The Art of Insubordination, page 9
Powerful, but not universally welcomed. The men in charge shrugged. What business did she have telling them how to do their work? To convince police and health care workers to adopt rape kits, Goddard worked seven days a week visiting individual police precincts and hospitals. Goddard tried raising money to further spread the word and advocate on survivors’ behalf, but nobody in Chicago would open their checkbooks. That is, except for the very last person you’d expect: Playboy founder Hugh Heffner. Say what you will about the Hef, but he forked over $10,000 through the Playboy Foundation, his company’s nonprofit arm. He opened his office space, allowing Goddard’s recruited volunteers to create a rape kit assembly line there. Regarding Heffner as an enemy, feminists were outraged. “I took a lot of flak from the women’s movement—but too bad,” Goddard said. “Boy, was I roasted for that. But I gotta tell you if it was Penthouse or Hustler, no. But Playboy? Please, give me a break.”
Over time, Goddard’s relentless pursuit of justice for female survivors of sexual abuse paid off. Some two dozen Chicago-area hospitals were using rape kits by the end of 1978. By 1980, health care workers were using them in thousands of hospitals across the country. A one-stop package for preserving DNA that officers, detectives, medical professionals, and prosecutors could use to produce a database matching individuals arrested for criminal activity with rape kit evidence. “Marty Goddard was a true pioneer in the anti-rape movement,” Dr. Dean Kilpatrick said, as “the rape exam was transformed from something that many women described as nearly as bad as the rape itself to something that treated women humanely and gathered the evidence needed to identify suspects and support a criminal prosecution.” Summing up the impact of Goddard’s work, he noted, “Marty deserves incredible credit for having the courage, fortitude, and persistence to make this very important thing happen in the face of much opposition.”
Rape remains extremely hard to prosecute in the United States, with fewer than a quarter of survivors reporting. But if Goddard hadn’t stayed the course, fighting the good fight year after year, visiting all of those police stations and hospitals and knocking on Hugh Heffner’s door, rape survivors would receive less justice than they do today. Bear in mind, Goddard operated in an era when terms like “date rape” and “marital rape” didn’t yet exist, and when the behaviors they describe went unprosecuted. It was a time when police officers, prosecuting attorneys, and even judges defended rape by arguing that “there are many sexually frustrated men who do not have a nonviolent way of satisfying their sexual desires” and “women who are raped dress or behave in a seductive manner.” Somehow, Goddard managed to persevere in this unsympathetic environment, fighting the good fight even when she felt tempted to give up or scale back her efforts. How do people like her do it? How can you stay in the game over the long term as a rebel, taking bold risks and persevering in the face of emotional distress caused by persecution, ostracism, loneliness, and unanticipated setbacks?
Virtually all mental health interventions developed in recent decades proceed on the assumption that the best way to respond to distress is to minimize it. If you’re a rebel struggling in the face of adversity, you go to a therapist or undertake some other intervention in hopes of obtaining some kind of relief that allows you to function better. More recently, psychologists have argued that trying to reduce distress can cause more suffering. As they point out, distress is a human experience and not inherently bad. What’s bad is the avoidance of and unwillingness to experience distress. When worried about an impending deadline, we procrastinate and scroll through social media. When sad or lonely, we comfort ourselves by gorging on food. When overcome by pangs of regret, we spend hours mulling over what might have been, failing to live in the present moment. Too often, our strategies for coping with distress, while possibly effective in the moment, distance us further from the life we want, causing us more distress over time.
How can you learn to withstand distress so that it doesn’t drag you down? One powerful solution is to cultivate what scientists call “psychological flexibility.” When bad shit goes down, the psychologically flexible person doesn’t freak to the point of breakdown. Rather, she takes steps to quickly recover and make progress anew. She shifts promptly away from managing the pain she feels to driving assertively toward her goals. Sounds good, you say, but how the hell do I do that? Glad you asked.
THE BIG IDEA
To withstand distress better, cultivate your new secret weapon: psychological flexibility.
DIG THE DASHBOARD
A powerful tool you can use to become more psychologically flexible is—wait for it—the Psychological Flexibility Dashboard. Weaving together a number of evidence-based strategies, the Dashboard is a simple, four-step process of reflection that prepares you to deal effectively with the inevitable adversity you’ll confront as a rebel. In the face of an emotionally intense situation, you can use the Dashboard to break down your experience of the situation, process overwhelming feelings of distress, short-circuit unhelpful ways of handling these feelings, and inspire yourself to take courageous action. Making sense of short-term hardship, you can turn back toward your larger purpose and pursue it with renewed vigor.
In summary form, the Dashboard looks like this:
(STEP 2) “What unwanted thoughts, feelings, memories, and bodily sensations am I experiencing?”
