Yes—coronavirus has cost many their livelihoods…and even their lives. But in the West, as countries were locked down and stay-at-home orders were issued, the wheels of a “Quiet revolution”—to use the term coined byauthor Susan Cain—were turning.
While countless extroverts bemoaned the lockdowns and the loss of freedom, some introverts viewed social isolation as not deprivation, but rather as an opportunity for quality time activities and peaceful reflection.
An introvert living in an extrovert world
In her celebrated book on introversion, Quiet, Cain notes that Western cultures tend to favor the Extrovert Ideal:
“the omnipresent belief that the ideal self is gregarious, alpha, and comfortable in the spotlight. The archetypal extrovert prefers action to contemplation, risk-taking to heed-taking, certainty to doubt. He favors quick decisions, even at the risk of being wrong. She works well in teams and socializes in groups.”
Consequently, when we introverts are measured against the Extrovert Ideal, we are often found to be lacking:
“Introversion—along with its cousins sensitivity, seriousness, and shyness—is now a second-class personality trait, somewhere between a disappointment and a pathology. Introverts living under the Extrovert Ideal are like women in a man’s world, discounted because of a trait that goes to the core of who they are. Extroversion is an enormously appealing personality style, but we’ve turned it into an oppressive standard to which most of us feel we must conform.” (Cain, 2012)
Growing up in societies that celebrate the Extrovert Ideal and mislabel anyone who doesn’t subscribe to that Ideal as “antisocial” has left many of us with feelings of inferiority.
Despite the fact our brains are wired differently from birth, the introvert’s preference for contemplating life instead of diving headlong into it often earns us dismissal.
The ‘Quiet revolution’ is here
Under scrutiny, introverts have been long forced to conceal and overcompensate for their unique natures.
Then, almost overnight, the coronavirus pandemic made social isolation the new norm, one infinitely more comfortable to the introvert.
Those privileged enough to hold onto their jobs and allowed to work from home were granted a reprieve from open-plan offices and thus sensory and small talk bombardment.
Suddenly, we were allowed to attend Zoom meetings from the comfort of our bedrooms—often while wearing pajama bottoms, no less.
As someone myself who is on the autism spectrum and has sensory sensitivities, Zoom has become a cherished substitute for face-to-face interaction.
(And let’s not forget other fringe benefits for the socially anxious, such as having acquaintances’ names listed below video feeds, in the event we forget).
The rise in remote working has put a pause on the much-loathed commute. Where before we introverts may have felt forced to spend a lot of our downtime recuperating from these various stresses, we can now apply ourselves to our activities and interests with renewed energy.
Meanwhile, social lives that might have once entailed exposure to overstimulating circumstances have also been placed on hiatus.
Introverts can now pick how and when they engage, measuring out social interactions in thimble-sized doses, over the phone, instant messages, or at a socially distanced hangout.
Extroverts living in an introvert’s world
Separated from the social contexts in which they have long excelled, many extroverts have understandably floundered.
Those who previously maintained their sense of self—and in turn their personal wellbeing—through social interactions have been forced to adopt a more solitary lifestyle.
The struggle of this transition is most visible in the endless parades of newfound skills on social media, the most prominent example being baking.
This phenomenon I believe is less an act of social performance than proof of the extrovert’s continued existence. It speaks as much to an existing sense of isolation that predated coronavirus (and which was accelerated by the rise of social media) as it does the degree to which that isolation has since grown.
But extroverts alone are not suffering from the side effects of our new lockdown culture.
Being social creatures, it is safe to say that our collective need for companionship is arguably greater than ever.
Introverts’ inherent tendency towards solitary activities must thus be tempered, lest our circumstances lead to a complete lapse in social interaction.
Toward an ‘Introvert Ideal’
The coronavirus pandemic has seen some promising steps taken toward a different status quo, one that is, in many regards, shaped towards the introvert’s need for less stimulation.
It’s not yet clear how much of this new introvert-friendly normal will endure, post-coronavirus.
