Organize Your Mind, Organize Your Life by Margaret Moore

constant crisis mode. “What does your son say about all this?” I asked.
    She rolled her eyes again. “He says, ‘Mom, stop stressing out.’ Easy for him to say.”
    I had a feeling her son is right. I was hearing disorganization here, yes, but I was also hearing anxiety and worry, and I was glad that her son had articulated it. I jumped on that.
    â€œWhy do you think he said that?”
    She pondered the question a couple of seconds. “I guess I overreacted to getting to the game late,” she said. “I told him that because of his video game he’d be thrown off the team, and so I told him no Xbox for a month. But I also called the coach and told him it was totally unfair to bench my son anyway. He’s been playing really well, and so what if he was late a few minutes a couple of times. Who isn’t? I mean the traffic alone….”
    Then, striking a mildly defensive tone, she sat up straight in her chair and added, “And in fairness to me, I do have a lot to be stressed about. And isn’t that normal in this day and age?”
    â€œWell, it’s not about what’s ‘normal’; it’s about what’s right for you,” I said. “And as you’ve been talking about how disorganized your life is, it does sound as if your stress level has been equally high.”
    She nodded her head in agreement. (This was important—I was glad to see her acknowledge the emotion.)
    I continued, “So you’re feeling disorganized and you’ve also been really stressed and anxious. One of the important questions at a given moment or during a given day is what comes first…the disorganization or the anxiety?”
    She raised her eyebrows as she pondered that. I went on.
    â€œThey can fuel each other. You might see that one precedes the other or one makes the other much worse. For example, if you hadn’t felt so…what was the word— panicked ?…about him continuing to play the video games even after you’d arrived home late…or to his being benched…you probably would have found a better approach in dealing with both him and the coach.”
    She nodded. “I guess so…maybe.”
    â€œWhat I’d like you to start doing is keeping track of this balance or imbalance of stress and disorganization,” I said. “Take a reading of your stress, day to day. Think about when you’re stressed, how often it happens, what you are feeling and what you are thinking at the time, and see if you can identify patterns. The first thing we might need to do is get a handle on that stress and anxiety. I suspect that will give us a better starting place to work on organization.”
    This was just a small start. As with any patient, all of this would require work; there were other issues, and I don’t want to imply that one appointment made all the problems in her life go away. However, this was an important first step in tackling her sense of feeling overwhelmed and disorganized and that her life was in “shambles.” Eileen’s reaction to these situations was part of the problem. It wasn’t that she got “stressed out” because everything was in total shambles; she got stressed out first and, very often, disorganization followed and increased from there.
    It didn’t have to be that way; getting a handle on her emotions was the first step—and I’m happy to say, she has made great progress in doing exactly that.
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    THE FEELING BRAIN…THE THINKING BRAIN
    Sometimes it may seem, as it did to Eileen, that we are totally ruled by our emotions. Not true. Your brain has spent a lifetime evolving and has the inherent capacity to handle your frenzy. It can allow the emotions to enrich our lives and not wreak havoc on them. Remember that the human brain has developed from a very rudimentary organ, with primitive reactive abilities, to one that is stunning in its complexity and