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

[TitaniasAss]

Or do you think it's just become more recognised? When I was young I remember my mum describing a neighbour as 'living on her nerves' which I think probably meant that this woman suffered from anxiety.

I don't suffer myself, I do get anxious about the things most people get anxious about eg driving test, exams etc but I don't think that's unusual. I work in a secondary school and we have so many children with SEMH and anxiety issues that it makes me worry for their future.

I used to work in a primary setting a few years ago and I can remember an 8 year old telling me that they were having a panic attack because of their anxiety. It was awful to me that a child that young even knew what a panic attack was.

I absolutely do believe that, for teens, social media plays a huge part. Why so many adults?

You really have to ask?!

24 hour doom global news
Climate fear
Poverty rising/high cost of living/wealth divide/inability to get on housing ladder & two parents having to work full time
Phones and social media addiction
Lack of daylight, exercise, nature & community
Rigid, highly pressured education system.

Absolutely this.

I have had anxiety all my life, mainly I think due to my father leaving when I was 2 and having an uninterested, unloving mother.

It has got worse as I have got older, been diagnosed with severe GAD and depression, I have had CBT but it did not work, the only thing keeping me functioning was increasing my anti-depressant, which I accept I will be on till I die.

Anxiety seems to be the latest in a long line of subjects people like to post about so they can put other people down - but cloak it as though they're genuinely interested in what people think. It's popularity is right up there with people discussing and disparaging ASD and ADHD.

At one time it would have been benefit bashing or obesity bashing but I guess people had to find something else to move onto and be horrible about.

There's high comorbidity between ASD/ADHD and anxiety, so you can get a two for one. Well done.

I think the world we live in is also hugely anxiety inducing

• enormous mortgages/rents (even for very modest homes in many places) that mean many are absolutely trapped and burdened
• emails /messages pushing for instant replies
• the constancy of social media and the fear a tiny mistake could blow up
• the reduction of normal healthy interactions and communities, replaced by interacting behind a screen

When my son went for a secondary school entrance examination they took the parents aside and told them they’d sent eight (out of a hundred and fifty) children on a tour of the school instead because they were panicking so badly and they said the exams were helpful but not important enough for the boys to cry/ hyperventilate over. I really appreciated that they did that but simultaneously my mind was blown at that level of panic

Several things:

1. Talked about now openly- if you look at the rates of anti-depressants and Valium in the past, it's clear it's not only this generation- the 50's was called 'The Age of Anxiety'.
2. What @ChillysWaterBottle said- modern life is not conducive to calm and peaceful living and so we end up running around with adrenaline spikes, crap food sending blood sugars all over the place and social media feeding the temporary 'high's before you crash.

The only way I can cope is to do meditation every day, and I have taken anti-depressants when the menopause hit. I am much less anxious now, because I've learned a lot of skills to cope with it, but young people aren't going to have those and everything is designed to make people very anxious (which is often a form of over-stimulation) indeed.

Also some medications can cause anxiety and people may not even realise that is the cause.

I just spent two years crippled by anxiety, seemingly out of nowhere, as soon as I finally persuaded my doctors to let me stop the medication that they insisted couldn't be the cause I felt better.

Similarly I watched my daughter go on a mental spiral down on montelukast, thankfully I had read this was a risk, because noone warned us it was when they prescribed it. I know it can be a miracle drug for many. It was for her cousin. But people need to be made aware what medication can do to them and we need honest conversations about this with doctors.

Nervous system dysregulation, neurotransmitters out of balance from too much screen time and the lack of support everyone feels from governments and services. The ethos of caring for the customer and having a supportive NHS and police force has gone. Our country doesn’t feel like a supportive environment.

There's a shocking lack of compassion on display in this thread. That may be a contributing factor to the increase. I sincerely hope some of you never have to walk any distance in my shoes.

Oh I have loads of these.
Well meaning attempts to be kind - avoidance increases anxiety so less pressure and expectation is great but it creates a monster.
Widespread use of antibiotics and poor diet (episodes of anxiety occur at a higher rate after taking a course of antibiotics and we are in historical terms new to their widespread use, couple that with depleted nutrients in soil etc).
Social circles that are both bigger and smaller - we hear the worst news of millions of people every day, feel inadequate because we are exposed to a highly filtered picture of how everyone else is doing; but we rarely congregate in small supportive family or community groups.
Long hours early years childcare from earlier ages, changes in family structure, less support for new parents and other impacts on good quality attachments that none of these factors determine completely, but which are likely to have had negative as well as positive impacts on society and infant development.

I accept all of this is true. However, there are some of the things you mention that we can limit access to if it makes us feel anxious. I don't do social media because I believe it can make the most resilient of us question our lives. It's the reason I limited my own DCs screen time when they were younger and they didn't have social media (one of them still doesn't as an adult).