The Extrovert Ideal won’t renounce its place on the pedestal any time soon. And yet if the pandemic has proved anything, it’s that we introverts are not in fact operating from a place of lack.
Rather, we have unique strengths that have served us well in a time of great isolation and uncertainty.
There will come a time when an Introvert Ideal will receive its due. Until then, may the Quiet revolution continue.
To find out if you’re an introvert, check out this quick quiz devised by Quiet author Susan Cain.
Essy Knopf is a therapist who likes to explore what it means to be neurodivergent and queer. Subscribe to get all new posts sent directly to your inbox.
As a teenager, I was anxious, isolated, and afflicted with insomnia.
Most days I spent indoors, indulging in geek interest escapism. Sometimes I would craft elaborate fantasy and science fiction stories. Other times I would voraciously consume books, movies, and video games.
Refuge could also be found, of all places, in hammering out essays at the computer. (That such projects could bring order to my otherwise unpredictable school and home life probably speaks to the systematizing nature of my autistic brain.)
The downside of my constant computer use was that relaxing became difficult. A day spent glued to my screen would inevitably leave my mind restless, my sleep broken.
Without friends, family, and a community to ground me, my self-worth became proportional to my productivity. There was always more to do, one more task needing completion.
Trapped in a vicious circle of feeling isolated, I sought reprieve in workaholism, which in turn only exacerbated my loneliness.
Living with constant internal pressure was motivating and could even be affirming. Just look at how productive I was being! So what if my peers at school bullied me – just look at these shiny achievements, these notches in my academic belt!
Caught on a treadmill of what I would later recognize as grandiosity, and terrified of the fall that would follow the moment I stepped off it, I became mired in anxiety and depression.
But rather than slowing down, I ramped up my commitments. At the height of my workaholism, I found myself juggling a full-time job, a feature documentary, a web series, a novel, and organizing two research trips abroad.
Getting to, and staying, asleep by this point had become an elaborate, multi-staged ritual, beginning with a double dose of Benadryl, followed by an hourlong walk around the neighborhood while I waited for it to take effect.
Sometimes I would end up at a 24-hour gym, working the elliptical until the fatigue hit me…unaware that all this activity was probably only making my objective all the more difficult.
When I got home, I’d pull my blackout curtains, slip on an eye mask, put in my earplugs, fit a pair of headphones, cue a soothing audio track, and lie down on a makeshift bed on the floor.
This, of all places, was the only place I was guaranteed to nod off, for reasons I still don’t understand. After many a tossing, turning and blanket adjustment, I’d doze off, only to wake a short while later.
Climbing into my real bed, I’d return to sleep, to rise the following morning, still tired but wired, ready to chip away at my ever-growing workload.
Some nights, however, I would doze off, only to be woken by a hypnic jerk, a kind of whole-body twitch typically preceded by the sensation of falling.
Again and again, I would doze off, only to be jerked wide awake. The steady background hum of anxiety would be cranked up into a shrill roar, putting sleep still further out of reach.
The journey towards recovery
Self-generated projects until this point had been the main source of meaning in my life, and yet they were as much a palliative as they were problematic.
The comparative ease with which others were able to accomplish sleeping – a basic bodily function – told me that something in my case had gone awry. Believing there was no recourse, however, I kept up my unwieldy sleep routine for years.
My mother’s staunch opposition to any form of dependency made prescription medication seem like a false option. Sure, I was already relying on Benadryl, but then again antihistamines weren’t habit-forming drugs.
And even supposing I could scrape together enough money to get a proper diagnosis, I would have to contend first with the fear that the professional I saw might dismiss my problem outright.
The situation reached a tipping point one night while I was doing my regular insomnia shuffle around the neighborhood, I became caught in a rainstorm.
Any sensible person would have run home, or at the very least ducked under the cover of a tree. But to return home before the Benadryl took effect would mean yet another sleepless night. So I pushed on.
The wind picked up, turning the rain horizontal. Next thing, it was inverting my umbrella, leaving me exposed to the elements.
