to nail down exactly why that is, my best guess is

00:04:08.400 that we as humans have evolved to be very uncomfortable with uncertainty because it's

00:04:12.920 good for us to try to resolve it.

00:04:14.700 So if there's something we don't know, it's good to be bothered by that, so you go and

00:04:18.060 find the answer.

00:04:19.080 The problem is, in the kinds of waiting periods I study, you don't have control over that

00:04:23.040 information.

00:04:23.580 You can't go get the answer.

00:04:25.120 And so your mind is working against you there where it's trying to say, solve this, figure

00:04:29.960 this out, and you can't do it.

00:04:31.280 And so you're just kind of stuck in that experience.

00:04:33.820 So in your research, when you're studying people waiting, right?

00:04:36.520 So in the example, women waiting for the result of a breast biopsy.

00:04:40.420 So this is potentially, you know, you might have cancer.

00:04:43.180 Do these women, do they experience more stress waiting for the news than actually getting the 0.99

00:04:49.140 news itself?

00:04:50.420 Lots of women say that that's the case. 1.00

00:04:52.500 So there have been studies done by other researchers where they've asked women at the end of a breast

00:04:57.160 cancer journey, what was the hardest part?

00:04:59.220 You know, and this is a group of people at this point who've gone through the horror

00:05:02.800 of that diagnosis, the treatment, the fear of recurrence.

00:05:06.160 I mean, all of that is present.

00:05:07.600 And yet many, many women, about half in a lot of these studies, say that the hardest part

00:05:12.020 was the not knowing.

00:05:12.800 It was the pre-diagnosis period.

00:05:14.140 So it does seem to be the case that there is kind of a reality to the waiting is the

00:05:17.800 hardest part.

00:05:18.880 It's not great to find out you have cancer, but at least you can start acting.

00:05:22.140 And that seems to provide us some reassurance.

00:05:23.780 All right.

00:05:24.660 So the reason why stress might be different or feel worse when you're waiting for uncertain

00:05:29.540 news is we just don't like uncertain news.

00:05:32.000 Humans don't like uncertainty.

00:05:33.780 Some other things you might experience when you're waiting for news is time seems to slow

00:05:39.660 down.

00:05:40.300 At least it's been my experience.

00:05:41.440 When you're waiting for some answer, it just seems time just seems to drag on.

00:05:46.480 Is that something that you found in your research?

00:05:49.520 And do you know why?

00:05:50.680 Like what's going on there?

00:05:51.600 Why does it happen so regularly?

00:05:53.780 Yeah, that absolutely is part of the waiting experience for most people.

00:05:56.920 If the waiting is stressful for them, time just seems to crawl along.

00:06:00.620 And the reason for that is very likely that anytime we're feeling something unpleasant,

00:06:04.280 experiencing something unpleasant, time seems to slow down.

00:06:07.160 So there's different theories for why this exactly happens.

00:06:10.600 It's not quite a resolved question yet, but essentially it's very well established that,

00:06:14.460 you know, if you're not having any fun, time is slow and time flies when you are having

00:06:18.060 fun.

00:06:18.340 So to the extent that waiting is unfun, time definitely seems to go slowly.

00:06:22.020 And of course, you know, when you're waiting, time is essentially the enemy you're fighting

00:06:25.440 against.

00:06:25.800 You want it to speed up so you can get to that answer.

00:06:28.240 And so really that provides a special form of torture that then it also seems like you're

00:06:32.400 just never getting to that resolution point.

00:06:34.180 So often when you're waiting for uncertain news, you don't know what the answer is going to

00:06:37.800 be, but you do know when you're going to get the answer, right?

00:06:41.120 So let's say you take a test at school, you know, you're going to get your answer, your

00:06:45.280 grade on Friday.

00:06:46.800 But then there's other situations where you don't know, like you're uncertain about the

00:06:51.440 timing of the answer, right?

00:06:53.640 So you don't, you don't, not only do you not know what the answer is, you don't know when

00:06:56.760 you're going to get an answer.

00:06:57.720 Have you done any research on that?

00:06:59.640 The uncertainty about timing?

00:07:01.460 Yeah, we have actually.

00:07:02.420 So we did a study once we asked people who were waiting for some kind of medical test result.

00:07:06.700 It was all over the map, what kinds of results they were waiting for, mostly pretty routine

00:07:10.720 results, but, or, you know, routine kinds of tests.

00:07:13.700 And about half of them said that they would rather wait longer, but know when they're going

00:07:18.720 to find out.

00:07:19.420 So we're going to call you on Friday at three versus we'll call you when the results are

00:07:22.940 in.

00:07:23.160 And that, yeah, exactly as you said, it's not terribly surprising because you're basically

00:07:26.620 layering uncertainties on top of each other when you also don't know when that call's

00:07:30.660 coming in.

00:07:31.240 You know, every time your phone rings, it could be the doctor with bad news versus being

00:07:34.620 able to put the call out of your mind, put the uncertainty out of your mind until that

00:07:38.300 time comes that you know you'll be resolving the uncertainty.

00:07:41.840 And, you know, in that particular study, interestingly, about 95% of them said, yeah, I don't know when

00:07:46.300 the news is coming.

00:07:47.160 So the healthcare system seems to not appreciate this extra layer of stress that they're creating

00:07:52.320 for their patients.

00:07:53.160 And what's interesting about this uncertainty and waiting for results is that even when

00:08:00.020 one uncertainty is resolved, you know, let's say, you know, like a cancer diagnosis, right?

00:08:05.580 So you now know you have cancer, but then like just a new uncertainty begins, right?

