It may be a sign of an improving society to see that anxiety itself is rising as a concern and an opportunity. Anxiety affects anyone who pays attention to life around us, and it adversely affects almost all of us at some time or another either acutely (immobilizing us) or chronically (nudging us to self-administered reactions). Many will accept the “just get over it” or the “it’s a normal part of life” thoughts about burdensome anxiety. And any of us will self-medicate our way through anxious times with comfort food, social alcohol, or natural or pharmaceutical “remedies.” Surely it is no measure of real health to be well adapted to a pathological society, but for many of us this may be as good as it gets. And yet there are healthy options if we allow ourselves to see and to embrace them.
Anxiety management most directly involves reducing the symptoms of anxiety. Symptom management largely means applying strategies to distract us from feeling our anxiety with the goal of calming and disrupting the cyclic intensification of sustained anxiety. If we recognize our anxiety as being unhealthy to ourselves early enough, we can adopt habits that will protect us from our anxiety. Healthy habits can be preventative as well as reactive. They can include calming rituals that anchor us into the manageable present and sensory toys that hold us in comfortably familiar, mildly playful states of mind. As with clinical practices, symptom management is big money, yet also often well worth the investment, if wise choices of care for individual needs are selected.
Beyond managing symptoms, many forms of anxiety can be reduced at their cause. These approaches seek strategies to block triggers of anxiety. This is not easy. Feelings that trigger anxiety, like feelings that trigger fear or panic, are socially contagious. Stepping outside of our social life to avoid these triggers proves to be very, very difficult. In real ways, we are part of the world that we live in, including our social world. We are embodied in the lives that we live. Reimagining who we are requires us to craft a new self-identity, and there is no guarantee that rethinking ourselves will have a lasting and meaningful impact on the way that the world feels to us.
As the world grows more anxious, anxiety becomes more contagious. To avoid the risks of becoming swept up into a tremendous wave of cultural anxiety, we need to see the wave moving toward us and find ways to protect ourselves. While we are all at risk, the young among us are most acutely at risk. They live in a world that is overloaded with information and frequently a desert of calming energy. As the wave of cultural anxiety rises up upon our ankles, clinical psychologist Luna Marques at Massachusetts General Hospital and assistant professor at Harvard Medical school cautions us that we may find ourselves in an “almost anxious” state of mind. This early stage of anxiety disorder is pre-clinical. There is a serious implication to this. We are likely to feel that clinical help is irrelevant for us, until we do have clinically recognizable symptoms of anxiety disorder. We can be like that fabled frog in the pot of water that is slowly coming to a boil, unaware of the hazard until the hot water scalds us.
We are not wired to see ourselves in waters that are slowly coming to a boil. From the inside, our anxious reactions typically don’t feel so unusual to ourselves. We tell ourselves exactly what others may be telling us: “Things are really not that bad. Just give it some time.” However, some friends and family will see things differently. They will see changes in your mood, patience, and behaviors that lead them to feel concerned about you. We can find ourselves in the unsettling position when some friends and family tell us to get over it because we are doing well, and other friends and family encourage us to pay attention and take better care of ourselves. Advising us to take better care of ourselves may be well intended, but what does this “better care” look like? And does the very fact that those who love us encourage us to take better care of ourselves also carry the anxiety-provoking message that “something is wrong?”
Loving parents and caring friends can be unknowing sources of anxiety. Each suggestion of “try this” sets up a hurdle that someone with anxiety is asked to leap beyond, and each suggested and requested leap can fail, leading someone with an anxious feeling of disappointing their loved ones. When we are in the “almost anxious” state of mind, the hopes of family and friends are all that we have. We are limited to what they understand about anxiety and ways to manage anxiety, and their understanding will be limited to their own experiences and to things they see on TV or the Internet.
If you have the time and the energy and anxiety management is something that you are considering, you will recognize that anxiety management advice is everywhere. Some of it may be good for you and worth your effort. Some of the advice may not be so good for you and spending your time following ineffective advice will distract you from finding effective alternatives. But you won’t know until you try. The easy path leads toward self-medication, which will feel good until it clearly isn’t. Selfcare is a goal, but not the best starting point. Finding a coach who can train you in healthy practices and help you build durable habits is difficult. This is difficult in the same way that finding a mechanic for your car is difficult. Yes, there are many mechanics, but which mechanic wins your trust. Without trust, any efforts to change your anxious behaviors will aggravate your anxiety. We live in a jungle of advice and options, and we all need guides. This is a role for friends and family.
What you need, what I need, what we all need is well-informed friends and family. We need to help friends and family discover local care givers who can help you navigate through almost anxious times. Friends and family cannot know what they don’t know so they will need to agree to help each other discover what is locally available that may truly help you. They will need to discover what can be done, who can do it, and how it can be accessed in terms of your individual time, cost, and personality match. In the almost anxious, pre-clinical times, these care givers will offer approaches that are alternative and complementary forms of care.
There will always be some people who will take advantage of and prey upon those needing support so exploring alternative and complementary care options will benefit from well managed group exploration. Your friends and family can help you decide which options might be helpful for you. Where will friends and families find well-managed exploration experiences for meeting promising locally available sources of alternative and complementary care for anxiety? The Blue Skies initiative for friends and family with anxious loved ones seeks to provide opportunities for these explorations.