How Your Brain Can Adapt In Difficult Times

During the 1930s and early ‘40s, a  whole generation in succession experienced the stress of the Great Depression and then World War II.  You may have parents, grandparents, or perhaps great – grandparents who have personal recollections of that difficult time.  In spite of the hardship people of that generation endured, hopelessness and despair were much less common then than they are today.

Nevertheless, there are many people today who continue to function in the face of serious difficulties.

As an example, think about Kayla, a single mother in her early thirties who worked as a fashion designer for a Wisconsin-based children apparel manufacturer.  Her life at the time was hard enough as a result of a painful divorce, loneliness, and a worldview that made worrying a constant companion even when things were going well.  But matters became much worse when, during the recession of 2000, she lost her job, in the first of what proved to be many layoffs at her company.

How did Kayla cope?  She channeled her fear and energy into the day-to-day problems of looking after her daughter.  More than a year later, she responded to an ad from a children’s toy company.  Getting the new job was the catalyst to turning her life around.  She is now remarried and very happy.

Conditions outside your control can change very quickly and unexpectedly.  Despair is a terrible poison, because it can blind you to unanticipated possibilities when they suddenly appear.  Losing hope shuts down the parts of your mind that are trying to adapt.  It keeps you from changing and tragically can become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Can childlike methods solve adult problems?  Some experts claim that adults learn in markedly different ways from children.  This idea seems to argue against applying findings from research with children to adult problems.  In reality, do adults and children learn in the same way?  In fact some brain training and memory training methods use the mind’s amazing ability to imagine or think in pictures.  With such memory techniques, using such child-like brain imaging methods, adults who have difficulty with memory or recall have developed amazing memory ability and vastly improved memory.  Children have an amazing ability to adapt their behavior and their thinking to the increasingly complex world that they are always facing.  As adults, we have not lost our childhood ability to adapt.  On the contrary, we have added years of formal education and real-world experience to what we could do as children.  Unless some kind of external pressure has caused us to repress the skills that we already have, adults become better at adaptation than children.

Whether they realize it or not, adults sometimes prefer not to change.  Change can be difficult because people face it with so much reluctance.  Adults often have good reason to resist change.  They may genuinely believe that their old familiar way of thinking is better than any newer alternative.  If it is not broken, why fix it? Alternatively, as people get older, they may feel that adaptation is just not worth it.  The unpleasantness of giving up an old trusted way of thinking or the uncertainty of trying something new may be too great.  Adults sometimes need to “mourn” what no longer works.  You need to recognize that an idea is no longer working, experience the regret, and then let go.  The ability to adapt can open the door to a better future.