“My anxiety does not come from thinking about the future but from wanting to control it.”
- Hugh Prather
Feeling on edge. Gnawed fingernails. Sweat-drenched. Struggle. Deprivation.
Certainly, a distorted mental state in which a single missed breath feels like the onset of suffocation.
Why do our present lives evoke such a sprouting of nerves? Is this a 21st century hangover where we have gone from predictability, economic confidence to endless uncertainty?
It’s difficult to pinpoint a specific cause but the effects are more than evident. Most of us experience both restlessness and fatigue...both lack of concentration and focus of tension in the muscles. We’re restless for the next big story and tired of it already when it arrives...sleepless and enraged we pace through our days.
We are in the midst of a new epidemic: depression, angst, panic, stress__whatever you choose to call it, there is a lot going around. It is a reflection of our values....the corona virus is a symptom, though the real source of this epidemic is stressism!,
Anxiety begins with a single worry and the more you concentrate on it the more powerful it gets....and the more you worry. If you start to believe the hype about the times we live in then you risk surrendering to the battle before it even begins. You need to let it go and disempower the worry altogether.
Anxiety is a petty monster but a tricky one...it can paralyse you over the choice of your salad dressing as though it’s a choice between life and death.
If I sound like a doomsday prophet, the intention is to understand the times we are living. If anxiety is the way to understand the fix we’re in, perhaps anxiety can show us a way out. It certainly makes me ask myself, “ Are we more anxious than the generations before us?”
We haven’t experienced devastating famines or the Nazi-like dread and terror...no such psychic torment for us. Yet there is an aspect of anxiety that we clearly have more of than ever before: self-awareness! The previous generations may have been wracked by nerves, but none fixated like we do on the condition....in fact none of them even considered anxiety a condition!
But Freud had to have us believe that we have underlying, subconscious impressions that affect our mental existence and we took these buried and somewhat mundane concepts into the market place.
So, the rise of anxiety consumerism can be seen in a variety of products from fidget-spinners to essential oil sprays to calm the mind....soothing an anxious psyche with retail therapy.
Anxiety takes many forms, but almost always there is an overwhelming sense of vulnerability and powerlessness. The anxious person believes the source of worry outside of them, it’s like the mind goes into a spasm, a grip from which they can’t relax and can’t accept any good news. They may even know the cause and where it lies but they spend their whole lives going in the opposite direction....it is avoidance behaviour. Facing their fear would be to take its power away but it would also mean giving up control and being vulnerable.
My point is: why should we view anxiety to be a problem that must be resolved? Why not see it as an inevitable part of life that we all experience and something that is positive and can teach us important lessons about our life.
I believe that we have this angst because there’s no ‘right’ path or guide to tell us what to do. In essence each one of us must make meaning in our own lives. Anxiety raises its undesirable head when this responsibility feels too great and when we retreat from facing this disturbance.
The truth is that we’re all free to make new and productive choices.
My suggestion and personal choices are to evaluate, plan and move the energy towards remediation. Turn anxiety into action. Make a list of three small changes like decluttering the home, visualising and making a plan for completing a shopping list or keeping an appointment you have not done for a while. Structure reduces tension and is an exercise by itself, it drains the stuck energy of frustration and worry and most of all it calms the mind.
So honour yourself and DO IT!
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