Chapter 3 - Anxiety

 

No amount of anxiety is going to make any difference in anything that is going to happen -Alan Watts

Anxiety is a natural human emotion. It arises when we feel threatened or overwhelmed. In the past, when humans lived in the wild and protected themselves from predators. On encountering one, the immediate response was to run away from it.

The response is also known as the fright, flight, and fight response. This response can also be understood when a dog starts barking and following you.

What will you do?

You will first sense the fear (fright) and either run away (flight). If you have some weapon in hand and feel confident enough, you might try to defend yourself (fight).

In these moments, the adrenal gland on the kidneys releases adrenaline hormones. It increases your heart rate, blood pressure, and blood glucose levels. All the energy in the body is shifted toward the brain and muscles. It makes you aware of the surroundings and runs faster or fights.

Man has worked very hard to decrease these situations. We do not get into these situations daily, and there is no need to run anymore with the advent of high-demanding and stressful schools, colleges, and jobs. This response gets ON whenever you feel you will get hurt physically or mentally.

On thinking about whether we will pass the exams, our job performance, etc., heart rate, blood pressure, and blood glucose stays raised. These stressors give us a signal similar to encountering a predator. Still, we do not do any physical activity but end up with a less working brain capacity and shivering muscles. This makes doing any action difficult.

Increased stress has caused an increase in diabetes and hypertension among young individuals. This is growing at an alarming rate and needs attention. You must understand that you are responsible for your health. You’ll need to learn methods to shut down this response system independently.

Anxiety seems to be a symbol of events that will occur in the future compared to guilt related to past experiences. Both these problems have a solution by staying focused on the present moment.

There are a few things that lead to anxiety. To start with, perfectionism, when we think about doing anything, we want to make it perfect.

Why?

Because of the fear of embarrassment. When you start doing something, you will notice that the brain will try thinking about the outcome. The brain is a highly evolved organ that tries to calculate if the energy being utilized is useful. If the outcome is not good, you will have to do something that will make you stop doing the work. First, starting the work will be problematic. The brain wants its energy to be utilized only for survival. Suppose you manage to start the work by promising him more comfort in some way. It will keep calculating the outcome. During the work, if you feel the outcome will fail to be good. The brain will create visuals of embarrassment and shame, making you stop doing the work. If you still try to force or if there is no option of stopping. The fright, flight, and fight mechanisms will take over. You will start losing control over your brain and muscles. This is the reason that most of the projects keep lying on the waitlist. We need to work on meaningful work. The idea of being perfect in our work makes us worse. It is better to start thinking of ourselves as ordinary people. To keep less expectation out of our results. We have to keep telling ourselves that the outcome will be average. This calms our nerves and helps us maintain the flow of work.

Anxiety also manifests when dealing with multiple problems at once. Most of us are capable of coping with problems when they come one by one. When a person faces multiple problems at once, it becomes difficult to understand what is happening. Solving the problems all at once has a high chance that one will be unable to deal with them. While if the problems are identified as multiple and sorted to be tackled individually, it will become easier to solve them.

Another problem is multitasking, productivity, and doing things at high speed. You can try to do things faster than your brain can process. You will feel that it is not done correctly, increasing anxiety. It is essential to understand that by doing things slowly at a comfortable pace of your brain. Anxiety decreases, and your brain starts helping you by increasing focus and reducing mistakes. Multitasking is a myth; our brains are designed to focus on one thing simultaneously. Thinking about doing multiple things at a time lands us in a situation where nothing is done correctly. Productivity is being sold in every form. People seem to worry more about feeling productive than actually doing the work. It looks like a big scam as more and more people are trying to sell courses and apps on productivity. In the long run, you will realize that thinking more about productivity and less about the work increases your anxiety and dulls your thinking. With this, we can conclude that both the emotions of guilt and anxiety are only good up to some extent, after which they start harming us.