After about half an hour of this, I surrendered and trudged home, sloughing off my dripping clothes and climbing into bed.
When sleep did not come, I grew increasingly anxious. The anxiety snowballed into hypnicjerks, which in turn fueled the anxiety.
The night stretched on, each hour punctuated by an anxious glance at my phone screen to check the time. Heavy with the dread of facing a new day unrested, I lay there, waiting for my morning alarm.
Come the following night, I still couldn’t sleep, and my insomnia ballooned into a record 50-hour spell that only ended with a no-refill script for Valium.
The doctor I saw granted me this small mercy on the condition I see a sleep specialist. The specialist in turn requested I visit a sleep clinic.
Two weeks later, I packed my bags like someone preparing for a red-eye flight and drove through the dead of the night to the evening ghost town of a local business district.
Strolling through a deserted highrise lobby I was overtaken by the peculiar feeling I was participating in some secretive, perhaps even illicit activity.
The elevator opened to the clinic’s front desk, where I was greeted by a man in scrubs who directed me to a sleeping cubicle.
After having changed into my pajamas, I stretched out on the bed as countless electrodes were attached to my head and chest until I resembled some primitive robot trailing electrical cables and hydraulic tubes.
Just how exactly did these people expect me to get to sleep?
The thought of it alone caused my anxiety to surface. Palming a pill, I settled into bed and waited for the heavy embrace of drug-induced sleep.
Seven hours later, I woke to the nurse removing electrodes. Hollow-eyed, I dressed then shuffled like a zombie from the room.
Treating insomnia
“So far as I can see,” the sleep specialist said, poring over my results, “you have a perfectly normal sleep cycle.”
I frowned my disagreement.
“So why am I struggling to fall asleep?” I pressed.
Alas, the specialist had no answer for me. Instead, he suggested an alternate treatment for my anxiety, something known as biofeedback.
A round of treatment would cost something in the range of five thousand dollars – an expense my insurance company was unwilling to subsidize.
With my wallet still smarting from the cost of other, unrelated illnesses, I turned to my final recourse: pharmacological treatment.
Explaining my long-standing problem to my psychiatrist, I caught myself making excuses.
“I don’t want to rely on drugs,” I said, “but this problem has gotten way out of control.”
“Well, it sounds like you’ve tried everything else,” my psychiatrist replied. “Don’t you think you deserve some relief?”
“Maybe,” I thought, feeling nevertheless that I had, in some unexplainable way, compromised my integrity.
With there being no one-size-fits-all medication for anxiety, I would now have to navigate a gauntlet of medications.
The most popular option was selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs). Think Lexapro, Prozac, and Zoloft.
Mainstream SSRIs however come with certain unpleasant side effects. After a couple of doses, my libido took a total nosedive.
The next recommendation was an antipsychotic medication that left me foggy-brained. One morning, while still under its spell, I pulled out into traffic, miscalculated my timing, and was almost hit by another car.
Fearing I might not be so lucky next time, I switched to a combination of antidepressants and antianxiety drugs. Thirty minutes after taking my first dose, I fell into a deep sleep.
When I woke eight hours later, it was to the discovery that the insomnia problem I had been battling for more than 15 years was, more or less, gone.
No more frazzled nerves, poor concentration, and feeling dead on my feet. As for the constant companion that was my anxiety? His hands had now been prized from the steering well and his butt relegated to the backseat.
Before, sitting down for 15 minutes to meditate had been an exercise in self-torture, my thoughts flinging themselves in every which way in a bid to escape any semblance of control.
With the current chemical cocktail, however, I was suddenly able to achieve some degree of focus.
Insomnia is a modern epidemic
Sure, these pulls could put a cap on my anxiety and insomnia – but they couldn’t completely suppress it.
In moments of stress and overcommitment, my mood disorder would flare up again, offering proof that if I wanted to truly get better, I would need to take a more holistic tack.
