ANSIEDADE – ANXIETY -  BEDENKLICHKEIT

Dear blog readers let’s talk about anxiety! Today is Easter and because of that many of us are spending time with our families and friends. Due to the fact that is not my case at the moment, I decided to use my free time to help others and myself as well with this new text.  I hope these reflexions can lead us to become better persons, today that we celebrate the rebirth of Christ. 

Well, where does anxiety come from? From a biological point of view it comes from an over activation of our warning system. We are equipped with a complex group of hormones and those are chemicals in our body that regulate some of our autonomic responses; those that we cannot consciously control. The effects that hormones of stress usually activate are heart rate increase, body temperature changes, sweating glands activation and many others. The thing is that anxiety; because of being an over reaction becomes very annoying. It makes our body to become accelerated and ready for the danger. It generates a feeling of prediction, usually biased to the negative outcome. It informs that something may harm us somehow in the future, so that we become ready for the fight/flight stress response. But I would say anxiety is annoying and unpleasant because even though the self-defense system makes sense from a survival point of view the anticipation of the possible harm outcome makes it unnecessary in a great number of occasions. In some situations it makes us fail to response accordingly, to react without reasoning or to postpone a decision fearing the consequence. It is a break that stops many of us to enjoy life experiences to the fullest. 

The psychological part of anxiety is also very interesting. My readings have taught me that anxiety is “excess of future”. The time frame we are inserted in makes us to live a lot of times out of the now. When the attention is taken towards the future, anxiety appears. Similarly, excess of past leads to depression, but for now I will just leave it for other text. The problem to live according to the future (actually to the expectation of what the future might be) freezes many of our actions. We fear and do not risk because of that. And even worse, we live an illusion. The life as we know can happen only in the now. I know that the society has been told that we should also take precautions to avoid pain of any sort in the future. That is why we have savings accounts (money for some emergency), car insurance (in case we hit the car), life insurance (in case we die and our family suffers) and so on. This is neurotic. This is no life. To make plans is very wise, yes, but cannot rule our life. The risk taking must be developed in such a way that we dare to take steps that are usually out of our comfort zone NOW. Otherwise, we are living like a plastic flower, who may look very beautiful but has no life inside. It is a theoretic way of experiencing life. And anxiety is the reflexion of the amount of importance we give to the future over the present moment. But, it is of vital importance to notice that we live a sequence of NOWS, and not in any other time construct. Excess of past=depression. Excess of future=anxiety. This belief is so into our society that the bestseller drugs in the market are either antidepressants or anti-anxiety pills. We have become a society out of the present moment and that has turned a great portion of the population sick. Anxiety is just the tip of a bigger problem. And this leads not only to legal drugs consumption, but also alcohol, gambling, smoking and ilicit drugs, to name a few harmful consequences of being out of the now towards the future. 

The cure? It is not in any of those strategies. The cure resides on our effort to understand that life is risky, has many dangers along the way and those cannot be predicted. One must face it and to take action, which in my opinion is always better than the “watch and see” approach. Anxiety can be controlled, only when we understand that there is no reason for us to worry too much because of the upcoming events. As long as we are in tune with our values and life goals, things will naturally resolve. And then anxiety simply dies, due to the fact that the future will be there anyways but we decide not give the future any power to put us down. So, relax, take the present moment seat and enjoy what you can NOW. Wish you all a nice Easter!