Adequacy

Human beings calm down when they believe-feel-think that they control their environment. Foreseeing the future, knowing in advance what will happen gives us the feeling of safety that calms the physiological reactions, shared with animals, as does the perception of danger: fight, flee, freeze. But, given the present situation where the information we have not only changes day to day but also from source to source, and we don’t know for sure what information about outside reality is trustworthy and which isn’t, or with what emotional and bodily immunological resources each of us counts on because we’ve never been exposed (in most cases) to a remotely similar situation, the possibility to foresee the future, and therefore, to feel in “control” to calm down is hampered.

Flexibility and the ability to change in order to adjust our behavior to the new information about external reality as well as our internal resources are the human abilities that are most needed to navigate these times of uncertainty and danger that seem to change every moment.