(STEP 1) “What and who is important to me?”
ESCAPING PAIN
HUNTING MEANING
(STEP 3) “What am I doing to reduce, avoid, or control unwanted mental content?”
(STEP 4) “What am I doing or could be doing to chase my values?”
The essence of the Dashboard is a recognition of two basic directions toward which you can move when dealing with an emotionally challenging event. When moving in the direction of Hunting Meaning, you remind yourself of your purpose in dissenting, deviating, or defying the status quo. Maybe you’re seeking social change. Maybe you want to feel a sense of autonomy or individuality. Maybe you’re seeking to innovate. Whatever it is, you’re pursuing goals that you find personally meaningful and important enough to merit a short-term sacrifice. When moving in the other direction to Escape Pain, you acknowledge the demanding strain put on you, and the sense of urgency to exert control over whatever negative thoughts and feelings appear. Each direction corresponds with two questions to ask yourself and, in turn, exercises to help improve your ability to self-regulate effectively. By sharpening your ability to think through these questions, you will become more flexible in the face of hardship. Psychological flexibility provides the seeds that produce resilience. Let’s run through the four steps one by one.
Step 1: “What and who is important to me?” (Remind Yourself of the Reason for Dissenting)
Clarity about your mission and its moral basis keeps you grounded, allowing you to absorb a higher level of pain than otherwise. If you know what you’re trying to accomplish, harsh criticism by others won’t matter so much, and you’re more liable to confidently go your own way (as one fascinating study found, people with a greater sense of purpose reacted less to the number of “likes” received after posting selfies on social media). It’s easier to defend a cause if you’re clear on your mission, even when your body is disrupted by panic attack symptoms (rapid pounding heart rate, trembling or shaking, tightness in your throat, and so on) or when your mind tells you to fear being taunted or when there are reasonable worries about losing a job. Conversely, if you’re rudderless or unanchored in your actions, ignorant of your core beliefs, you might find it harder to leverage your strengths, skills, and allies to meet the demands of a difficult situation.
To help yourself through hardship and inspire moral courage, ask yourself why you rebelled in the first place. Remind yourself of the beliefs that set your moral compass. Beliefs that prompted you to step up and dissent. “I got into fighting sexual abuse because I was sick of seeing women, especially children, go through all of that pain, with oftentimes no conviction of the culprit,” Goddard clarified. She reflected on her desire for justice, her belief that survivors needed a voice, her desire to live in a country where women and men receive equal protection under the law. It was personal. “I knew I had to reveal that I had been sexually assaulted myself. I was sick of it being some big secret, and still am to this day. It was very painful to re-live my past, but it was so beneficial for so many rape victims.” Making your own pain a springboard to help others can be personally healing and meaningful. She sought to make society better for other women. Armed with the underlying motivations behind her purpose, Goddard could steel herself in difficult moments by reflecting on what she was trying to accomplish in taking on the status quo.
Take out a blank sheet of paper and make lists of the following: (1) the people and things that are most important to you; (2) details about your current purpose in life (for Goddard, it was helping rape survivors receive dignified treatment and justice); and (3) the core values that underlie your purpose. Spend some time and really think about these lists. Write down as much as you can. Keep your answers nearby as a talisman to remind you of what you uncovered. A statement or manifesto in your wallet or on the wallpaper of your smartphone might work, something that evokes why principled insubordination is worth the pain. The following exercises will spur your thinking and help you populate the three lists.
Clarifying What and Who Is Important
1. Who are the people you would most like to thank? Think hard about how they helped you, how they served as a role model, and what parts of your identity they reinforced.
2. Who is the wisest person you know? Think hard about what is it that you admire and seek to emulate.
3. What do you think is your main purpose in life?
4. What makes you strong? Think about the stack of capacities that together allow you to obtain excellent results on a regular basis, whether when working, socializing, playing, or living. Everyone has a profile of strengths. Know yours. Own it.
