As a result of the research on anxiety for my thesis, I have been expanding my relationship and my experience with anxiety.
I will tell you a little history about anxiety, it is very curious that a problem with translations has caused that two words like anxiety and anguish have sometimes been intermixed.
From the Latin verb ango, which means to narrow, to squeeze, two nouns were derived anguish and anxietas. In French and Spanish, psychiatry uses two correlative words: angoisse Y anguish that come from anguish, anxiété and anxiety derives from anxietas.
On the other hand, anxiety is the only English technical word -anguish, derived from anguish, is purely literary- and in German there is only the word Angst (from the same root as angustia). In languages in which medicine uses two terms, the difference in meaning between them has been a source of discussion. In French, it was accepted that a nuance of intensity existed between the two: the angoisse was more intense than the anxiété.
In German, Angst poses a specific difficulty for that language. In its usual sense, it means fear and is synonymous with the word Furcht.
Anxiety is a sensation that is usually felt in the chest and that a centripetal sensation, and it puts us in motion, makes us get going and doing and doing until we are exhausted.
Anguish is a sensation in the stomach, like a hole, more centrifugal, more of getting inside and feeling that our existence is in danger, it leaves us more immobile.
Both anxiety and anguish are two signs that alert us that something emotionally needs to be addressed, something is happening in that person who suffers anxiety or anguish.
We are immersed in a society of performance, since we were little, we are already compared and separated by performance, the best and worst children. Parents fight for their children to be in the good group and they get angry if they do not succeed and pressure the child to speak better English, to jump or run more ... or whatever, jumping over their child and the evolutionary period in which it is.
Byunh-Chul Han, professor of Philosophy and Media Theory, in his book, “The Tiredness Society” talks about our society being a society focused on performance. The performance society is characterized by the verb “CAN", "Yes, we can". When a person in this social model realizes that he cannot, then he becomes depressed since he has failed, and the hard and difficult thing is that not only does he think about it, but also that his boss, his family, and society think about it. general.
From an early age we are introduced to a career that begins at School, continues at University and then continues in the world of work. We are led to believe that there is not for everyone, only for the good ones, that “Güays” Companies want “Güay” people (successful, high-performing, and also handsome…).
Society puts pressure on us to be capable of doing many things at the same time (multitasking). The multitasking it is not progress for civilization ... it is rather a regression. Multitasking is widespread among wild animals. It is an essential care technique for survival in the jungle. (Byunh-Chul Han, The Tiredness Society, page 33).
With multitasking, we avoid what Gestaltists know is essential for realizing, the here and now, mindfulness and awareness, and what it generates is a scattered attention, changing the focus from one task to another, generating boredom, fatigue, stress and avoiding boredom, so necessary to be able to be creative.
The performance society generates exhausted and tired beings, that the only way they have to stop is by getting sick. Almost 90% of the people I see in consultation come with anxious and depressive symptoms, when we work on the secondary benefits of these symptoms, the possibility of stopping, not doing, not trying, not having to be the best appears ... in short, to rest.
Considering Max Weber, we are in a society where social action prevails in accordance with (or teleological action). The teleological action is the one carried out by a subject thinking of an end, thinking, therefore, of the realization of his own goals. social action according to ends (or teleological action).
Weber thinks that the greatest degree of rationality is possessed by teleological action. Weber considers that rationality is the one that has triumphed. The image of the world with values is the one that has been regressing. All of these are values that were believed to be supreme, primary and unconditional. Behind the values of Western culture there are not only interests (Scheler, Apel, Habermas), but other things. Behind truth, efficiency, objectivity, etc. there is the will to power.
Medicalization understood as the conversion into pathological processes of situations that are and have always been completely normal and the attempt to solve through medicine situations that are not medical but social, professional or interpersonal.
From my point of view there are two forces that converge, on the one hand the fear of pain, the search for momentary and quick relief as a social trend and on the other hand, the abuse of pharmaceuticals.