00:08:12.440 So you know you have cancer, you know what you need to start doing, but then there's an uncertainty

00:08:16.960 about, you know, is this treatment going to work?

00:08:19.820 How long is this going to take?

00:08:21.100 Like, so, you know, it's like uncertainty begets uncertainty.

00:08:24.920 It does.

00:08:25.700 And I mean, really, at any given time in our lives, we are all uncertain about lots of

00:08:29.680 things in the future.

00:08:30.860 So really, what I kind of end up studying is are the uncertainties that are really front

00:08:34.600 and center.

00:08:35.280 So, you know, in a, let's say, journey of fighting cancer, there's lots of points at

00:08:39.960 which you might feel like you're doing a lot of acting, a lot of doing.

00:08:42.900 You're, you know, actively getting treatment, you're going to doctor's appointments, there's

00:08:46.100 lots of sort of things that you're doing to try to get better.

00:08:48.640 And that might feel less uncertain because you're more in control of your fate, at least

00:08:53.120 it feels that way at the time.

00:08:54.280 But then let's say you have a follow-up to make sure that the cancer is gone and now you're

00:08:58.120 waiting for that result.

00:08:59.140 Suddenly that waiting kind of comes to the fore again.

00:09:01.020 So those sorts of long-term, especially kind of health experiences or, you know, situation

00:09:06.280 with a precarious employment situation is another one where the uncertainties just kind

00:09:11.020 of keep coming.

00:09:12.200 And sometimes they're more at the front of the mind and sometimes less, but they're never

00:09:14.860 really gone.

00:09:16.240 So I've known people who, when they have uncertainty in their life, they just seem, I mean, they're

00:09:21.500 unflappable, right?

00:09:22.560 They just go on with their life.

00:09:24.180 They say, ah, whatever.

00:09:25.340 I'll find out when I find out.

00:09:26.800 I'll deal with it when I have to deal with it.

00:09:28.860 Unfortunately, I am the opposite.

00:09:30.340 The opposite of that.

00:09:32.480 So I'm curious, are there some people, I mean, if you found this in your research, are there

00:09:35.940 some people who are more susceptible to worrying while waiting for uncertain news?

00:09:41.080 Certainly.

00:09:41.760 And in fact, I take some inspiration from my parents here.

00:09:44.060 My dad is of that lucky kind who just really doesn't think about it until it's over.

00:09:48.520 You know, it's a little more stressful.

00:09:49.660 He's confessed when it's someone he loves who's going through some kind of difficulty and that's

00:09:53.500 creating uncertainty.

00:09:54.440 But for himself, he says, you know, I just don't think about it until I have to.

00:09:57.820 I am not like that.

00:09:58.640 I did not get that from him.

00:09:59.640 I am more like my mom.

00:10:01.220 We are both worriers.

00:10:02.700 And there are lots of characteristics that might kind of promote worry or prevent worry

00:10:06.680 when you're waiting.

00:10:07.900 There's personality traits.

00:10:09.300 So people who are, for example, high in the trait we call neuroticism, like they experience,

00:10:14.780 I should say we, people who are high in neuroticism, like we experience negative emotions in lots

00:10:19.660 of stressful situations.

00:10:20.860 Waiting is not easy for people who are high in neuroticism either.

00:10:23.460 People who are more optimistic, so kind of dispositionally, naturally excited about the future, thinks the best will happen.

00:10:30.840 Even if the best doesn't happen, it probably will be okay anyway.

00:10:33.440 Those sorts of cheerful folks do better as well.

00:10:36.280 And then we've done a few studies actually looking kind of at demographic characteristics.

00:10:39.140 I realized at one point that I'd been studying waiting for so long that I had, you know, 20 plus studies with all the same measures of waiting and worry and coping and also a lot of demographic characteristics.

00:10:49.920 And so we have one paper, for example, that puts those all together and on average.

00:10:54.840 And of course, there's lots of overlap, but in every single study, women reported higher worry than men.

00:11:00.460 And I want to be really careful about saying reported because I don't know if they were more worried or if women are just sort of told our whole lives that it's okay to talk about it when we're worried.

00:11:08.960 But certainly they were more forthcoming about their worry in our studies.

00:11:13.700 So you also did some research about religiosity and worrying while waiting.

00:11:17.320 What does that say?

00:11:17.980 That is a surprising one, and I haven't quite worked it out yet, so I'm interested to know what your listeners might think.

00:11:24.060 You know, we found across I think maybe about 10 or 12 studies in that case that people who reported being more religious and having a more committed religious faith and religious practice actually are more worried on average in our studies quite consistently.

00:11:37.780 It's not a big difference, but it's a very consistent difference across lots of different kinds of waiting periods compared to those who say that they're less religious.

00:11:45.240 And we looked at that question in lots of different ways.

00:11:47.120 We tried lots of different measures of religious beliefs and behaviors.

00:11:51.440 We asked people how spiritual they were to kind of get away from that structure of religion.

00:11:56.180 And kind of no matter how we cut it, it seems like religious people worry more or, again, at least tell us in our studies that they worry more.

00:12:02.360 I really don't know what's going on there.

00:12:03.720 It's not what we expected, but it's an interesting finding.

00:12:05.860 So our tendency is to worry when we don't have all the information.

00:12:10.980 But that worrying, I mean, even though it feels uncomfortable and not great, you've done some research, there can be some benefits to worrying while waiting.

00:12:18.460 So what are those benefits?

00:12:20.300 Worry, yeah, is actually really helpful to us.

00:12:22.060 We would probably die much quicker if we didn't have worry.

00:12:24.980 I come from a sort of tradition of research around emotions that is called functionalism.

00:12:30.220 And that approach basically says that feeling is for doing.

