If you've ever kept moving through a hard season and had someone mistake your momentum for avoidance — this episode is for you.
Triage is active. Avoidance is passive. The problem is that in a heavily therapized culture, any forward motion without visible processing gets read as denial. But movement can be the processing. Clarity doesn't always precede action — sometimes it follows it.
In this episode of Current Mind, Nneka draws on research from psychologists Richard Lazarus and Susan Folkman, Yale's Susan Nolen-Hoeksema, and organizational psychologist Tasha Eurich to make the case that knowing which coping style you're in — and knowing your why internally — is what separates founders and creative practitioners who build through hard seasons from those who stall inside them.
This one is for the managers, the creators, the practitioners who are doing the work to stay in — and watching it look like chaos from the outside. You know what you're doing. Keep moving.
STUDIES & ARTICLES
Lazarus & Folkman — Stress, Appraisal, and Coping (1984) The foundational coping research. No free full text available — it's a book. Best to cite it verbally and link to the publisher page:
https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9780826141910
BOOKS
What is Current Mind?
Current Mind is hosted by Nneka Mogbo, founder of Úrú Collective and executive producer of Afrobeats Intelligence and The Joey Akan Experience.
It is a podcast for creators, talent managers, and cultural professionals who want an honest look at what it actually takes to build in the African creative industry. No performance. No highlight reel. Just the real work.
New episodes drop bi-weekly.