The End of The World Tomorrow
The world has ended an infinitive number of times.
Literally and metaphorically. Like the
personal tragedies people experience or collective tragedies like natural
disasters or war. These are the very real calamities humanity endures. Often
the world tends to end in minds of people, who are constantly entertaining
fearful or negative thoughts, fuelling anxiety. There are lots of dangers that
never manifest too.
According to Paul Ekman, anxiety and fear are two
of six primary emotions and people all over the world experience both regardless
of their geographical location, upbringing, social group, religion or political
views. We all have it and experience it in different amounts during our life. Life
events or circumstances can evoke these emotions, however if there is nothing
threatening happening – we still have some anxiety and fear waiting there to
appear when necessary. All living beings contain anxiety and fear in their makeup.
It is often referred to as the ‘survival instinct’ (In this post I will only
concentrate on anxiety and fear experienced by humans).
Anxiety has a very important function –
to alert us to all potential dangers in order to aid our survival. Anxiety and
fear are interconnected. Fear makes us respond to a threat in a variety of
ways. When we are in a survival mode – we are not thinking. We are acting fast
and we sometimes do things we would have never done before. Making sense of
what had happened comes later, sometimes much later. To simplify: if you
lived in Ireland 13 hundred years ago and saw Vikings approaching, your anxiety
would help you to respond to the danger. You would run away, fight them, or play dead. Fear
would fuel the engine and you would either respond by running for your life
(flight), adrenaline would shoot up and make you fight them or you may have been
paralyzed by the fear and played dead (freeze). If you survived, you could
learn new skills and develop warning systems. If you fought and won or played
dead and fooled the danger then you could write and sings songs about it later.
Thankfully, these days there is no chance that Vikings will raid county Wicklow
or any other part of Ireland, unless a programme is being filmed.
Despite that we can still react, as if
the Vikings (or any kind of danger) comes to get us.
I can’t help thinking that there is a
dividing line between what people go through in terms of how societies are
affected by fear and anxiety. In terms of survival, the line separates ‘the
well-off’ societies from the deprived. People are anxious and afraid of
different things, people use distinct survival instincts. Obviously in the ‘well
-off’ societies there are always exceptions to the rule, as in the deprived
ones. Nothing is ever black and white, there are so many colours in between.
Consider terrorist bomb attacks – which happened in Ireland and Afghanistan,
Moscow and Madrid. Poor and rich, young and old, women, men and children were
affected and suffered terrible consequences. People worry that it could happen
again, like the attack on the Twin Towers. This fear can lead to anxiety
disorders.
Still, dangers out there in a privileged
part of the world are very different to the dangers our ancestors had to deal
with. Those dangers have hardly ever anything to do with a survival (unless you
live in a household were domestic violence is present, facing homelessness or
similar circumstances). Sadly – many people in dangerous, underdeveloped and disadvantaged
parts of the world still have to fight, flight or freeze in order to survive
dangers surrounding them. The real threats and dangers – whether it is male
soldiers kidnapping young girls from schools or dodging bullets and bombs on a daily
basis… The real threats and dangers make the survival instinct necessary. I feel it would be inappropriate for me to
talk about that more, I am only highlighting the dividing line. One might say
that from the perspective of someone who lives in a safe place (zero chances of
meeting a Viking), has access to nearly everything they need and feels entitled
to medical help and social welfare, if required – anxiety and fear are may not
exist at all.
The reality is that anxiety is something we need in
a moderate amount. A healthy level of anxiety can be a motivational force to
e.g. prepare for an exam, perform well on a first date, have things done on
time, protect yourself and others from Covid-19 and so on. An unhealthy, excessive
amount of anxiety leads to mental health problems and can take over someone’s
life. Sitting at home and isolating, constantly worrying that the world will
end tomorrow is definitely an example of unhealthy anxiety. As mentioned in the
previous posts (‘Mental Health in a nut shell 1 and 2’) – the World Health
Organization considers depression and anxiety to be the biggest mental health
challenges humanity is facing at the present and in the future. Depression and
anxiety often ‘walk hand in hand’, often one onsets the other or turns into it.
What is the difference between those two? The easiest way to explain it is that
depression is often connected to the past and negative beliefs and ways of
thinking about one’s present abilities and circumstance, whereas anxiety is a
perceived, usually future threat or danger (that can be growing from a present
moment e.g. while someone thinks they are a hopeless employee because they were
made redundant in the past and couldn’t find a new job and have nothing to
offer to a potential employer, anxiety will paralyze their efforts to expose
themselves in order to continue looking for a job and attend the job interview).
Different forms of
anxiety were described abundantly (amongst many other conditions) by two worldwide
recognized sources. Those sources are: the World Health Organization that
produced the 11th Revision of ‘The International Classification of
Diseases’ (2019) and the American Psychiatric
Association that produced the ‘Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders’ (2013). Despite using slightly
different words to describe it, both sources agree that anxiety can take the
form of: Separation Anxiety, Generalized Anxiety Disorder, Obsessive Compulsive
Disorder, Panic Disorder, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, Social Anxiety
Disorder, and Specific Phobia Disorders, to name a few. Every disorder is
characterised by symptoms specific to that disorder that allow to distinguish
that particular disorder from another. The intensity of disorder and time onset
might vary from individual to individual. The clinical approach to anxiety that
aims to diagnose a person varies from public health perspectives and
psychotherapy. I want to highlight the fact that I am not aiming to diagnose
anybody, just drawing attention to how classification helps to understand what
is going on.