There is a demand in society that does not want to suffer, nor take responsibility, It is easier to take a pill and not question, or reflect, or consider a paradigm shift, or of course do therapy. On the other hand, the voracity of the pharmaceutical companies that, in order to sell, favor the increase in mental illnesses and symptoms and behaviors that were not "illnesses" before and therefore were not susceptible to being treated with drugs, now they are.
In the "Medical Bibles" where diseases are recorded (DSM) there has been a great increase in diseases in recent years. The pharmaceutical industry pays little interest in finding new drugs for existing diseases and focuses part of its efforts on releasing existing drugs through the creation of new diseases (previously shyness was shyness, now it is called "Social anxiety disorder")
Today's Society has experienced a reduced tolerance level to pain and suffering and it requires health care for situations that were previously accepted and resolved without the need to resort to health professionals. This is what some authors call "zero tolerance". When requesting care, a medicalization of these situations occurs and this generates higher expectations and less tolerance, closing a circle of perpetuation of the situation. A study by the OCU indicates that 29% of Spaniards have taken medication in the last year to treat anxiety.
More and more people are "connected" 24 hours with the outside with absence of internal contact. What is outside is premium over what is inside. Contacts are becoming more virtual and less real, less presence. The here and now is relegated to what happens on a device screen. Relationships between people cool down, there is a growing sense of loneliness due to our way of treating each other as instruments.
When we have lost contact with our natural needs, impulses and desires, we walk through the world disoriented, without the possibility of satisfying ourselves and developing ourselves..
To get to be yourself and "wake up", it is necessary to get used to going through anguish.
According to Luis Gonzalez, anxiety It can be given as a function of the patient's inability to come into contact with his biological rhythm, a connection that would allow him to surrender to his organism and deeply experience his body; may have to do with the modern condition of live permanently excited, running, unable to complete an action that involves a meaningful contact with one's own body and internal rhythm.
If the hysteria was the most prominent psychopathology at the beginning of the last century, if the depression was the predominant disease in the second half of the last century, if in the eighties and nineties the boom of the narcissistic disorders, This new century seems to emerge with new scenarios crossed by pathologies, biopathies and disorders derived from a predominant emotion: the afraid".
Hobbes and Machiavelli agreed that fear is the political emotion more powerful and necessary. Kurt Goldstein wrote: “There is no better way to enslave people and destroy democracy than to create in people a state of fear. One of the basic pillars of fascism is fear "
Fear is an individual but contagious emotion, that is, social. The contagion of fear allows us to speak of “family fears", and of "social fears". Fear produces a triple narrowing of consciousness: bodily, psychological and behavioral.
Plato said that value is the bridge that joins desire and reason. For Spinoza courage was the desire of man to persevere in his being, according to the dictates of his own being. Courage is freedom in action. Can you act courageously just by force of will? Those of us who work as therapists know that no, that deep self-knowledge work is needed.
The possibility of control, and of to prevent they are the great antidotes of fear and friends of anxiety and stress.
Today's society guides people to avoid boredom and constantly search for novelties. Following the Cloninger personality model, High Novelty Search (BN) is associated with low activity in dopaminergic pathways. It is a behavior that is characterized by an exploratory activity in response to novelty, impulsiveness, and signals of reinforcement and active avoidance of frustration.
Individuals with high BN are irascible, curious, susceptible to boredom, impulsive, flamboyant and disorderly..
If you search for “happiness” in Google, more than 60,000 references appear (the secret of happiness, the institute of happiness, the journey to happiness, parents want happy children, the recipe for happiness, on the other hand if you search for “sadness "20% fewer references appear compared to" happiness ", related to depression and sadness, reduce sadness, how to cure sadness, sadness is a negative emotion, alleviate sadness ...). The movement seems to go towards happiness and avoid and / or leave sadness ...
By not being able to surrender to sadness, we cannot surrender to joy either. This is how we become anxious in situations of pleasure, generating anxiety in the conflict between giving ourselves affectively and the fear of doing so, arising, in this way, every time that pleasure is strong and "dangerous" enough to threaten our control more or more. less conscious.
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