This in short would involve psychotherapy, undertaking a regular meditation practice, and making daily relaxation time a priority.
It also meant addressing ongoing insomnia triggers, such as an overreliance on digital devices, and workaholism as a coping mechanism for social isolation.
Even when faced with the physical and psychological manifestations of our stress, we often try to ignore them – much to our detriment.
Finding a solution that works for you
If there’s anything my journey to overcome insomnia has taught me, it’s that we can’t ignore our problems or rely on Band-Aid fixes.
Those of us who are looking to kick our sleep woes to the curb can find some relief by adopting one or more of the following changes:
Restricting device usage: Use the wellness feature on your Apple or Android devices (sometimes referred to as “night light”). This reduces the amount of blue light emitted around set times. This light can have the effect of keeping your brain in “awake” mode. It’s also worth turning on your phone’s do-not-disturb mode and enforcing a no-device usage rule around bedtime.
Practice good sleep hygiene: Create ideal conditions for sleeping. Go to bed and get up at a regular time. Ensure your bedroom is quiet, dark, relaxing, and comfortable. As an addendum to the first point, try to remove electronic devices from your sleeping space. Employ blue-light-free bulbs. Avoid large meals, caffeine, and alcohol before rest. Use your bedroom exclusively for sleeping. More tips here.
Consider psychotherapy: Therapy can provide a safe outlet for pent-up emotional tension, which can in turn affect your ability to sleep. Therapy can also support your efforts to develop coping strategies.
Stop overworking yourself: Identify an eight-hour daily working window. Use hacks to enhance your productivity. Exercise self-discipline to stop work spilling over into “you” time.
Make relaxation a priority: You can’t be productive if you’re feeling depleted. Replenish your inner reserves every day with fun and enriching activities. Catch up on your favorite TV show, take your dog to the park, or try a new recipe. Consider doing meditation, breathing exercises, or yoga to help you unwind. Adopt what Jon Kabat-Zinn calls a “non-striving” attitude.
Consider natural remedies: While Benadryl can assist with occasional insomnia, natural treatments like melatonin, valerian root, magnesium supplements, lavender, and passionflower extract may prove equally effective.
Explore additional help: Attend a sleep clinic. Explore alternate therapy options. Seek the guidance of a psychiatrist. Investigate prescription medication.
Essy Knopf is a therapist who likes to explore what it means to be neurodivergent and queer. Subscribe to get all new posts sent directly to your inbox.
As the coronavirus pandemic wears on, stories have emerged of survivors who continue to suffer chronic illness weeks and even months after recovering.
As anyone living with ongoing symptoms can attest, the challenge is never strictly physical. Being sick often carries a psychological toll, fueling stress, anxiety, and isolation.
Having myself suffered a gut disorder since my early teens, I know firsthand the restrictive – if not crippling – effect ongoing health problems can have.
What these experiences ultimately taught me however is that even when overcoming illness might seem impossible, fighting your own definition of “betterness” certainly isn’t.
An ailment unknown
From the age of 12, my stomach became permanently bloated and tender, my digestion troubled.
After a family dinner, I’d usually wind up locked inside the bathroom as my gut purged itself. Sometimes the voices of my siblings would drift out of the kitchen, and I’d hear their complaints that I was deliberately shirking post-meal cleanup. How little they knew.
Stabbing pains came and went often at random. One moment I’d be sitting at my computer, and the next I’d be stricken, doubled over, or collapsed on the floor.
These spells of agony sometimes lasted for days. During a family cruise vacation, I was afflicted by fluctuating blood sugar levels, and caught myself returning to the buffet repeatedly, wolfing down one dish after another.
Then, halfway into the trip, my digestive tract gave out. For three days I lay in the fetus position in our windowless cabin in a cocoon of darkness split by red lightning-strikes of agony.
“It’s just the stomach flu,” my mother said when I asked to be taken to the onboard doctor.
“Mum, something’s really wrong,” I insisted. “My body isn’t digesting anything.”