Anxiety disturbs the body and its functions. It is the
body’s natural response to stress (more in Silence Teaches You How to Sing).
The connection between body and mind can get very tricky. Anxiety affects the body, but it tends to preoccupy the mind. Sometimes
it disconnects a person’s thoughts from their bodily sensations and physiology
and they ‘live in their head’. Sometimes anxiety can distress the body and be the
reason for all sorts of problems and illnesses like difficulties in falling/staying
asleep. The words used to describe a panic attack are quite similar to the
words used to describe a heart attack and often those two are mistaken for each
other. People in severe distress are brought to the hospital and undergo testing
to find out that there was no physical, bodily reasons for an illness. Often
anxiety causes people ‘mysterious’ pains and aches that have no medical
explanation.
Lots of people who experience a panic attack live
in apprehension of another one coming. Apprehension anxiety is when we think
something that we dread will happen again. Anxiety is your body's natural response to stress or threat.
It's a feeling of fear or apprehension about what's to come. The first day of school,
going to a job interview, or giving a speech may cause most people to feel
fearful and nervous.
Preoccupation with
anxious thoughts appears to me like a dark sky with many different clouds having
different consistencies, shapes and heights. They block the sun during the day
and moon and stars during the night. No clarity of vision. There are low-level
clouds hanging below 6500 feet – cumulus, stratus and stratocumulus – that
could be compared to low level anxiety or even healthy anxiety, given
circumstance. There are middle clouds hanging between 6500 and 20000 feet above
the Earth and those are: altocumulus, nimbostratus, altostratus, that are able
to imprison someone in a struggle of not being able to live and enjoy life. And
finally, high-level clouds hanging above 20000 feet: cirrus,
cirrocumulus, cirrostratus that are like chronic anxiety that paralyzes and
robs people from the hope that things could ever change and diminishes their
ability to look beyond the clouds. Clouds can be flat, layered and smooth, or heaped
up and puffy – all affect visibility of the pure sky, or in other words, disallow
clarity of mind. Clouds that are high up and wispy that bring rain, hailstones
and snow, can be compared to panic attacks or constant restlessness. All of them
might have a silver lining, however if the sky is really dark and the sun is on
the other side of the world we won’t see it, because of fear. None of them are
what we call being on ‘cloud nine’.
Somehow, anxiety is strongly linked with loss or a
perceived sense of loss. Sometimes grief and anxiety are very hard to
distinguish. The loss of safety, a job, relationship, not having the best
grades or performance interview – we worry a lot about the ‘what ifs’. I feel
this type of anxiety can be easier to deal with and address, because we know
the source of worry. There are things we feel anxious about but cannot name
them – this is a very difficult place to be and to come out of.
In psychotherapy, there
are some theories about anxiety that are psychoanalytical, existential,
cognitive, physiological or nervous system based. Anxiety is considered in a
different way than in medicine. Many books were written from diverse
perspectives in order to understand anxiety. To find the source. To heal it. Psychiatry,
psychology and psychotherapy use diverse methods, techniques and tools to help
people who suffer with anxiety related conditions and anxiety disorders.
Anything from medication, exposure to relaxation techniques and group therapy works
for individuals. Or a combination of them for a certain period of time, or for
life. Good mental health is an ongoing project. There isn’t a ‘happily ever
after button’ that once pressed, brings everlasting positive mental health.
It has been exactly one year since I started
writing this post... I got very involved with my personal life and also in a
big, educational project. I kind of forgot about this post. I believe the world
has ended a good few times since then: the Typhoon Odette mercilessly battered the
Philippines and in many different places around the world, human rights
violations in Afghanistan, Palestine, Myanmar and terrorist attacks in Somalia,
Mali, Nigeria and more occurred/are occurring, abortion rights in the USA are
being threatened (and in many other countries too: Poland and Venezuela are on
the top of the list) and finally the war in Ukraine – to name a few global
ones.
Last Sunday I was indirectly reminded of it. My
grandfather Ferdynand passed away at the age of 96 (nearly 97). I felt very
emotionally attached to him, being the eldest grandchild and for a variety of
different reasons like his love of nature and natural remedies. My great memories
of him could be written into a book, right now on the spot. I think of his long
life and of how many different ends of the world he has experienced. I never
knew if he was afraid of anything, but I know (as many others do) that he
committed many brave acts and actions for him and others. I bow to all fearless superheroes for giving
hope to the rest of us.
Music and the sounds of nature are a natural remedy
for stress and anxiety. Below are two healing songs, sent to me by my Rain
Partner. Now I am sharing that with you, enjoy.
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