{"id":1871,"date":"2020-04-06T00:25:15","date_gmt":"2020-04-06T00:25:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thedavisgroup.org\/?p=1871"},"modified":"2021-10-19T21:22:42","modified_gmt":"2021-10-19T21:22:42","slug":"the-anxiety-pandemic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thedavisgroup.org\/the-anxiety-pandemic\/","title":{"rendered":"The Anxiety Pandemic"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The coronavirus triggered another global pandemic that has spread far more rapidly, infected far more people, and whose effects are likely to be felt much longer than COVID-19.<\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anxiety.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

That foreboding sense that something bad is looming, it will change your life for the worse forever, and you\u2019ll be helpless to stop it. You\u2019re not really sure what it is or how to identify it, only that it\u2019s coming and you can\u2019t stop it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It manifests in poor sleep, short tempers, racing hearts, rushed decisions, poor concentration and flowing tears. It hoards toilet paper, road rages, objectifies others, and panics. In doing so it leaves the infected more alone and less able to face their challenges, thus increasing the likelihood of their fears becoming reality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Think of anxiety as the degree to which you are unquestionably accepting of outside influence. The degree to which you swallow information whole without weighing it against what you already know, common sense, or what trusted resources are saying. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sometimes describing anxiety as lying along a continuum from 1-10 helps. Let\u2019s say a \u201c1\u201d is a person who believes everything they hear and whose hair is accordingly always on fire. We all have that person on our social media – the one who posts fifteen memes a day espousing the worst case COVID-19 scenario without any data backing them up. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

If they\u2019re a \u201c1,\u201d then a \u201c10\u201d is a person who notices others around them feeling anxiety and panicking. Perhaps they even notice themselves feeling anxiety and wanting to be impulsive. But after noticing them panic, they pause and ask themselves if the panic is warranted. They then seek trusted, reliable data to guide their response. Perhaps they still feel panic, and perhaps their actions reflect the urgency they feel, but their response feels different – it is purposefully designed to restore a sense of control to their life based on the best data they have at the time.  Their anxiety follows their rationality rather than vice-versa. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

How does anxiety spread?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anxiety spreads by infecting those most vulnerable to panic (i.e., the 1\u2019s in our example), then proceeding up the line until it reaches the 10s. In normal times, the things that panic a 1 won\u2019t even register to a 10. If society\u2019s collective anxiety is around, say, a 3, then the 1 will get the 2 worked up, who will in turn get a 3 worried as well, but it\u2019ll probably fizzle out around the 4. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But what about times when our collective anxiety is raised, such as during a global pandemic? In this case the anxiety of the 1 encounters far fewer roadblocks as it spreads up the line and, depending on the level of societal anxiety, even many 10s get caught up in the fervor. In times like these, it\u2019s hard to know who, if anyone, is steering the ship. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What is the antidote? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Resilience. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What does resilience look like?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The psychologist Rollo May is credited with saying, \u201cReal freedom is the ability to pause between stimulus and response, and in that pause, choose.\u201d That, in a nutshell, is resilience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In other words resilience recognizing when you\u2019re feeling off, understanding what your feelings are trying to tell you, decide whether the feelings are based in reality, and if so, figuring out what’s in your control and letting go of what isn’t. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lack of resilience then, or emotional reactivity<\/em> as therapists like to call it, circumvents rationality and immediately assumes that whatever is felt is true and must be obeyed. Every headline, every word of calamity that reaches the unquestioning ears of emotionally reactive anxiety brings panic. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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