“They’re going to charge me $100 and all they’ll do is give you an aspirin,” she complained. “Just rest. It’ll pass.”
But 72 hours later, the symptoms had failed to ease. The constant pain and nausea had robbed me of my appetite, and after three days of fasting, my mother’s seeming indifference turned to concern.
She thrust plates of salad in my face, insisted on feeding me forkfuls despite my protests.
Days later, back on solid ground and mostly recovered, I looked back on the hellish episode as a freak incident. But chronic illness persisted.
Sticking with self-diagnosis
For the next decade, the same symptoms came and went with the suddenness and ferocity of summer thunderstorms. Their cause, at first a mystery, was eventually identified as wheat.
The symptoms after all were on par with those of Coeliac disease. And when I indeed subtracted wheat products from my diet, the symptoms eased to the point of being manageable.
My doctor suggested I get an endoscopy so I could be formally diagnosed. She explained that in order to avoid a false negative, I would need to start eating wheat again.
Having already tasted freedom, I had no intention of going back into dietary bondage. Besides, what would the test prove, other than what I already knew for a fact?
My resistance to getting tested was in part due to my parents once dismissing my symptoms as psychosomatic.
My antique distrust of authority figures, and the fact I alone had championed my own health, left me somewhat resistant to the doctor’s suggestion.
It was I, after, all who had determinedly spent three hours Googling symptoms; I who had found the name for my chronic illness.
It followed, therefore, that only I could determine what was best for my own health.
“You have no way of knowing for certain,” the doctor said when I declined the offer of an endoscopy. “It could be Coeliac disease. Or it could be something else entirely.”
“I’m good,” I said. “Thank you.”
“Well, it’s your health,” she replied with a shake of the head.
“It is,” I snapped back. Just who did this woman think she was to question myjudgment like this? A qualified medical professional?
No one and nothing was going to dissuade me. Defiant, I marched out of the doctor’s office, clutching my self-diagnosis to me with the kind of protectiveness reserved for a newborn.
The struggles of identifying chronic illness
Still, I never achieved complete symptom clearance. All it took was a handful of nuts or a glass of milk to kick off a round of wind and intestinal purging, while beans had the opposite effect, bringing digestion crashing to a halt.
A dietician suggested that maybe I was eating too much fiber. She proposed I try cutting back on certain trigger short-chain carbohydrates like lactose and fructose, known by the acronym “FODMAPs”.
But by the following week, I was embarking on a month’s long trip overseas, and soon forgot the dietician’s proposal.
Later, believing I must be suffering some kind of allergy, I attended a leading clinic. If I was hoping to come away with a diagnosis, I was instead left only with a patch of irritation on my left forearm, something akin to a mosquito bite.
The allergen prick test revealed I was reactive to American dust mites, but not wheat and diary.
The clinic recommended nevertheless I switch to a diet low in certain naturally occurring food chemicals called salicylates, amines, and glutamates.
These chemicals are present in anything from chocolate, to coffee to cheeses. Eliminating them completely naturally proved quite the chore, and even once I did, my condition scarcely improved.
After a few months of attempting to be vegan, things only worsened, my belly swelling as tight as a drum.
When a rash surfaced on my back like an inflamed continent, I conceded that maybe my self-diagnosis was wrong.
Previous adversities had left me reluctant to ask for help, to trust that others really had my best interest in mind. Yet this same reluctance meant I had inadvertently prolonging my chronic illness.
Seeking treatment
A somewhat lengthy and expensive battery of tests confirmed that I indeed had been wrong about having Coeliac disease. What I was actually suffering from was Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS).
While both conditions share common symptoms, what my body seemed to have been reacting to was not the wheat protein gluten, which typically causes the immune reaction in Coeliacs sufferers.
My triggers were in fact FODMAPs, the carbohydrates previously identified by my dietician. This explained why my body responded adversely to high-FODMAP foods such as wheat, milk, nuts, and beans.
