Pandemic Personality 2.0: COVID Coping - Keeping It Together (while we remain apart)

                                        Quotable Quotes, Opposite Orientations                                                                            "I'm losing it!"                                              "I'm keeping it together"                                                            "When will we get there?!                            "Two minutes closer than when you last asked"                        "She's a hot mess!"                                        "She's got it all figured out"                                                      "I'm clueless!"                                               "I'm figuring it out..."                                                                "I'm lost"                                                        "I know where I'm heading..."                                                  "He finds a problem for every solution"        "He can think outside the box..."

Character Counts: Two personality characteristics that distinguish between individuals who tend to cope better (including under pandemic like circumstances) include ambiguity tolerance and locus of control. These dimensions of personality explain quite a bit about a person's approach to their daily lives, and in turn impact on their respective circumstances. That is, they are both the 'chicken' and the 'egg', both a cause and an effect. 

Dazed, Confused? Early in graduate school, as aspiring psychologists, we learned that a person's ability (and willingness) to tolerate ambiguity (aka uncertainty) is a sign of good mental health. That is, not 'freaking out' when you can't initially see a clear pathway or solution, highly related to what we routinely refer to as frustration tolerance. An attribute of a good problem solver is to identify known and unknown variables, to utilize the known in a quest to solve for the unknown. A vivid 'real time' opportunity to observe this in my office is via psychometric assessments, which incorporate novel problem solving scenarios: there are those individuals who, when confronting a confusing or otherwise perplexing problem, resort to a haphazard, trial-and-error approach; others pause, reflect on what they have learned from the initial effort, and try a different approach; others repeat a previously failed approach over again, expecting a different result (definition of insanity?). And, of course, there are those, who at the first sign of trouble, 'shut down'. Which category do you tend to fall into, especially throughout 2020 so far? The extreme opposite, which is putting up with ambiguity too long, when you need to make a choice, can also be maladaptive, a source of psychological decline. The latter tends to happen more often when we are faced with two negative alternatives (risk management) and wait around until a more attractive option might appear.

In the Stars? A second, related personality characteristic (relatively easy to measure via interviewing and self-ratings) has to do with the degree to which we perceive our lives to be under our own (versus external) control. Namely, locus of control. For example, people who believe that "hard work generally pays off" in contrast with those who have adopted "it's all up to chance, to the alignment of the stars" reflects a more internal and external orientation, respectively. Generally speaking, people with a relatively internal LOC enjoy more robust mental health. There are important exceptions, such as when people have endured horrific upbringings and/or traumatic events completely out of their control ("not your fault"), which is still hopefully a starting point for identifying opportunities to assume better control.

Looking Forward: The foregoing dimensions of personality (I will introduce you to more here in the future, so come back) are highly relevant to how each of us continue to cope with our ongoing COVID circumstances. Just consider, for instance, how many times you have heard (or uttered) the refrain, "I've had enough of this; I'm just going to to do what I want!" Compare this to those, less visible to us, who continue to persevere through long days and nights, incorporating what they have learned from 'failed trials' in ultimately providing us with a (partial) pathway out of this mess in the form of a vaccine. Which characterizes you? Which do you aspire to? How might we be further transformed by these circumstances? Worth thinking about; maybe a matter of surviving, even 'thriving'...