Why do you think so many people have extreme anxiety these days?

[HarrySnotter]

I don't mean getting anxious about things that most people would, like a driving test or a new job, I mean things that are 'everyday' for most people.

I have a close friend who is really struggling with it at the moment. She's gone from being the life and soul of the party to barely being able to leave her house and it absolutely rules her life. I feel so incredibly sorry for her, it's an awful condition.

Do you think that anxiety is more prevalent these days or did it just go undiagnosed previously?

I have extreme anxiety and medication doesnt really help. I have learned to accept it.

I wasnt always like this.

I have no more actual problems than the next person but sometimes day to day is just too much.

I don't really kniw why this is. Ive been on meds for 10 years.

Sometimes i wonder if i should just get a grip.

If only it were that simple

LEM I you've been on meds for 10 years and they 'don't really help' then you should come off them.

Social media has a lot to answer for.

For me - work is my sanctuary. I have a stressfull job that many comment to me they couldn't do but that is where i am calmest. I have one day off a week and i hate it.

Psychadelic - believe me ive tried

I really really disagree about life being harder now. It is harder now for the well off middle class people, but not for others. I was a young adult in the early 80s living in a place decimated by manufacturing closures. I remember friends being over joyed that they managed to get a job in a shop, because unemployment was so high and getting a job was so hard. Unemployment is now at a really low level.

There was far fewer rights at work so most working class people had far fewer holidays than the legal minimum now and worked longer hours.

For women at work, sexual harassment and sexism were pretty normal and legal address was even harder to get.

I think social media plays its part, and I think most children are over stimulated.

Personally, I think social media has a lot to answer for. Competition and striving for the unattainable.

There is so much pressure to be perfect.

Also I remember elderly women when I was young that had anxiety - they used to say they had problems with their nerves. But they did have to go out and get food, etc. If they couldn't do that, they would be hospitalised.

Abucat i agree actually.

And I agree that we need boredom. Just down time doing not a lot. And our kids need it to.

I do sometimes think about if I was poor in the Victorian era or if I was raising a family in wartime, would I be so preoccupied with basic survival eg finding food to eat that I would not be worrying about more ‘trivial’ things?

Thespace I agree, I get worried about things that are not about basic survival. I have been there where the threat of homelessness was ever present and life was really bloody hard all the time. And I really did not give a shit about the things that worry me now.

I've had anxiety since I was a child but I've never asked for any special treatment and I've only told a couple of people. So many people these days say that they have it and I doubt them half the time. In the workplace we have people being late for work because their anxiety is worse in the mornings 🙄. Employees expecting businesses to run effectively when they are absent for 80% of the time. I've had people phone in sick with anxiety because a famous person died or it's the anniversary of 911 despite not being personally affected by it. Last winter before the snow even came we had people absent because the thought of snow was triggering their anxiety.

Life is not harder now.
My grandfather had to work down a mine at 11 because his father died.
My mum was working full time at 14.
People had less time in their hands and quite bluntly died much younger.
Nobody say around looking at how pretty x looks on social media. They came home exhausted after completing a long laborious day at work, had their home cooked dinner, washed up, dried up, shared a cold bath, sat by the fire then went to bed in a cold room.
Rinse and repeat.
I blame divorce, the break down of families. Social media. People who live closer to nature are probably far happier.

I wonder if boredom had a function we didn’t know about, ie letting the brain calm down.

I totally agree with this.
I also think that we all lead far too isolated lives (family and friends moving away, not having as much to do with neighbours etc...). We are a social species and I don't think that leading such solitary lives has been good for us.

Sheep you are 100% right and intellectually I know you are correct. But in my fucked up brain this doesn't work. I did it on Friday and felt totally wrecked all weekend - like someone up thread describes perfectly. The physical shaking, lack of sleep and inability to focus on anything goes beyond transient discomfort (the inability to eat can be helpful pre party dress mind ;))

This is not normal or how I am most of the time but is how I am now so I need to rebalance myself. If I don't, ocd and really bad shit might happen again and I am not prepared to put myself and my family through that again.

I am incredibly lucky to have an option to step back into an alternative role in a lovely team where I thrive so it's a positive move in many ways.

What I would say is that in my current team there are a number of people with a similar personality type to me - maybe not with the clinically diagnosed stuff I have but with perfectionist, emotive personalities and we are all on our last legs. Others in the team are also finding it incredibly difficult but can tune it out better. So pressure is definitely external (and they have recognised they put me under the most) but reaction is not.

One of my dds seems to have a similar perfectionist personality to me. One is able to let go like her dad. So on it goes.....

I wonder if boredom had a function we didn’t know about, ie letting the brain calm down

This makes a lot of sense to me. I remember when I was a kid/teen being quite bored a lot of the time. Especially in the winter when you were less able to go out and play. There were only 3 channels in the telly and my mum would never have allowed the TV on during the day anyway. No phones/gadgets etc. You just got bored. I wonder if our brains were given the time to recharge then.