00:12:33.160 I'm cribbing someone's quote there.

00:12:35.100 But it's a useful way of thinking about emotions such that basically humans have lots of different emotions.

00:12:40.620 We can identify hundreds of feeling states and emotions.

00:12:44.140 And the reason that we have such a rich emotional experience in our lives, this theory goes, is because different emotions have different kind of jobs to do for us.

00:12:52.400 They motivate us to do things that more often than not keep us alive, keep us thriving.

00:12:57.460 Worry is no exception.

00:12:58.380 It's very unpleasant.

00:12:59.500 But because it's unpleasant, it's very motivating.

00:13:02.100 And what worry tends to do is it draws your attention towards some potential looming threat in your future.

00:13:07.380 It holds your attention there in ways that are very unpleasant and that, you know, keep you from sleeping well and focusing on other things.

00:13:13.560 But nonetheless, it's good if you need to take some action to prevent a bad outcome.

00:13:18.500 And it motivates you to then do that.

00:13:19.960 And so, you know, that's great if the thing you're worried about is getting in a car accident and you can drive more carefully and wear your seatbelt.

00:13:25.980 Now your worry has done its job.

00:13:27.740 It's not so useful when what you're worried about is a cancer diagnosis coming next week or failing the bar exam.

00:13:33.340 There's really very little you can do about those things in the kinds of periods I study.

00:13:36.740 And so suddenly that worry doesn't have a job to do.

00:13:39.600 And I think that's part of why waiting is so difficult for most of us.

00:13:42.740 Yeah, I mean, I think that's why worrying feels so terrible in my experience, right?

00:13:47.460 Because it just feels like there's nothing you can do, right?

00:13:49.740 It feels like you can't make the answer come any sooner or do anything to fix the problem.

00:13:53.680 So you just end up feeling anxious and bad.

00:13:56.700 That's usually right.

00:13:57.760 I mean, when people ask, you know, how do I deal with worry in these really difficult moments?

00:14:01.680 I typically recommend a kind of two-part process.

00:14:04.840 One is run the checklist.

00:14:06.400 Is there anything you could be doing to, you know, secure a better outcome ideally?

00:14:10.440 Or if that's not in your hands at that point, at least maybe to kind of get your ducks in a row so that if the bad news does come, if you have cancer, if you fail the exam, that you're kind of ready for it and you might be able to respond more effectively.

00:14:22.380 Even though that's not really changing the outcome, it still does tend to provide people with a sense of reassurance.

00:14:27.000 And if you've run that whole checklist and there's nothing left to do, then you're really just left with the option to try to worry less, which, of course, is easier said than done.

00:14:35.220 Well, I want to dig more into how we can alleviate the worry while waiting.

00:14:38.780 So you mentioned one tactic, right, is we can just make a checklist of things you can do to have all your ducks in a row.

00:14:44.560 Another one you have done research on is called preemptive benefit finding.

00:14:49.680 What is that and how can it help alleviate worry while waiting?

00:14:53.280 Yeah, that's a really clunky term we've come up with.

00:14:55.900 We're looking for something zippier, but we haven't found it yet.

00:14:58.540 Preemptive benefit finding, we call it that because it's kind of a name check on something else that we know about as psychology researchers, and that is post-traumatic benefit finding.

00:15:07.160 So just speaking about that for a moment, when we talk about benefit finding in a post-traumatic context, basically we're saying when something bad happens, you can sometimes find silver linings in that bad outcome.

00:15:17.600 You can think about how maybe, you know, at the very least it makes you appreciate life more or you've learned something, maybe you don't make the same mistake next time.

00:15:25.200 And we know that's pretty beneficial in most cases to help cope with something bad that has happened.

00:15:29.600 I wondered, because I study waiting, if maybe that process doesn't actually just start when the bad news comes, but maybe we actually can and maybe do very readily start thinking about those benefits in advance, kind of lining up our silver linings in advance.

00:15:42.960 And yeah, we've done some research showing, first of all, that it happens very readily, even in really difficult circumstances.

00:15:48.780 So for example, with the women that we interviewed at a biopsy appointment, we asked them the question, do you think there's any good that might come from it, any silver lining if you find out that you need to get treatment, which is kind of code in our interview for if you find out you have cancer.

00:16:02.520 And I've asked people what they thought, what percentage of our participants they thought would say yes to that question in that moment, in that scary period when they're getting the biopsy.

00:16:10.500 My mom, for example, who has now had to survive cancer twice, she said, I don't know, 1% maybe who on earth would say that.

00:16:17.460 In fact, it was about 75% of our participants who said, yeah, you know, if I have cancer, I'll become healthier, I'll be a role model for my daughters, I'll, you know, show people that they need to get screened.

00:16:27.960 They had lots of different ways of kind of articulating those benefits.

00:16:31.300 And then we have other research, we didn't get to follow up with them after their diagnosis, but other studies we did follow up with folks after bad news.

00:16:38.440 And it does seem like kind of lining up those silver linings does make bad news a bit easier to get.

00:16:43.840 Okay, so just to clarify here, the finding the silver lining, this isn't being overly optimistic.

00:16:48.660 You're not saying, well, you know, maybe things will just be awesome and it won't be as bad as I think it'll be.

00:16:53.760 You know, what you're doing is you're assuming, I'm going to get the bad news.

00:16:57.020 I'm going to get the news I don't want, but I'm going to look for the good that could come out of that bad news.

00:17:02.480 Is that what we're doing here?

00:17:03.760 That's exactly right.

00:17:04.400 Yeah, and that's a really important distinction.

00:17:05.980 I mean, I've also studied how we manage our expectations for our outcomes and we can certainly talk about that.