Had I listened to the dietician and trialed the low FODMAP diet, I would have been spared not only my usual raft of symptoms but the development of a new, secondary condition: small intestinal bacterial overgrowth (SIBO).
If IBS could be at times unbearable, SIBO had the effect of only exacerbating the symptoms.
Treating the SIBO with antibiotics decimated my gut microbiota. It also triggered a secondary infection of a parasite known as blastocystis hominis, suspected of stowing away on my body during my trip abroad.
The blasto infection sent me running to the toilet every hour, and could only be bested with still more antibiotics.
Suffice to say, it was months before I returned to any semblance of digestive normality.
When I expressed my desire to “get better” to my gastroenterologist, he laughed. IBS was a “functional” condition, quite unlike more serious conditions like Crohn’s disease. Expecting complete recovery simply wasn’t reasonable.
Certainly, chronic health conditions are often complex, and the problems they throw up insoluble. But if my gastroenterologist wasn’t interested in helping me explore the possibility at least of improved health, then it fell once more to me to try.
To this end, I explored all manner of remedies: antidepressants, antidiarrheals, antianxiety medications, fiber supplements, peppermint capsules, digestive enzymes, natural supplements, antispasmodics, probiotics, exercise, hot pads, meditation, acupressure, and hynotherapy.
By isolating potential trigger foods, I discovered that the recommended fiber supplements were actually making things worse.
Another contributing factor was a substance known as resistant starch, which can be found in many IBS-friendly staples. As it turned out, something as seemingly innocuous as reheated rice or potatoes often was more than enough to ruin my digestion.
The modifications I eventually settled upon involved quitting coffee and curtailing fiber, fat, oil, sugar, and resistant starch. Intermittent fasting, which involved restricting my eating to an eight-hour daily window, proved infinitely helpful.
Meals were kept to three in total and limited to reasonable portion sizes, taking the pressure off my admittedly delicate digestive tract. Adding peppermint supplements, enzymes, and anti-diarrhetics further supported my digestion.
Lifestyle changes were also in order. There was to be no more round-the-clock workaholism. Time would need to be made now for a regular exercise routine, daily meditation, and relaxation.
As it turned out, the gastroenterologist had indeed been wrong for laughing off my complaints. A better state of health was indeed possible.
While some health conditions may be in part or completely out of our control, management or easing of symptoms is always possible. Quality of life is never an unrealistic goal.
Identifying a key need and a strategy
“What do I need most?”, “Is it realistic?”, and “How do I achieve it?”
For those of us suffering from chronic illness, these three questions can be the determining factor for both our physical and psychological wellbeing.
In my case, my foremost need was being able to eat nourishing, delicious food without getting sick.
The dietary limitations imposed by IBS meant eating out was a fraught affair, so avoiding tummy upset going forward would require I make all my meals from scratch, going forward.
Even after I threw out all my current go-to recipes, many of the IBS-friendly alternatives I found online contained other foods that were triggers for me, such as oil.
The only way I was going to fulfill my tasty food cravings therefore was by getting creative. So for the next year, I recipe tested like heck, substituting problem ingredients with symptom-free alternatives.
Most meals I produced during this period were, for the most part, healthy, if a little bland. But by the second year, my culinary game was on the up, and I had at least four passable meals under my belt. Then suddenly they weren’t just passable – they were delicious.
As cooking IBS-friendly meals from scratch could be an expensive and time-consuming process, I began bulk-buying and batch-cooking.
This strategy ensured I spent less time in the kitchen carefully measuring ingredients. Instead of or shuffling through the supermarket, poring over the price tags of often more expensive low-FODMAP alternatives, I was now able to spend more of my time savoring the fruit of my labors.
Seeking support with chronic illness
Being forced to carefully monitor everything I eat, while managing occasional flare-ups can at times be stressful.
Sometimes I’ll catch myself trying to “silver lining” the situation, reassuring myself of the benefits of having IBS. The forced dietary changes for example have rendered me permanently lean.
