Text me when you plane lands.
Text me to let me know you got home safely.
Where are you?
How are you?
Hey did you get my last text? (sent 2 minutes ago!)
With the proliferation of cell phones, most of us have dramatically increased our checking on loved ones. This innocent micro-behavior is a symptom of a mega-problem. In fact, it’s the most common problem I treat, the root cause of most worry and stress. The problem is intolerance of uncertainty.
Checking behavior is prompted by a perception of threat. It is often an unconscious perception in the sense that we do not always do any risk assessments about our loved ones well-being before reaching for the phone. The impulse to check and see is triggered by our “limbic brain”, what I call the monkey mind, that governs our emotions. When our loved one is out of sight and we can’t be 100% certain they are happy and safe, the monkey sets off alarms in the form of fight-or-flight emotions. Our brain gets hijacked and we start thinking in “what-ifs”. What if my loved one got in an accident? What if he’s sick? What if she doesn’t love me anymore?
Those thoughts and feelings are eased when we pick up the phone and are confirm they are OK, but this reassurance reinforces the perception of threat, in effect “feeding the monkey”. We end up in a pattern of addiction that distracts us from being present in our own lives. If we want less anxiety about our loved ones we must increase our tolerance of uncertainty by putting our checking behaviors on a diet.
If we were going on a food diet, we would start with monitoring what we’re eating. For a checking diet, we begin by monitoring how often we check on loved ones in the course of at least a day or, better, one week. (You can down load this form or you can keep track on your phone.) Once you have an average of how often you check on loved ones every day, cut this number in half as a target for your diet.
When we begin reducing how often you check, we will notice is that your anxiety will increase. The monkey mind doesn’t like us being uncertain and it doesn’t like being ignored. But like all our feelings, anxiety has a beginning, middle and an end. More important, because it breaks our pattern of checking addiction, this short-term pain will bring long term tolerance of uncertainty.
Reduced checking on loved ones will help us to be more relaxed and present. What greater gift can we give the ones we love?
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