00:17:10.100 But preemptive benefit finding in some ways is kind of a scary prospect.

00:17:13.340 It's really coming face to face with the possibility that you will get bad news.

00:17:17.720 And again, in some of the cases I study, that's really bad news.

00:17:21.120 But it's kind of confronting that possibility with a little bit of armor on because you're kind of building the armor, I guess, as you're confronting it.

00:17:28.040 Because you're thinking about, okay, let's say I fail this exam.

00:17:31.000 Let's say I have cancer.

00:17:32.800 That's bad.

00:17:33.560 But what good might come from it?

00:17:35.120 Will I learn something from this?

00:17:36.520 Will I have a new perspective on life?

00:17:38.340 Will I change my behavior?

00:17:39.640 And so you're exactly right.

00:17:40.860 You're not assuming the best, but you're kind of finding some good in the worst.

00:17:44.600 Well, let's talk about your research on expectation setting that we do when we're in that uncertain period.

00:17:49.520 So what does your research say there?

00:17:50.940 Like, how do we typically try to manage our expectations for ourselves when we are facing uncertainty?

00:17:57.220 Expectation management was kind of my first love in research.

00:17:59.360 In fact, I went to grad school to study with someone named James Shepard, and he had been doing work just for a few years at that point on something that we call bracing for the worst.

00:18:06.600 This is basically our tendency as humans to become pessimistic as we approach some moment of truth, when we'll find out some outcome, we'll resolve some uncertainty.

00:18:16.240 Humans tend to be, in general, very optimistic, and that's a really healthy tendency for the most part.

00:18:21.640 But he had shown this very reliable tendency for people to just suddenly become abject pessimists when they were, you know, moments from receiving an exam grade, for example, in a classroom.

00:18:30.620 And so I went to school to study that and did for a long time.

00:18:34.100 I still research that question a bit.

00:18:36.560 And what I can say over, you know, 20 years now of studying that question is that basically everyone does this almost all the time.

00:18:43.080 In fact, even folks who are really dispositionally, naturally optimistic, they do have higher expectations.

00:18:49.520 They are more optimistic about their outcomes, but they are just as likely to forego that optimism as they approach that moment of truth as someone who is pessimistic kind of all the time.

00:18:58.760 And what we think is true about bracing is that it's really helpful.

00:19:02.040 So what I tend to advise for people who are waiting is that you hold on to optimism as long as you can, but not all the way up until you get the news.

00:19:09.800 It's really a good kind of bargain to make with yourself to brace for bad news, to assume the worst, at least at that moment of truth, whether that's minutes or days or even weeks in some cases, to kind of prepare yourself for that possibility so that it's not such a shock when you get the news.

00:19:24.700 If you've ever gotten bad news that you really didn't see coming, you know, bad news is bad news, but it sure feels a lot worse when it knocks you out and you didn't have time to prepare.

00:19:33.060 So bracing seems to be good for that as long as you don't embrace pessimism for too long, which can be really taxing on your well-being.

00:19:39.120 And we're going to take a quick break for your word from our sponsors.

00:19:47.260 And now back to the show.

00:19:48.980 Okay, so do some bracing.

00:19:50.380 You got to be a realistic optimist.

00:19:52.800 Do the preemptive benefit finding.

00:19:54.720 So you just assume the bad, right?

00:19:57.480 I assume I failed the test.

00:19:59.360 I didn't get the job.

00:20:00.760 What are the benefits that could potentially come out of that?

00:20:03.400 And that could help reduce some of that worrying that you might experience while waiting.

00:20:08.060 You also have done research on how seeking moments of awe can alleviate worrying while waiting.

00:20:14.620 What's going on there?

00:20:16.160 Yeah, that was an interesting one.

00:20:17.260 I had a graduate student, Sarah Andrews, who got really interested in kind of positive psychology generally.

00:20:23.180 And awe was and still is a really big area of research, kind of a hot area in our field.

00:20:28.180 And so she was interested in this question of whether awe might be either uniquely suited to periods of uncertainty.

00:20:35.260 You know, awe is kind of a funky, it's a funky emotion.

00:20:38.800 It's not quite positive because there's often a bit of fear that goes along with it.

00:20:42.680 If you think of, you know, standing at the Grand Canyon or staring out into space and kind of imagining how small we are, that feeling of being small in the face of something big is good-ish, but also kind of makes us uncomfortable.

00:20:54.100 It's kind of the whole thing about awe is that discomfort, that need to adjust our perspective.

00:20:58.720 And so there's kind of uncertainty baked into that in some sense, uncertainty about our place in the world, for example.

00:21:04.080 And so she thought maybe that would be a really good or maybe very poor fit for these kind of moments of uncertainty and waiting.

00:21:09.080 And so she did her dissertation on that topic and found that, in fact, a dose of awe, even a pretty small one, just watching an awe-inspiring nature video in the lab as you wait for some kind of news, does seem to improve the experience.

00:21:22.900 I don't think it really counteracts worry particularly, and our data didn't show that.

00:21:27.340 But it just gives you a boost of this kind of powerful, all-encompassing, positive-ish emotion.

00:21:33.340 And that seems to be a benefit in those difficult moments.

00:21:35.840 Well, it's interesting that awe can help, but that religious people tend to worry more, right?

00:21:41.340 Because you'd think, in theory, religious people would have more awe-like experiences, right? 0.82

00:21:46.080 They're doing things that's conducive to awe, so like prayer, meditation, et cetera, but they still worry more.

00:21:51.640 I think that's interesting.

00:21:52.740 Yeah, I know.

00:21:53.360 You're right.

