Stop dress rehearsing tragedy!
How many times have you played out in your head a tragic and graphic scenario where you lose your partner, or one of your children?
Has it ever felt so real that you have cried and ran through how you would cope and what life would look like after that? Or, knowing that indulging in catastrophic thoughts isn’t good for any of us, do you have some strategies that you use to stop your mind from “going there”?
No matter how useless “dress rehearsing tragedy” may be, it would be difficult to find any parent who hasn’t done it. Maybe you’ve scrolled past a facebook or Instagram post about tragedy befalling a friend, family member, or friend of a friend, and it taking you by surprise, you have broken down with the grief and gratitude that it wasn’t you.
Just because it can be upsetting, it’s not a good reason not to do something
When clients tell me that they have been putting off getting their Wills done because the task is “too big”, or they “don’t want to think about it” it is hard not to judge this though process as being negligent. But also simplistic, because you’re likely having these thoughts anyway.
I know that I do, and I cannot bear to think about how life would look for all of us if tragedy visited our family. Since creating Head and Heart Estate Planning I have been spending a lot of time in my own thoughts contemplating what my clients’ fears are, and how I might help them through them. But what has actually happened many times in this process is that I have been caught entertaining my own “worst case scenario” thoughts, and facing my own fears, and it has been truly been very distressing at times. I love Nick and the kids so much, just like you all love our own families too. When I assisted my own Dad with some advice recently I had the awful thought that maybe I was “jinxing” him by discussing it! And this thought took me completely by surprise, I have heard it from clients many times but this was the first time I had that dread myself.
You are negligent if you don’t have an Estate Plan
I believe a fundamental truth about the work that I do is that not having a Will is negligent. Every single person should have a Will, Powers of Attorney, and every couple and family should have death literacy discussions: no excuses, and no exceptions. No matter how difficult the thoughts and discussions you have to get there may be.
Is ignorance bliss?
I do worry however that if I compel clients and the wider community to contemplate their death, or incapacity, what if I leave them worse than when they came to me? I know for certain that having their legal documents sorted will make any death or tragedy that they face infinitely better, but what about their life before that tragedy? Who am I to disturb the blissful ignorance we can live in by not thinking about death until it announces itself in our families through cancer, disease, heart attack, injury, accident, and any other door it chooses to take into our lives…
Many clients say that they feel better after having their Estate Planning finished, that the worry of not having it done was much worse and more burdensome than actually doing it. But doing an Estate Plan will not stop the catastrophising that we do in our mind, or the guilt felt when we see someone else suffering and we know that we have it “too good”.
So, what do I encourage you to do when we finish our work together?
How to overcome catastrophic thoughts
Firstly, I want you to know that catastrophic thoughts that are regular and debilitating can be a sign of anxiety. If you are not sure if the amount of time that you spend, and the anguish that you put yourself through imagining these “worst case scenarios” for your family is normal, have it checked out by going to see a psychologist or a GP to discuss it.
Secondly, begin to be conscious of how often and when you do it. And ask yourself, why? What purpose does it serve when it certainly doesn’t actually prevent any sort of tragedy befalling you. Perhaps you have reached your “upper limit” of your tolerance to experience joy and your thoughts are bringing your into your more natural state of worry.
Gay Hendricks’ exploration of this in his book “The Big Leap” is excellent reading on this theory.
Brene Brown has a similar and excellent theory. She calls catastrophising thoughts “dress rehearsing tragedy”. She says that to feel true joy, we must actively practise gratitude. And when we practise gratitude, we must acknowledge how vulnerable we are, and that the source of our joy could be taken away from us at any time, and so we try to beat vulnerability to the punch by “dress rehearsing” tragedy. Brene Brown discusses this with Oprah here: https://youtu.be/RKV0BWSPfOw
But, not letting ourselves feel in our hearts the full potential of joy in our own lives will not stop any death or tragedy in our own fate or future. It will only lessen the joy that we experienced while we had it all in front of us.
So, the answer according to Brene is that when you start to feel worry, or foreboding that instead of dress rehearsing tragedy, you need to practise gratitude. Gay Hendricks says that we can increase our upper limit tolerance for joy by being aware when we are hitting an old upper limit, acknowledging it, but not being constrained by it.
Actively practising gratitude and mindfulness are two things that I am working on in my own life, and I will share how in another blog soon.
In the meantime, if you would like to work with a lawyer who can look after both the legal and emotional aspects of Estate Planning: this is my special area of expertise. You can book a free chat here: https://www.headandheartestateplanning.com.au or an appointment to work with me here: https://www.headandheartestateplanning.com.au/work-with-us