November 18, 2024
This post is part of my 30in30 challenge, where I write 30 minutes every day for 30 working days. Due to my limited time for this challenge, the content will be only very lightly researched and edited. The idea is to just write. Find my voice, and find the courage to publish. To follow my curiosity wherever it may take me.
"That's the duty of the old," said the Librarian, "to be anxious on behalf of the young. And the duty of the young is to scorn the anxiety of the old." They sat for a while longer, and then parted, for it was late, and they were old and anxious.
Northern Lights by Philip Pullman.
Sometimes, I read a book and come upon a passage that describes the state of my reality better than I could describe it myself.
As a child, I remember being told not to tell one of my older relatives that I was going on a trip because it would make them anxious, and the anxiety would make them unwell. I couldn't understand. What about my trip that could make someone else anxious? And it wasn't even a long or adventurous trip.
This was during the time in my life when I didn't know what anxiety was, that it didn't need to make sense to other people - or even the person suffering from it themselves, and exactly how unwell it could make them. How blissful was my ignorance!
A popular definition of anxiety is that "Anxiety is an emotion which is characterised by an unpleasant state of inner turmoil and includes feelings of dread over anticipated events."
Needless to say, I can emphasize with my relative very well now.
I can't remember exactly when I started experiencing anxiety myself. It happened gradually, and for a long time, my feelings didn't have a name. I would think of unwanted, intrusive thoughts and feel heaviness on my chest and tightness in my throat, but I just shrugged it off. It wasn't until I started to struggle falling asleep or enjoying happy moments because my inner monologue got so dark that I felt trapped by it, that I looked into what was happening to me.
The notion of what we now call anxiety is nothing new. There are mentions of anxiety in the medical texts of Hippocrates, and Seneca often spoke about anticipating negative events:
We are in the habit of exaggerating, or imagining, or anticipating, sorrow.
He also famously said:
We suffer more in imagination than in reality.
Anxiety is also very common. Research shows that (contrary to the above Pullman's quote) younger people are more likely to have some sort of anxiety, more women report higher levels of anxiety than men, and what is even more worrying, more people suffer from anxiety as the time goes on.
This begs a question. What causes anxiety? Where does it come from? Why do we experience these often paralyzing feelings? Mind, a mental health charity in the UK, says that past experiences, current life situation, physical or mental health issues, or certain medication could all contribute to anxiety, although the exact causes are difficult to determine. Not only that, having a close relative with anxiety can increase the chances of experiencing anxiety - something called anxiety sensitivity.
Seems like pretty much anything, the act of living itself, can give you anxiety.
As I struggle with it daily, I wanted to acknowledge this reality, and give grace to myself and anyone reading this post.
Just because anxiety is as old as humankind, it doesn't make it a light burden to carry.