You Tend, I’ll Befriend and We’ll Both Try Not to Crashout.

Since my last post, my AP Psych students and I have marched on to Unit 5: Mental and Physical Health (you ight know this as abnormal or clinical psychology). Equipped with Freud’s framework for overanalyzing ourselves, we’re digging into stress responses and coping strategies. 

While some of us are running the gauntlet of defense mechanisms, our healthier, more adjusted friends find time to send a thoughtful text, invite others for a meal, or lovingly coerce others into moments of community, not as a way to solve anything (because Lord knows what the clowns in DC will decide today), but as a way to decrease anxiety by increasing community.

“What are you doing for dinner tonight? Want to grab a bite?”

“Hey, let’s go get shisha this afternoon.”

“Are you still in town? Why don’t we crowdsource snacks and watch a horror movie on the couch?”

“I’m going to call my sisters for a bit (and by a bit, I mean for 2 hours).” 

Ask me a few years ago and I would’ve said these are all pretty standard texts between friends. Today however, I think these actions are a glimpse of  what is known as the  “tend and befriend” stress response. It’s kind of in the name but more formally the theory, proposed by Dr. Shelley Taylor in 2000 states that, “humans respond to stress by nurturing others (tending) and seeking social support (befriending).”

When I hear “tend and befriend” I envision a garden. I picture a faceless gardener in a plaid shirt and floppy hat, bent over some green stalks, carefully pulling out weeds, lovingly tilling earth, and dottingly  sprinkling water on the bed of soil. 

Over the last few weeks, the faceless gardner has taken shape. In the UAE, my friend Ami was quick to organize a dinner, movie night, and drop off some snacks with a hug. My boy, Phil, often organized group workouts followed by dinner, with an open invite to anyone who wants to pop by.When we shifted to Thailand, I found myself taking on a gardener role, ensuring our rental was equipped with snacks Nate could wolf down and organizing dinners with our impromptu community of colleagues who all happened to be remote teaching on Koh Lanta. 

It would be easy to interpret these actions as compartmentalization or sublimation, but a more generous assessment might apply Dr. Shelley's theory which suggests that some of the healthiest ways of coping with stress is through nurturing community. In this belief system, interdependence is not a sign of weakness but rather an essential component of survival. 

That's said, much of the way we manage stress in modern society is tainted by gender expectations and cultural norms. It's easy to attribute “tend and befriend” to women as they are often viewed as the care givers and nurturers in our society. In many households, a mothering type emerges and the burden of tending to the needs of everyone in the home is placed on that person. Although gender norms certainly influence the way care shows up in the world, picking up groceries, running the kids to the park, cooking butter chicken mac and cheese, or smack talking during a Wrestle Mania viewing session are equally valuable contributions. 

While in the West one person might carry the load, in more collectivist cultures duties of care are disseminated among group members. In such communities, individual feelings about a traumatic event or the loss of a loved one are secondary to the collective –what does the community need in that moment and how can we support that? Of course that can lead to problematic things like gaslighting or tribalism, but in general, research shows that decentering oneself can lead to increased emotional regulation, a shift in perspective, healthier relationships, and greater overall happiness. 

As someone who has worked in an international context through Covid-19 and now a regional war, I’m acutely aware of the potential clash of approaches to stress and crisis management. Do we make space for each individual's experiences and corresponding emotions knowing these vary from calm to crashout or do we charge ahead with schedules, agendas and meetings, knowing routine can support healthy regulation?

This past Thursday, faculty and staff reconvened on campus for a two-day training, seven weeks after the campus was closed. Our leadership tried their best to juggle all the aforementioned factors as they labored to get us ready to face students next week. 

At that moment I was reminded of another pertinent aspect of this conversation: problem-focused coping and emotion-focused coping. As indicated by its name, problem-focused coping seeks to assess and evaluate a given problem and work towards possible solutions. Your car breaks down; you call AAA. You wake up with a congestion, a splitting headache and a sore throat; you break out the netti-pot, douse yourself in essential oils, and start gargling salt water. It’s faaaaar more difficult to problem solve when the problem is missile interceptions in the sky that  shake your window panes. You aren’t likely to “problem solve” when two heads of state are building blockades to block other blockades.  

This is where emotion-focused coping comes into play as its foundation is emotional regulation or at least leveraging strategies such as meditation, deep breathing, or even taking medication to manage the tumultuous feelings running amok. As you can guess, those of us most directly impacted by the conflict in the Gulf can't reason, purchase or lawyer our way out of the situation. We're facing a barrage of emotions at any given moment and trying to navigate this weird, ambiguous season that has no real end in sight. For us, this isn't about gas prices. 

As a student succinctly put it, “we should problem-solve for event-based situations and use emotion-based coping for everything else.” 

On Monday after forty-two days of online learning, I will welcome back my students to in-person learning. I'm hyper aware of the range of emotions walking into the classroom. I have no idea who will be there as a handful of students are still abroad, others are stuck in the States until the embassy gives the all clear on their return, and some have opted to remain home due to safety concerns. 

Teachers are expected to balance social emotional well-being with academics, while also reviewing our new safety protocols and emergency procedures and managing their own nerves. Reminiscent of American active-shooter drills, I'm trying to stifle the anxiety threatening to surface. Somehow protecting myself against falling debris feels more ominous than responding to a gunman. 

All I can really do for my students is ensure my own emotions are somewhat regulated, my lesson plans offer a few pathways for students in their various mental states, and I radiate confidence with a  “we're in this together” vibe sprinkled in.