Some fitness fanatics might consider this an ideal result, but practically speaking, not having “rainy day” body fat can be a problem during periods of illness when I’m most prone to rapidly dropping pounds.
Chronic illness has brought many periods of frustration and despair. Key to our endurance in such instances is having someone we can talk to about our difficulties. As the old adage goes, “A problem shared is a problem halved”.
While loved ones can ever truly know what it’s like to walk a day in your moccasins, they can certainly empathize. But if you find no respite in venting to friends and family members, a sympathetic-ear-for-hire may be another option.
Therapy for some isn’t financially tenable, while others may not be comfortable opening up to a stranger. In such instances, it’s worth exploring other avenues, such as online communities or support groups for people with your condition.
Failing that, a daily “mood” diary is always a great fallback. In moments of stress or high emotion, consider jotting down in detail what you’re feeling, why, and the circumstances or situations surrounding these feelings.
Diary writing when suffering chronic illness can be cathartic for the sheer reason that it allows us to divest ourselves of burdensome thoughts and feelings. Without an outlet, they may otherwise continue to rattle around inside our brains, draining our strength and impeding our wellbeing.
Diary writing in this sense is preventative, acting as a pressure valve. It allows us to release what we are carrying in a safe and constructive way, offering us valuable perspective on our difficulties.
Essy Knopf is a therapist who likes to explore what it means to be neurodivergent and queer. Subscribe to get all new posts sent directly to your inbox.
My 18-part blog series on dog ownership, Anxious Seeks Canine, was, firstly, an admission of guilt, written before I had gotten my hands on such classics as Cesar’s Way.
Between picking at my own stitches, I was also skewering the role my neuroses had played in my shaping relationship with my pup Cash.
Yet for all the self-awareness writing Anxious Seeks Canine demanded of me, one year on after giving up my dog, I was no closer to a better understanding of what exactly had gone wrong.
Sure, Cash had been an anxious dog; about as anxious, in fact, as I myself was.
Sure, I had done the best according to what I knew at the time. And yet, walking away from the experience, I found myself wondering what exactly I could have done differently.
Millan highlights the fundamental error owners commit when adopting dogs. Specifically, our habit of trying to understand them from a human-centric perspective.
Dogs may share our mammalian heritage, but their needs and priorities are inherently different from our own.
And it’s when these needs and priorities clash with our own that problems develop.
Cesar’s Way: Exercise, discipline, affection – in that order
One of Millan’s key points can be distilled into the following statement: dogs require “exercise, discipline, affection – in that order”.
Too often these priorities are placed out of order, with affection first.
Consider the owner who matches their dog’s over-excited response upon returning home.
Believing that their dog has suffered through loneliness or even the perception of abandonment, s/he may over-empathize and lavish them with attention.
The problem of course is that this is a very human attempt to interpret a distinctly non-human thought process.
Iz not human. Cannot do.
As Millan points out in Cesar’s Way, dogs don’t necessarily live in the past or future as we did, in remembering and anticipation. They don’t construct causal narratives about their relationships.
Rather, they dwell in the present, responding less to memories than to prior conditioning.
As gay men, many of us have all experienced some measure of abandonment, if only as a result of our sexuality, be it from friends or family members. It stands to reason therefore why we act so lovingly towards our “fur babies”.
Yet the downside of giving affection first is that you may be unwittingly reinforcing whatever behavior the pet is engaging in at the time.
In this case, the owner is conditioning the dog to work itself into a state every time they leave or return, thereby intensifying their emotional response and instilling greater and greater levels of separation anxiety.
Take for example my habit of greeting Cash with squeals and baby-talk. In time, my dog came to connect my response with his feelings. Very quickly, my infantilizing patter began setting him on edge.
Any wonder then I never made true headway with easing Cash’s separation anxiety.
The importance of being active
From day one, Cash was bursting with excess energy. When I stood up from my desk, he would rocket to his feet, n preparation for what, I never knew.
Our daily walks involved Cash tugging me behind him, like a freight train climbing a mountain.