00:21:53.960 This is why that religiosity finding is so perplexing to me.

00:21:56.720 I thought there were lots of reasons why people who were more religious, again, having a sort of personal spiritual practice and or having a connection to a community,

00:22:04.240 a community of faith, that they would be better off.

00:22:06.460 But, yeah, it doesn't seem that way.

00:22:08.140 It is the case that people who were religious in our studies did tend to cope in ways that I would think are positive. 0.93

00:22:14.260 So, for example, I think in literally every study, more religious people were more likely to engage in benefit finding.

00:22:20.700 I don't think that actually made it into the paper in the end, but that's a sneak preview of some other work we've looked at.

00:22:25.560 So there's some good coping strategies that seem kind of to be helpful.

00:22:28.880 But, again, it just didn't quite crack through to those reports of worries.

00:22:32.340 So that's definitely an open question still.

00:22:34.500 Some other research you've done is how flow, flow states, can help reduce or maybe help mitigate the feeling of worrying while waiting.

00:22:42.540 So let's start off, you know, what is flow?

00:22:45.040 And then what does your research say about flow's ability to help during those periods of waiting for uncertain news?

00:22:52.700 Yeah, I got kind of obsessed with flow.

00:22:54.140 I'm still a little bit obsessed with it for the last few years.

00:22:56.340 I'll just step back a little bit and say that the reason why my lab got interested in flow is because we hit a point in our research about, I don't know, five years ago, where I realized that we knew a whole lot about why waiting was hard and almost nothing about how to make it easier for people.

00:23:10.500 And so, if nothing else, for our own suffering, we wanted to kind of find that answer.

00:23:14.280 And so, we asked about 100 people, when you have to wait, what makes it easier?

00:23:19.600 And you only had to read maybe 10 of those to see that every single person was saying, I try to distract myself, I try to take my mind off it.

00:23:26.440 And we'd done some research on distraction.

00:23:28.120 And we hadn't found that people were very good at it or it wasn't very effective.

00:23:31.060 And so, we thought, okay, where's that disconnect coming from?

00:23:34.240 And we thought, well, maybe it is that people are not good at finding the right kinds of distractions.

00:23:38.540 And through this conversation, one of my graduate students, it's lost to history who it was, but had heard about flow and kind of brought this topic up.

00:23:46.000 And so, that began this relatively long now research program, combining these two topics of waiting and flow.

00:23:52.100 Flow is a concept that is in some ways very simple and in some ways wildly complex and not very well understood.

00:23:57.500 It's basically being in the zone.

00:23:59.420 So, it's doing something where you're fully engaged.

00:24:02.020 You are out of your mind, not out of your mind, out of your head.

00:24:04.660 And your kind of worries and any other thoughts you might be having are very quiet because you are just fully immersed in the activity that you're doing.

00:24:11.640 Time tends to fly by, which is a pretty good thing when you're waiting for some kind of news and you're experiencing that worry.

00:24:17.180 And so, we thought maybe this would be helpful.

00:24:19.320 And maybe it is the case that people aren't good at kind of intuiting that they need to engage with something rather than trying to kind of check out and relax and binge Netflix while they're worrying.

00:24:29.060 So, we did some studies where we just, well, we asked people how much they were experiencing flow.

00:24:32.860 We have also put people in situations to experience more or less flow while they're waiting.

00:24:37.720 And really, across the board, flow does seem to be a very powerful benefit when you're waiting because, at the very least, it just gives you a break from your worry.

00:24:45.340 If you can just get into something, even if it's something as trivial as a video game, if you've got the time to spare, it will give you a break from your thoughts.

00:24:52.640 And that can just really be an incredible benefit, especially when you're really paralyzed by worry.

00:24:56.980 I'll mention that flow, in fact, even seemed to be really helpful in the very early days of the pandemic.

00:25:02.720 We had this wild opportunity in February of 2020, before most Americans, at least, including myself, really knew what was coming for us, to do a study with folks in China where COVID was raging, of course, at the time.

00:25:14.300 And just by sheer coincidence, we caught the two-week period when COVID rates were at their highest until very recently they've hit a new peak.

00:25:20.900 And we asked about 6,000 people in a survey how they were coping, how they were feeling.

00:25:26.820 And one of the things we did was ask if they were experiencing flow.

00:25:29.880 We sadly don't know what they were doing to get into flow, but the folks who had found flow somehow or another and were in quarantine just didn't suffer as much as those in quarantine who hadn't found flow.

00:25:41.580 In fact, the folks in quarantine who found flow were no worse off than people who were not in quarantine at the time.

00:25:47.700 So they basically kind of zeroed out, it looked like, the effect of quarantine on their well-being, on every measure of well-being we could possibly think to include.

00:25:55.100 I think it's about 10 different measures.

00:25:56.820 So it seems like even in the most uncertain, most restrictive kind of experiences, flow can be a real helper.

00:26:02.440 So how do you induce that flow?

00:26:04.220 Let's say you're waiting for whether you got a job or not, and you're feeling really anxious.

00:26:10.300 What are some specific things that people could do to induce that flow state, to alleviate some of that worry and anxiety?

00:26:17.700 So the great thing about flow is that it is induced by different things for everyone, but I can give some tips for finding your specific flow activities.

00:26:24.320 I say it's a good thing, by the way, because another thing I've studied that we might talk about is mindfulness, and I find so many people just will not consider meditation, will not consider mindfulness practice.

00:26:34.320 It's just not for them, and that's okay.

00:26:36.040 The good thing about flow is you can kind of make it your own and fit it to your own enjoyable activities.

00:26:41.160 The quick tip I have for finding your own flow activities is think of what you absolutely cannot start doing if you need to leave the house in 10 minutes, because you know that you will just completely lose track of time.

