Ubercaring

I don’t know why I care so much. I don’t consider it a mark of superior character to care about everything from the war in Afghanistan to my daughter’s problems with her renter and everything in between, to the extent that I could lie awake for two hours in the night thinking about all the things that need to be fixed in the world.

Some people are constitutionally constructed to care more than others. The Ubercarers are often women, fitting into one of those Enneagram categories that describe a set of coping mechanisms we’ve developed in childhood. I’m not really a helper Two or a worrier Six, more an observer Five, but still, I often care more than is useful.

Ubercaring is marked by mulling over things you can’t, or won’t ever, do anything about. And by thinking a lot about other people’s lives and problems. But most of all, you may be an Ubercarer if your mood often sinks to a level that seems to match the state of the world, whether it is the nuclear crisis in Japan or the latest crisis in your nuclear family.

The sinking mood is the curse of Ubercaring. Whatever the situation is, feeling bad about it probably won’t help and may even make things worse. Many well-intentioned people believe they need to feel bad about the world in order to do what is needed but—maybe it’s just me--I have found the opposite is true. Feeling bad paralyzes me. And feeling bad is contagious. It spreads to those around me.

So I look for coping mechanisms to address my own Ubercaring. One of them is Byron Katie’s method, which she calls The Work, described first and best in her book Loving What Is. I won’t go into it except to say it is Buddhist detachment made everyday-practical, just the thing a Practical Mystic might recommend.  It’s mainly a cure for judging and blaming others, but it’s also an antidote to Ubercaring.

My other antidotes to Ubercaring have to do with shifting out of thought and into feeling, and letting the bad feelings dissipate. For instance:

A beauty soak. I am sitting on my porch at dawn, in the presence of trees. A rooster crows, the wood thrush trills. Lalo-cat hovers nearby. Rather than wishing for the world to shift and change to suit what I think should happen, I bask in the beauty that is present. I absorb it. I see it. I become it.

A hot bath often works the same way. Or a swim in a cold lake. A walk down a gravel road. A bike ride over the hills. (No wonder my sprained ankle is making me grouchy. It has immobilized me for a few days.)

But sometimes I have to let the bad feelings rise to the surface first. Cry. Or rage. It's ok, they are just feelings.

Meditation is good if I am truly able to stop my thoughts. Breathing, opening myself. Prayer, but not wish-prayers. Prayer as waiting for what comes.

Sometimes, after the mulling worries have stopped and the feelings have shifted, solutions and ideas rise to the surface. Things I can do, things I can try. Sometimes they don’t. But at least I move back into the world knowing that I am much less likely to make things worse.