Why patience is NOT a virtue (and you're NOT a bad person)
As I was waiting for jury duty this week, I made a conscious effort to manage my anxiety with mental fitness practices (e.g., emotional awareness, controlled breathing, accepting what I cannot control, drinking plenty of water, wearing comfortable clothes, reading a book, etc.)…
That got me thinking about why patience is NOT a virtue, as so many of us have been taught and told.
Struggling does NOT make you a bad person
During Mental Health Awareness Month (and always), it's important to be aware that mental health is NOT a matter of morality but rather a matter of neurological function that can be impacted by any number of internal and external factors.
Patience is just one of the many higher neurological “executive” functions drive by the brain, namely the prefrontal cortex. The prefrontal cortex powers conscious mental functions like impulse control and emotional regulation (i.e., patience) that require conscious effort, and accounts for only 5-10% of brain activity.
This is why it’s so important to understand and accept the inner workings of our human brains and bodies to reduce the shame and stigma so often attached to thoughts, feelings, and behaviors (as though we should always have complete conscious control) to improve mental health, function, performance, and outcomes (even when unhealthful influences are beyond our control).
Why practicing patience isn’t always easy
Like any other organ and bodily function, your prefrontal cortex requires proper energy, care, and development to function well and healthfully.
Due to how your nervous system works to keep you alive without conscious effort (thank goodness!), your conscious nervous system receives neurological signals AFTER your unconscious (or autonomic) nervous system. Your autonomic nervous system is what drives your unconscious stress response, emotions, and other bodily functions without conscious effort. This unconscious neurological activity accounts for 90-95% of brain activity.
It’s also important to note that the prefrontal cortex isn't fully developed until around the age of 25 (depending on individual development), which is why proper understanding, care, guidance, and support are so critical in childhood and adolescence to help develop healthful neuropathways that forge our thought patterns, perceptions, habits, and behaviors, before we have the conscious ability to do so on our own.
Without proper understanding, care, and support, we can develop unhealthful neuropathways early in life that drive unhealthful thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, and make it much harder to redirect them in healthful ways later in life.
This is why practicing patience requires conscious understanding and effort to energize and activate whatever powers of the prefrontal cortex we have, that can be extra difficult without proper development, understanding, care, or support.
Neurodiversity impacts patience too
Practicing patience can be even MORE challenging when our nervous system is impacted by any number of health and/or developmental factors.
From lack of sleep, nutrition, safety, or support to alcohol, caffeine, hormone imbalance, or inflammation to anxiety, depression, ADHD, OCD, PTSD, FASD, Autism, or dementia to abuse, trauma, or grief (or any combination of the above, and then some); ALL impact neurological processing and mental function, including patience.
This is why how you navigate stress — to feel and do YOUR best — depends on what YOUR brain, body, and nervous system need to function healthfully.
It’s important to know that when you (or someone else) lose patience — whether waiting in line, in traffic, for answers, for help, etc. — it's a neurological signal that healthful care and support are needed. It’s a signal that we must PRIORITIZE our mental health, NOT that you (or they) are a bad person.
Knowing this, you'll find how POWERFUL it can be when you accept how you (and others) feel as a neurological signal that must be understood even when it’s not easy, that will help you navigate and regulate your stress response to energize your prefrontal cortex (and theirs) in the process.
If you'd like to learn more about how to PROactively promote mental health and fitness, to shed the shame and stigma that hold so many of us back from feeling and doing our best, let's connect!