I have anxiety and it’s a load worse in winter as I don’t get any time to myself - it’s committing,work,kids, husband, sleep. There’s literally no time for myself. I hate it.

I don’t think the expectation that women work full time as well as men is that great for women tbh. Life is hard work.

• Less stigma so people are more open about having a problem with anxiety
• Change in terminology - 'suffers badly with her nerves' > 'suffers from anxiety'
• Some people in the past who suffered from really bad anxiety and depression would have been 'put away' in a psychiatric hospital and never discharged - so less likely to have children and pass it on, since it does seem to have a genetic link
• Not enough sleep
• Not enough deep darkness - screens are a problem here, so are streetlights
• Not enough fresh air, exercise, time away from screens and devices
• Not enough time talking to real people in real time, face to face or over the phone, so you have a genuine conversation picking up on facial expression, tone of voice, body language etc
• Poor diet - too many calories from refined carbs and fat, not enough wholegrains, fruit and veg, so not enough fibre, vitamins and minerals
• Social media - difficult to get away from, far too easy for people to put over an airbrushed version of their lives, easily used for bullying, puts too much stress on identikit appearance, feeds social contagion in an unhealthy way
• Harder now to put roots down and feel certain about the future because of not being able to get a good permanent job, zero hours contracts, poor pension provision, benefits cut, high levels of debt, only being able to get rented accommodation, having to move often -- there was a fascinating study done on civil servants many years ago that showed that lower grade staff had far higher likelihood of cardiovascular problems than senior staff because they had a lot less control over their work, leading to higher stress - and I would think that high stress levels are also likely to contribute to poor mental health
• Changes in the school system - far more testing and drilling from the earliest years, teaching to the test rather than true education, not enough time for the creative subjects, sport, reading and writing for pleasure, authoritarian disciplinary methods (also found in e.g. call centres, NHS sickness policies, sanctions for benefits claimants) - so increased stress levels, decreased ability to problem solve/think critically/learn for pleasure/self-motivate
• Children are far more coddled now in early life. We used to expect them to fend for themselves from an early age without parents and teachers hovering over them ready to intervene the moment something difficult happened. We are now far more conscious of the high risks of leaving children to sink or swim but instead of finding safer, more humane ways to teach children to swim through life than chucking them in at the deep end, they're sometimes just kept out of the pool, as it were, so they reach adult life lacking in resilience and coping skills.

I agree with buttered. I come from a poor country where if you don’t work, you don’t eat (or rely on charity not to starve). Nobody there is devouring buzzfeed articles about “Things only socially anxious people will understand” and other self indulgent drivel.

I’m not denying that mental illness is real and incredibly difficult, but that all this self diagnosed depression and anxiety massively devalues the actual illnesses. Akin to people with a pulled muscle claiming a broken bone or heart attack.

Flame away.

calamity In those cases I really do think people need to pull themselves together. I do think that is partly about parenting. Many of us have tried to prevent our children experiencing any discomfort or ordinary unhappiness and anxiety. That is for good reasons, but actually children need to learn how to deal with these feelings. I think many young adults have not learned how to deal with those feelings, and therefore don't understand that those feelings are normal.

Because we are so individualist I think.

We don't have as much community anymore.

I can’t grlp feel it’s something to do with adrenal fatigue as PP said. Stress in our lives today can’t be outfought or outrun so the original environment for cortisol or adrenaline responses just isn’t there anymore. Constantly suppressing the fight or flight hormones eventually throws you off balance.

The healthiest people I know regularly exercise their adrenaline response with outdoor exercise ideally a bit exciting (climbing, surfing, mountain biking, trail running) but I’m sure a bit of vigorous hiking would probably help too.

I agree with boredom letting your mind reset and recharge. There is a link with mindfulness

www.headspace.com/blog/2017/07/21/turning-mindless-into-mindful/

I think many children’s lives are often too full of organised activities and when they are not involved in these activities, they are being passively entertained by games and tv. They have no time to just ‘be’. Add in the pressure of our education system, social media etc and you have very stressed children who have no capacity to cope with silence, doing nothing and just being with themselves and their own thoughts.Those anxious children become anxious adults.

A couple of generations ago there were loads of women who were spoken of in hushed tones as being 'bad with their nerves'.

That's probably what we now recognise as untreated post natal anxiety. I know that I became a wreck after my first child was born. I was terrified of everything. Absolutely everything. It was intrusive thoughts constantly, things that I now (having been on long term treatment) can laugh about. But it was far from funny at the time.

I'm younger years I suffered from quite severe depression, to the point of frequently feeling suicidal. But honestly, if I had to choose between the depression and the anxiety, I'd choose the depression because it was less debilitating. And obviously I never want to suffer from either of them again.