00:26:52.000 That's definitely a flow activity for you.

00:26:54.080 And you can kind of think of other activities in your life that generally have that effect, so things that kind of get you out of your head, make you lose time, that feel just really completely engaging.

00:27:03.540 It's not going to be something passive.

00:27:05.460 One of the keys for flow is that it needs to be pretty actively engaging, at least in your mind.

00:27:10.120 It doesn't have to be something physical, but it needs to be something that's pretty active, pretty challenging, something that isn't too easy, not too hard.

00:27:17.580 So there's some kind of characteristics you can look for, but I think we all know those things that, you know, if you start that puzzle, if you start that game, maybe even if you're lucky, if you start that task that you love at work, you know that time's just going to pass and you're going to miss the next thing.

00:27:29.960 That's going to be your flow.

00:27:31.280 Yeah, you mentioned, I think, in one of the research papers, Tetris was a good flow inducer for a lot of people.

00:27:37.340 Because, yeah, as it gets harder, you have to use your brain more.

00:27:40.500 And then you kind of get to that state where it just feels like your thumbs and your mind have just melded together.

00:27:45.640 They're doing everything they're supposed to do.

00:27:46.880 You don't have to think about it.

00:27:48.340 Yeah, so we've had guests on the podcast talk about flow.

00:27:51.260 So, yeah, physical activity, that can do it for some people.

00:27:53.700 Dance.

00:27:54.640 I think those, like, extreme sports guys, they get into the flow state a lot.

00:27:58.000 So, you know, if that's your thing, I'm not that kind of guy.

00:28:01.180 But, I mean, if that's your thing, right, if you're worrying while waiting, you can do a backflip on a BMX ramp or something.

00:28:09.280 That'll help you out.

00:28:10.180 Yeah, it is interesting.

00:28:11.100 The flow has become this kind of obsession of so many different people in the world.

00:28:14.260 I went to a conference, strangely, in Iceland last summer.

00:28:17.320 And there was a lot of flow research at that conference.

00:28:19.400 And there were people who are extreme skiers, rock climbers.

00:28:22.980 Those sorts of folks tend to really experience this flow activity.

00:28:26.160 In fact, people who do, like, free climbing where you're not on any ropes will talk about how there's nothing more flow-inducing than knowing that, you know, any move you make could be the end of you.

00:28:34.780 And so that is kind of the extreme version.

00:28:36.480 I agree that one's not for me.

00:28:37.780 I find flow in data analysis myself.

00:28:39.760 But, you know, whatever works.

00:28:41.800 So you mentioned mindfulness.

00:28:42.940 What's the research say about mindfulness mitigating worrying while waiting?

00:28:47.560 Mindfulness is a really powerful practice.

00:28:49.600 Again, it's not for everyone.

00:28:50.720 A lot of people have maybe tried it and feel like it's just, you know, it's too hard to kind of sit with their thoughts.

00:28:54.540 But if you kind of engage with mindfulness in the way that I think practitioners intend, it's really quite active mentally.

00:29:01.420 So mindfulness is kind of always hard to explain without sounding a little hippy-dippy.

00:29:04.980 But basically, it's just a really intense focus on right now.

00:29:08.860 It can be a focus on almost anything, actually, as long as it's kind of a sustained attentional focus.

00:29:14.540 You know, you tend to hear the suggestion to focus on your breath.

00:29:17.100 But there's nothing special about breath.

00:29:18.700 It's just that it happens whether you like it or not.

00:29:20.800 And so it provides kind of a target for your attention that will always be happening.

00:29:25.980 And when we engage in that kind of really focused attention and we just let our thoughts come and go without really getting attached to them, we just keep coming back to that whatever it is, let's say the breath.

00:29:35.340 It seems to have the effect of kind of going to the mental gym.

00:29:38.960 It just makes your mind a little less chaotic.

00:29:42.740 It kind of requires less effort to stay focused and to be in control.

00:29:47.460 And it's not easy to do that practice.

00:29:49.460 But when you do it, it really seems to be effective.

00:29:51.620 In our studies, we have found that mindfulness seems to be a really good match for feelings of worry during waiting periods.

00:29:57.980 It's my theory about why it's a good match is that when you're waiting, one of the worst things you deal with is this kind of mental time travel where maybe you're thinking back to, you know, how many items you missed on the exam or how you could have been healthier and not gotten yourself into this medical situation, whatever the past might be.

00:30:13.560 And most of all, we're thinking a lot about the future and what's going to come.

00:30:17.160 And the key with mindfulness is really to not think about the past and future, but to focus on the present.

00:30:22.680 And that seems to be a really powerful antidote to worry.

00:30:26.200 Yeah, it helps you avoid the rumination that can happen when you worry.

00:30:29.580 Yeah, that's exactly right.

00:30:30.560 And I should say, you know, I don't send people off to like two-week meditation retreats to make this happen.

00:30:35.580 This is really in a very brief context.

00:30:37.940 We've done studies in the lab where people who maybe have never meditated before just sit for 10 minutes and do a guided meditation.

00:30:43.620 That's sufficient to help them in that moment.

00:30:46.140 We did a study with people taking the bar exam and had some of them practice a mindfulness meditation as often as they were willing.

00:30:52.500 We've said every few days, but I think at best they were doing it once a week.

00:30:55.800 And again, these are not, you know, experienced meditators.

00:30:58.300 And the folks who did that practice versus a different kind of meditation even seem to have an easier time waiting.

00:31:03.420 So it's a pretty powerful practice if you can make yourself do it.