Three 20-minute walks each day was, in my books, more than sufficient exercise. Not so in Cash’s.
Even after hours-long hikes, my dog still somehow found the energy to chase me to the door.
Suffice to say, my largely sedentary lifestyle was not working for him. Being cooped up in my apartment went against his very genetics as a Husky-Corgi.
My high-maintenance pooch.
As a result, Cash remained perpetually anxious, freaking out when left by himself or exposed to other dogs, barking incessantly, snarling when they got too close, and trying to mount them.
If my squeals had only fuelled Cash’s anxiety, his anxiety only fuelled the conflict he’d anticipated fear, my dog’s aggression inevitably drawing retaliation.
It didn’t help that during my visits to the dog park I was, as Millan terms it, “punching out”. Rather than actively monitoring my dog, watching his body language, intervening early, and correcting undesirable behaviors, my attention went instead to a book or laptop screen.
Suffice to say, adjusting my lifestyle to better accommodate my dog would have gone a long way to remedying the situation.
Setting and following rules, boundaries and limitations
Shelter, food, and affection – none of this guarantees your dog will necessarily respect your place as head of the household.
However hopelessly dependent your dog may be upon you for their survival if given an inch, they most certainly will take a mile.
As Cesar Millan notes, dogs are pack animals. They seek to establish hierarchical relations. When human beings treat them as their equals, dogs may respond by attempting to assert dominance.
They may, for example, disobey you, or engage in other less obvious behaviors, like insisting they be the first to go through a doorway.
In Cesar’s Way, Millan argues that your dog doesn’t necessarily want to be the leader. Their response is simply an attempt to fill a perceived power vacuum.
Feeling forced to take the job of “top dog” can have the effect of creating anxiety for your pet, not to mention frustration for you.
By employing discipline – setting rules, boundaries, and limitations – however, we can avoid this situation entirely.
While regular obedience training can certainly help, if you fail to apply the same discipline to other facets of your dog’s life, there’s a good chance the training won’t take.
What’s important here is consistency. A dog is more likely to be happy and stable if it knows =what to expect to you. This means being firm with not just enforcing rules, but ensuring that you yourself uphold them.
For example, Cash only dragged me during our walks because I had failed to set clear, consistent rules about his role and place in the pack.
By removing food bowls after a certain amount of time had elapsed, and always ensuring I was the first to eat, I managed to quickly communicate my role as pack leader.
A no-pull halter also had the effect of stopping all attempts to dive through doorways, while forcing my dog to walk at my pace.
But most importantly, it communicated to Cash that he no longer needed to take the lead.
And for all my dog’s dislike of the halter, I sensed immediate relief on his part, as he no longer felt compelled to play a role for which he was not able.
Infantilization. A case in point.
When to use positive reinforcement
According to Cesar’s Way, we should give attention only to those behaviors we want to positively reinforce.
As for undesirable behaviors? Millan says they should be corrected immediately, by providing a replacement activity indicating what it is you would rather your dog do instead.
Affection is a form of positive reinforcement and is best earned, for example, when the dog respects a rule or obeys a command. Even then, Millan says we should only offer it so long as our pet is calm and submissive.
There are times as well when affection should be withheld: “When your dog is fearful, anxious, possessive, dominant, aggressive, whining, begging, barking – or breaking any rule of your household”.
By clarifying and reinforcing your expectations of them you condition your dog to behave in desirable ways. This not only encourages obedience but establishes your pet’s place in your household’s “pack”, thereby strengthening her/his sense of purpose and wellbeing.
This is key to dispelling the anxiety Millan notes dogs can develop as a result of living with human beings and is the cause of many of our difficulties as owners.
For those of us with firsthand experience with highly-strung dogs, the Cesar’s Way philosophy thus offers a clear path to a more balanced and content life, not just for pets – but owners as well.
Essy Knopf is a therapist who likes to explore what it means to be neurodivergent and queer. Subscribe to get all new posts sent directly to your inbox.
