It’s pretty rare to come across someone who doesn’t struggle with anxiety one way or another. In a 2020 survey, 62% of respondents reported experiencing some degree of anxiety.
I’m not one to blame phones for every world issue, but maybe there’s something to it. Perhaps it’s a problem with our youth and young adults who’ve grown up in an age of fast-paced technology and stimulation.
However, upon further research, it came to my attention that youth don’t lead the charts on experiencing anxiety. The most affected age group is 30- to 44-year-olds. It affects twice as many, 30- to 44-year-olds than it does the 50+, age group.
Anxiety is a primal instinct that’s been around since the beginning of human civilization. A smartphone won’t be the catalyst for a mental health epidemic.
Does this data really matter, though? Are these stats going to give me a cure to this cycle of fear and insecurity?
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In my experience, anxiety makes you feel alone, abnormal, and “crazy.” The fear is so real, yet the circumstances (that give you fear) do not require that stress. Anxiety is the body’s response to fear or worry. When it’s significantly interfering with your quality of life, it’s just your body getting the wrong signals, i.e. fear, out of daily life.
There’s no reason to be ashamed of anxiety. If you look back to before we had “modern society,” anxiety would’ve been a good trait.
Think about it. Let’s say you’re living in a tribe way back in the Neolithic age. Who’s going to survive longer? The guy who kicks his feet up by the fire after a long hunt, or the guy who sleeps with one eye open, always thinking about the fear and danger that may approach.
Evolutionarily we have evolved to be anxious overthinkers. Because, back when your life was in danger every day if you were anxious, you were actually on to something. All the “overthinkers” and worriers survived and had children, passing that anxiety down to their kids because anxiety was a necessary trait to survive.
Just like you learned in Bio 11, survival of the fittest.
The problem is, now, in our modern society, we don’t need anxiety to that degree to survive. Modern challenges that may give you anxiety are; social events, relationships, insecurities, phobias, etc.
Obviously, we still should reasonably fear illness and violence, but not the same level of anxiety of getting your village sacked or dying of famine.
Our brains are not evolving at the same rate as society is progressing. In many ways, our brains are still driven by primal survival instincts. Your body fights to keep you alive every single day. If anything threatens your life, your body goes into the “flight or fight” response. What threatened human life thousands of years ago isn’t so much of an issue now in 2021.
For example, probably one of the most common anxiety disorders, social anxiety. I believe most of us have this to varying degrees. You may know that feeling, that dread of a social event because of that fear that you’ll be hated or ostracized from the group no matter what you say or do.
If you boil that feeling down to the simplest form, it easily relates back to a fear our early ancestors would’ve had. If you didn’t “fit in” with the tribe or were dislikable, you would fear being kicked out, exiled, no food, no shelter, no nothing. We heavily relied on each other as hunter-gatherers. We needed each other to survive, and it was essential to get along with your community because you couldn’t survive alone.
Bring it back to the 21st century. We’ve created a society where it’s no longer a fight for land and resources. But, as I said, our primal survival instincts may not see it that way.
Throughout evolution and the construction of civilization, humans have been conditioned into innate tribalism.
An off-hand comment you made to a classmate may wrack your brain all night, filling you with anxiety and dread for the next time you see them. That’s the same response your body might have had thousands of years ago, fearing you will die of hunger if your tribe does not accept you.
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Panic attacks are another common symptom of an anxiety disorder. At least one-third of us will experience one at some point in our lives, according to Cindy Aaronson Ph.D., a clinical psychiatrist at Mount Sinai Health System in New York City. They’re another example of misfired fear in a non-life-threatening situation.
A panic attack is pretty much the fear of fear. Your body’s physiological response to no real danger is heightened, i.e. increased heart rate, sweating, shaking. These physical symptoms trigger your brain to think something is extremely wrong, often life-threatening, resulting in a 10-30 minute state of panic and dissociation.
Although it feels like your body is fighting you, everything your body does during a panic attack is designed to keep you safe and protect you.
Crazy, isn’t it?
If we’ve learned anything here, it’s that modern times are not like the times in which our ancestors evolved, and our brains have some catch-up to do in regards to the degree to which fear (for survival) affects us. But we can’t be mad at our brains for still functioning in this way.
It’s so easy in this modern age to be overwhelmed with fear. We now have access to bad news 24/7, with media and television. Many are addicted to constantly being fed this information of news and disaster. We psychologically are drawn to this information as a survival tactic. Our body’s primary function is to survive. You’re studying how to escape death.
For this exact reason, I don’t want to say, “you have no reason to be anxious. You have food, water and shelter.” Because no, obviously, it’s not that simple if so many of us struggle with it.
There’s nothing “wrong” with you if you battle anxiety. A huge struggle for me is the anxiety of having anxiety. I find it helpful to remember what anxiety is. It’s your body’s outdated way of keeping you alive, and sometimes there are misfires, and sometimes it can be life-saving.
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Accepting these fears as thoughts that simply pass and tools for your survival can help remind you that you’re not “crazy” and you deserve compassion. When you eliminate at least that layer of anxiety, it makes everything else far easier to take in stride.