00:31:07.420 Speaking of this idea of rumination and trying to avoid it, have you guys done any research on journaling?

00:31:11.960 Like, does that help when you're worrying while waiting?

00:31:16.000 Great question.

00:31:17.180 I don't know, actually.

00:31:18.280 We haven't done that study, though.

00:31:19.780 Now I'm inspired to ask that question in my research.

00:31:22.880 What I do know is that there's a lot of work on what we call expressive writing.

00:31:26.520 And so expressive writing is just, I've never done a study on it, but I know the work pretty well.

00:31:30.740 And they have participants kind of think through and write about some sort of negative experience they've had in their life.

00:31:36.340 This tends to be a very powerful intervention for folks who've experienced trauma and really are suffering from that trauma.

00:31:43.060 And there's something about kind of analytically writing about the thing you experienced in the past.

00:31:48.000 And I imagine it might be effective for something you're currently going through, like a difficult waiting period.

00:31:52.560 And it kind of sucks the energy out of it in a way that makes it much less emotional and much more analytical.

00:31:57.380 That stepping back seems to be really powerful.

00:31:59.280 So I have not looked at journaling or even expressive writing in the context of waiting, but I think there's a lot of good reason to think it might work.

00:32:06.200 Yeah, I was thinking, so what I've read about the research on expressive writing is that people, when they typically start doing it, they usually try to figure out why something happened.

00:32:18.740 And when you start asking why, like that's when you go down this rabbit hole, because that's when it gets, you know, really emotional.

00:32:23.760 You just start asking why, why, you know.

00:32:25.440 But when you focus your question on how or what, you know, like ask yourself, how can I make this better or what can I do?

00:32:33.040 It puts you in your logic mode of your brain and it helps you quit worrying.

00:32:38.500 And so I was thinking, you know, combining journaling with preemptive benefit finding might be a useful tactic.

00:32:43.280 So just sit down and journal and just write, you know, assume I get the bad news.

00:32:48.180 How will my life be better once I know that?

00:32:51.220 I don't know.

00:32:52.100 Yeah, absolutely.

00:32:52.680 I can totally imagine that, you know, in our case, we sometimes do have participants write that down just for practical purposes for our research.

00:32:59.000 And so, you know, for all I know, that's maybe the key to the intervention that we're doing is that they're writing about it and kind of putting that into words,

00:33:05.780 thinking about how things might be good in the future, despite or in the face of bad news might be very important.

00:33:11.300 I can also imagine that just kind of writing down your worries and as exactly as you said, kind of thinking about them in a more objective way,

00:33:17.340 stepping out of your own perspective and looking at it objectively, those are all very powerful tools for minimizing any kind of negative emotion.

00:33:24.920 I should mention, by the way, that you want to be careful with expressive writing, that kind of analytical approach to thinking about your memories.

00:33:30.720 If you do it with positive memories, it does the same thing, which is to say it completely undermines the emotional experience of it.

00:33:35.940 So good for negative events, not so good for positive events.

00:33:39.340 What role does social support play in mitigating worry while waiting?

00:33:43.500 Social support is super important in basically every part of life.

00:33:46.880 And so waiting is no exception.

00:33:48.880 Social support is really tricky, actually.

00:33:50.600 So people have been studying versions of social support for decades and decades and decades.

00:33:55.600 I would say that the journal publications on that topic probably count in the, I don't know, tens of thousands.

00:34:00.480 And yet I would challenge you to find a researcher who could tell you, here's what you should do to be supportive in any given moment.

00:34:07.360 It's really hard to kind of know what will help.

00:34:09.260 People don't know what they need.

00:34:10.860 Asking for help is a little bit treacherous, we know, from a well-being perspective.

00:34:14.220 So supporting someone who's in a difficult time of any sort is a challenge.

00:34:18.340 I suspect, and we have some evidence for this in our studies, that supporting someone in a waiting period is an extra challenge.

00:34:24.660 Because from the outside, when you're not the one going through that emotional roller coaster,

00:34:28.220 they're, you know, it's like, just wait.

00:34:30.160 You'll know soon enough.

00:34:30.980 Like, let's just not talk about this.

00:34:32.340 Let's not worry about this.

00:34:33.320 Why don't we just wait and find out what happens?

00:34:35.080 But of course, for the person who's suffering, it's not just a fallow period.

00:34:39.080 It's an emotionally incredibly difficult period.

00:34:41.340 And so I think that mismatch is a little bit more problematic when people are in that moment of waiting.

00:34:46.700 But when, in our studies, people did crack through that challenge and find ways to support their partner,

00:34:52.640 let's say their romantic partner or a friend,

00:34:54.840 when that person was waiting, it did seem to really help.

00:34:56.960 So the best advice I think that any social support researcher could give is,

00:35:01.580 don't worry so much about exactly what you're doing or saying.

00:35:04.240 Just do your best to figure out what that person kind of needs from you in that moment and do that if you can.

00:35:09.520 And they might not even know, but just being there often is really enough,

00:35:13.120 even in those moments of uncertainty.

00:35:15.340 Well, you've done some research that's found that people or loved ones are really good at supporting someone,

00:35:21.100 waiting for uncertain news.

00:35:22.540 Right after the person discovered, you know, they've got some uncertain news coming up, right?

00:35:28.200 So let's say you tell your spouse, you know, I applied for this job.

00:35:31.640 I may or may not get it.

00:35:32.820 And the spouse is probably gonna be really supportive at that time.

00:35:35.620 And then they're going to be really supportive again at the time you get the bad news, right?

00:35:39.540 Right at the moment.

00:35:40.560 But it's like in between that, people really don't know what to, they don't know what to do.

00:35:46.200 Yeah, it does seem that way.