5. If with a wave of a magic wand all of your insecurities disappeared, what would you be doing differently?
6. If you had unlimited money, what would you be doing differently?
7. Imagine you could achieve anything—what would it be and why?
8. At the end of your life, what do you want to be remembered for?
Value Trade-Offs to Know Yourself
1. Which of these would be most difficult for you to accept?
_____ the death of a parent?
_____ the death of a sibling?
_____ the death of a spouse?
2. Which would you prefer to give up if you had to?
_____ economic freedom
_____ religious freedom
_____ political freedom
3. Which would you least like to be?
_____ a rifleman firing point-blank at the charging enemy
_____ a bomber on a plane dropping napalm on an enemy village
_____ publicly branded a coward by your own community
4. Which would you least like to be?
_____ poor
_____ sick
_____ disfigured
5. Which would you prefer?
_____ a short, impactful life with a peaceful death
_____ a long, non-impactful life with a peaceful death
_____ a long, impactful life with a slow and painful death
6. Which would be the most painful way to spend the rest of your days?
_____ being unable to remember anything
_____ being unable to forget anything
_____ reliving only a single memory over and over again
7. Which type of romantic partner would bother you the most?
_____ one who spends frivolously
_____ one who interrupts constantly
_____ one who is very messy
8. How do you learn best?
_____ independent reading and study
_____ lectures
_____ discussions with others
9. Which is most important in a friendship?
_____ honesty
_____ generosity
_____ loyalty
10. How would you most like to spend a Saturday?
_____ alone on an activity you are passionate about
_____ with people you love, doing something you don’t care about
_____ with acquaintances doing something novel and fun
11. Which do you respect most in others?
_____ intelligence
_____ kindness
_____ humor
12. If there were no negative effects, which of the following would you most want to give up?
_____ eating
_____ sleeping
_____ exercising
13. Which of the following would you least like?
_____ being confined to a single room for the rest of your life
_____ never being allowed indoors for the rest of your life
_____ going anywhere you choose but only allowed to visit loved ones for six months a year
Step 2: “What unwanted thoughts, feelings, memories, and bodily sensations am I experiencing?” (Get in Touch with Your Discomfort)
Now that you checked in with your motivations for dissenting, challenge yourself to register the unpleasant or negative emotions experienced. Make yourself aware of why you will benefit from mental fortitude. If you’re Martha Goddard receiving angry messages from feminists upset about your affiliation with Hugh Hefner, you’re probably feeling a gamut of emotions: shock, worry, fear, guilt, frustration, indignation, doubt, hopelessness, disappointment. Your mind might trail off into a whirlwind of self-defeating thoughts about yourself, your personality, the quality of your relationships with others, your future prospects, and so on. Physically, you might feel the signs and symptoms of distress—dry mouth, racing heart, shortness of breath, sweaty palms. As painful as all of this might be, chart the dimensions of your experience as fully as you can. As many discover, doing so can feel oddly liberating. The mental torture you’ve inflicted on yourself will come out in the open. When it does, your torture techniques lose some of their potency. Conversely, when we don’t acknowledge the distress that arises from challenging conventional thinking, we become weaker and less effective.
The more specific you can be in describing your experience of adversity, the better. As my research has shown, it’s difficult to identify and label the myriad of emotions experienced on a regular basis, but skillfulness at “emotion labeling” can prove extremely helpful. In one study, my colleagues and I asked participants to report intense negative experiences they had in daily life on a handheld computer. Those adept at labeling the specific emotions they felt consumed 40 percent less alcohol during a stress-induced drinking episode than participants who weren’t. In other studies, we found that people who had been emotionally hurt by others and who were better at distinguishing their negative feelings were 20 percent (in one study) and 50 percent (in a second study) less likely to retaliate with verbal or physical aggression. In yet another study, people adept at describing their feelings over the course of two weeks were better able to handle experiences of rejection. They showed similar levels of brain region activation in areas linked to psychic and physical pain (the insula and anterior cingulate cortex) regardless of whether a stranger welcomed or rejected them in a video game. When you label your emotions effectively, you feel calmer in the face of stressful life events, and unwanted distressing mental content seems less bothersome. You become more capable of deciding what to do next.
As research suggests, training people to label their emotions more effectively increases resilience. In one study, researchers trained spider-fearing individuals to precisely label emotions they felt when observing a spider (e.g., “in front of me is an ugly spider and it is disgusting, nerve-wracking, and yet, intriguing”). Participants trained to precisely label emotions spent more time physically handling spiders and felt less flustered during the experience than others trained to distract themselves or generate positive thoughts. A week later, trained to describe their feelings proficiently, these participants could approach a stressful situation irrespective of the amount of disgust or fear they felt.
For rebels, emotion labeling has a number of specific benefits. First, labeled emotions become easier to manage. Felt emotions become manageable or harnessed into goal-directed energy. For instance, anger might make you speak with more volume, inflection, and confidence during a legal proceeding. For anxious people, labeling emotions makes events less scary. Second, the act of using words to describe what you feel conveys information about the situation and possible courses of action. Third, by improving the management of intense, distressing emotions, you become less likely to dedicate energy toward controlling emotions. Instead, you channel energy toward more meaningful life pursuits. My research team found that combat veterans who organize their lives around trying to manage their emotions experience less joy and meaning. Further, they contribute less effort toward and make less progress toward their most important goals. As you worry less about feeling worried, you have extra energy to dedicate to specific tasks related to your principled insubordination.