It would certainly never be my intention to make anyone feel that way @MrTiddlesTheCat , really and truly.

If it's not too intrusive to ask, do you find that you have triggers or is it 'life'?. I really do sympathise, it must be an awful feeling.

I agree with this.

I've only realised recently that I had anxiety as a child/ teenager. I just thought it was my personality but when I think back it absolutely controlled my life. I had OCD from being around 8. I'm sure my parents must have noticed as it really was debilitating but they didn't try to talk to me about it. This was 70's/80's. I think I'm those days you were just meant to get on with it, people just thought you were being an idiot/strange.

I think we live in a world that we weee never designed to be in. Too many flashing lights, too much access to crap food, too much go go go! Our bodies and brains evolved for a world completely different to the one we created in the last 20 years, and we are broken!

I Absolutely agree there are elements that are very much in our control but how hard is it when the world we are raised in constantly conspires to pull us back ‘down’.

I wish more people took control over their own lives but unfortunately I feel the systems and environments we live in now make it almost impossible for many. Many don’t have the education (by that I mean from their own parents/familes and communities not school) or the resources to do so:( I don’t know what the answer is. We need a reset.

Probably because the world is shittier than it ever has been past 50 years and they can talk about it nowadays.

Indeed.

And for all those saying that nowadays is the worst of times, have some historical imagination!

Imagine being in an isolated village, working hard for 6 long days a week for not quite enough to eat, and then those around you start dying of a really horrible disease.

There is no cure and even if there were, you couldn’t afford it. You fled, or you locked the afflicted away. You can’t read or write so you have no idea what’s happening. It feels like the end of the world.

Or imagine seeing the first factories with hitherto unimaginable noise and heat and vicious ness of the machines which could mangle a child. Yes, the Industrial Revolution was pretty horrible to live through.

These present days for those of us in the developed North are hardly the worst. it’s special pleading and ignorance to think they are.

I have autism so my baseline for anxiety is higher than normal but with support I always kept on top of life, just about. Unfortunately this year has brought some awful, life changing events, which are ongoing. As I result the anxiety has spun out of control.

The physical symptoms are chronic eg I've been running a fever for 4 months. Likewise the suicidal ideation is constant, although the strength fluctuates. The crying is triggered by anything, yesterday I was triggered by a carrot advert.

So no I don't have triggers as such. There were two trigger events which have left me struggling with everything.

Many reasons.

I know my grandmother would likely have been diagnosed with anxiety (as well as post natal depression which also wasn't recognised) but she was just called 'strange' because she had panic attacks, spells of agoraphobia etc.

Also a lot of what relieves anxiety is physical activity and getting into the body.

I also think anxiety in some form or other has always existed. In the modern world we are often more exposed to voyeurism of all the awful things.

• social media
• more awareness
• jumping on the bandwagon.

Probably in fairly equal amounts, I'd say. More awareness is a great thing in that people who wouldn't have got the help they need now can, but also leads to people who actually don't have anxiety saying they do.

And what do you attribute the apparent decline in human compassion to?

Situations that would be expected to cause nervousness/anxiety (meeting new people, new places, exams, job interviews etc) are overlooked massively.

Of course you should be nervous before your driving test, giving birth, getting married, going on a first date…but these days if someone feels the slightest twinge of butterflies, it’s anxiety.

I think the whole self-diagnosis trend (around mental/ND conditions) is also an aspect of this. No need for a doctor with years of experience and medical training, we can just self-identify as having it.

i think some posters are a bit absurd on this thread. There’s no point in comparing modern life to the Second World War and saying ‘well folk just got on with it’ because a) they didn’t actually and a load of young men came back from war with ptsd and had very fucked up lives and b) the fact that today’s teens aren’t shipped off to the trenches to fight Germany doesn’t mean that modern day life isn’t ridiculously stressful.

I was a kid in the 90s and life is a lot harder for current kids of the day than I remember it being then.

I'm a 70s child and I do think the over labelling of normal feelings really doesn't help. It is normal to feel anxious about exams (it's what gets you revising!), normal to be anxious about going into a new situation. It's normal to feel a bit worried when your boss gives you feedback. I work hard to ensure my teen knows these are all normal feelings and also that they will pass.

We mollycoddle our children so that they never make decisions, never resolve conflict, never sit with unhappy feelings. In my son's school they can't swap trading cards because kids get upset. Making a bad swap is part of life, learning that you've made a mistake, sitting with that feeling, learning from it, winning back your card (or trying to). These are all valid life lessons. Instead we've got kids that get upset the moment something doesn't go their way then relying on an adult to solve it. Usually then over-anxious parents stepping in too demanding a solution to remove any upset.