00:35:49.140 That's exactly right.

00:35:49.960 So our specific study was, again, with the bar exam.

00:35:52.480 I've mentioned that experience many times because we've studied it many times.

00:35:55.540 And that's a long one.

00:35:56.720 That's four months.

00:35:57.720 And, you know, it's highly consequential.

00:35:59.520 This was romantic partners.

00:36:00.720 So your fate is kind of intertwined, usually, with the person who's taking the bar exam.

00:36:04.300 That determines their career opportunities.

00:36:06.280 And so, you know, it's a really difficult period of waiting, potentially for both parties.

00:36:10.180 But what we found very consistently in our study is that the people who were waiting for the news, the ones who took the bar exam, would say, yeah, my partner is really great right after the exam.

00:36:20.320 They were like, oh, how'd it go?

00:36:21.740 You know, there's lots to talk about.

00:36:23.020 You know, you can kind of debrief about the whole experience.

00:36:25.980 And then that social support started seeming to be quite a bit less effective in the kind of middle months, let's say the middle two months of that four-month waiting period.

00:36:32.120 And then as we were getting closer to that moment of truth and the stress was ramping up, then suddenly the romantic partners seemed to kind of come back into the picture and figure out once more how to support them.

00:36:42.500 But that middle period was rocky for everyone involved.

00:36:46.900 So any advice there, you know, on how to handle that middle period?

00:36:50.720 Yeah, I think it's really about recognizing.

00:36:53.140 It's kind of perspective taking.

00:36:54.200 So it's recognizing that, yeah, you know, the exam was two months ago and the results are two months in the future or whatever time frame you're in.

00:37:00.080 But nonetheless, this random Tuesday, for whatever reason, is a really hard day for my partner.

00:37:04.180 And so today's the day I need to show up, even if it feels a little unnecessary, you know, for the person who's giving the support.

00:37:11.520 You know, if that person's having a hard day, don't question it.

00:37:14.380 Show up for them then.

00:37:16.040 What do you do if you've got someone who's dealing with a waiting period and they're using you as a sounding board for the rumination, right?

00:37:23.840 Should you step in and say, hey, you know, this isn't helping.

00:37:26.820 Let's stop because this isn't going anywhere.

00:37:28.660 Or should you just let them vent?

00:37:31.400 Yeah, that's where the problems with the social support research come in because we really don't know.

00:37:36.380 And the problem is that we have, for example, asked hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people at this point, when you're waiting, what's helpful for people to do, what's unhelpful that people do.

00:37:45.860 And frankly, those two lists look pretty similar.

00:37:48.500 So, you know, letting someone vent might be great in one situation.

00:37:52.160 And in another situation, that might just make them feel worse.

00:37:54.820 Telling them everything will be fine might be great in one situation for one person.

00:37:58.560 It might be undermining their, you know, desire to kind of brace and ruminate in another.

00:38:03.380 And so I think, again, it's really hard to know.

00:38:05.320 It's hard to get it right.

00:38:06.160 Like, yeah, that's really what I can say, which I think should be freeing for people.

00:38:10.540 Like, there is no really right answer.

00:38:12.120 And so there's really no wrong answer either.

00:38:13.840 If you're being kind of responsive to what the person seems to need, if you're being responsive to what they want to do at the time, that's about the closest you can get probably to being a good support partner.

00:38:23.620 Well, Kate, this has been a great conversation.

00:38:25.040 Where can people go to learn more about your work?

00:38:27.520 Yeah, so I have a website.

00:38:28.560 It is katesweeney.com.

00:38:30.080 The only trick is spelling my last name right, which is S-W-E-E-N-Y. 0.88

00:38:33.900 And we've got most of our work up there.

00:38:35.860 We've got descriptions of the work we're doing now and also a lot of the papers that we've published over the years.

00:38:40.120 So that's a good place to start.

00:38:41.840 Fantastic.

00:38:42.200 Well, Kate Sweeney, thanks for your time.

00:38:43.320 It's been a pleasure.

00:38:44.380 It's been very enjoyable.

00:38:45.440 Thanks so much for having me.

00:38:47.240 My guest today is Kate Sweeney.

00:38:48.240 She's a psychologist who researches weighting.

00:38:50.760 You can find more information about her work at our website, katesweeney.com.

00:38:53.960 Also, check out our show notes at aom.is slash weighting, where you can find links to resources, where you can delve deeper into this topic.

00:39:06.820 Well, that wraps up another edition of the AOM Podcast.

00:39:09.580 Make sure to check out our website at artofmanliness.com, where you can find our podcast archives, as well as thousands of articles written over the years about pretty much anything you think of.

00:39:16.920 And if you'd like to enjoy ad-free episodes of the AOM Podcast, you can do so on Stitcher Premium.

00:39:20.440 Head over to StitcherPremium.com, sign up, use code MANLYS at checkout for a free month trial.

00:39:25.240 Once you're signed up, download the Stitcher app on Android and iOS, and you can start enjoying ad-free episodes of the AOM Podcast.

00:39:30.460 And if you haven't done this already, I'd appreciate if you take one minute to give us a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

00:39:34.400 It helps out a lot.

00:39:35.500 And if you've done that already, thank you.

00:39:37.180 Please consider sharing the show with a friend or family member who you think would get something out of it.

00:39:41.180 As always, thank you for the continued support.

00:39:43.020 Until next time, it's Brett McKay, reminding you to not only listen to the AOM Podcast, but put what you've heard into action.

00:39:50.440 AOM Podcast is a production of the AOM Podcast.

The Art of Manliness - April 03, 2023

How to Deal With the Worry of Waiting

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript