If there is anything that we can be sure of it’s that anxiety is increasing and so are depression and suicide. What is going on? Why is this happening?
Some may argue, “well we have just had a global pandemic with millions of people dying. We shouldn’t be surprised by increasing levels of anxiety at all.” That is a good point, but if we look at the stats and the research, we can be confident that anxiety levels, depression and suicide had been increasing before the pandemic.
If we look at surveys from a few years ago, anxiety was increasing BEFORE the impact of Covid-19[1]:
“’New survey results show Americans’ anxiety levels experienced a sharp increase in the past year, with almost 40% of respondents saying they felt more anxious than they did a year ago.’
That’s a pretty big spike–following on the heels of a 36% jump between 2016 and 2017–and it means this year’s national, averaged “anxiety score” has tipped over halfway on a 100-point scale: it’s now sitting at 51, with a five-point increase since 2017.
‘This poll shows US adults are increasingly anxious particularly about health, safety, and finances,’ says American Psychiatry Association president Anita Everett, whose organization sponsored the survey.
That increased stress and anxiety can significantly impact many aspects of people’s lives, including their mental health, and it can affect families.”[2]
[1] https://sciencealert.com/americans are in the midst of an anxiety epidemic stress increase
[2] www.sciencealert.com/americans are in the midst of an anxiety epidemic stress
So we know that fear, anxiety and depression have all been increasing. What has been so disturbing is the increasing rates of suicide in young people. There have been many theories trying to explain these increases and social media and cell phone use has been targeted as one of the most likely causes of this growing trend.
Why are we so anxious ? Why do we have no peace ?
I think we can break it down into three very important categories, our thoughts, our emotions, and our actions.
The more relaxed you are, the better you are at everything: the better you are with your loved ones, the better you are with your enemies, the better you are with your job, the better you are with yourself.
Bill Murray
Our Way of Thinking
Here is an excerpt from my latest book, Challenge Your Fear, Empower Your Spirit :
So, let’s address one major source of fear and anxiety—our own thoughts. This idea is absolutely crucial to understand and accept because it’s the truth. Everything begins in your mind. Your thoughts are the beginning of every action. It could be a good thought or a bad thought. When it comes to fear and anxiety, most of our thoughts are just not valid or useful. We are focused on events or outcomes that could happen—not those that are going to happen.
Not only that, but we could also be allowing these negative thoughts and ideas to control us. Making matters worse, we do nothing about it. We could be passively allowing our own thoughts and our negative emotions to control our actions and our behavior. You have a role to play in controlling your thoughts. You can also take an active role in controlling your emotions, including fear, but it requires some work and discipline.
When you live in a world that allows your thoughts and your emotions to control you, there is a word for that—hell.
If we don’t address our own thoughts and try to get control over them, then we are giving up a huge chunk of territory in this war. And this is a war, make no mistake about it. When it comes to our individual battles and taking on fear, if we have no plan, we’ve already lost. We need a battle plan. But before we can formulate one, we have to recognize what is happening when it comes to both fear and complacency. They are linked.
The idea of having no plan and coupling this with the notion that we are normally overwhelmed with negative thoughts is important when we think about having peace and feeling confident and competent.
Our Emotions
When we allow our emotions to call the shots, this is when we get into trouble. When we let the emotion of fear to control our lives this can lead to anxiety and depression. It also leads to complacency and feeling unfulfilled.
Let’s look at how all of this happens in our minds so that we can understand our own behavior. Here is an excerpt from my upcoming book, The Pain Paradox.
Feel, Think, Do
When it comes to the brain and how we respond to certain stimuli, our primitive brains experience an event or emotion in a positive or negative light. In other words, we perceive it as a good or bad experience. So we feel first. Then we think.
That is the progression.
“In humans, as in other animals, the two kinds of emotion—positive and negative—have specific locations in the brain. Positive emotions are associated with the ‘centers of reward’ and negative emotions with the ‘centers of punishment’. Many of these sites were subsequently linked through a common neural pathway in the evolutionarily ancient, sub-cortical limbic system, the medial fore-brain bundle, as it courses through the lateral hypothalamus to the ventral tegmentum and nucleus accumbens. Other brain reward ‘spots’, in particular those comprised of the cortical regions and sub-cortical nuclei, might eventually converge at this limbic core site. The brain ‘punishment’ centers might have evolved from a primitive brain system responsible for body health, in particular physical damage.
Experiencing pain and pleasure in humans not only involves these evolutionarily older parts of the brain, common to all vertebrates, but also is inextricably linked with the latest evolutionary innovation—the neocortex—that is, the part of the brain that is responsible for self-consciousness. The brain is “the organ by which we experience the world—that is, we feel pain and pleasure, we yearn, and in order to find out how to minimize pain and maximize pleasure, we think. The first step in generation of emotions in humans is represented by unconscious, implicit evaluation of a stimulus, followed by physiological responses, and the second step is a conscious experience that may or may not persist….”
The biology of happiness: Chasing pleasure and human destiny Ladislav Kováč1
EMBO Rep. 2012 Apr; 13(4): 297–302. Published online 2012 Mar 13. doi: 10.1038/embor.2012.26
So first we feel the experience and then the signals are transferred to our neo cortex and then we think. So how we think about our pain or a difficult or uncomfortable situation influences our actions. What we do. Our primitive brain feels, our neo-cortex thinks and then we do.
So essentially our neo-cortex and how we think about the pain or the pleasure is the biggest influencer of our behavior and our habits.
Our experiences, our habits and our conditioned responses to events in our lives comprise who we are and how we behave. But we can’t really learn anything about ourselves until we look at our behavior.
“You can only find out what you actually believe (rather than what you think you believe) by watching how you act. You simply don’t know what you believe, before that. You are too complex to understand yourself.” – Jordan Peterson
If we examine our own behavior in certain situations we have a pretty good idea if we are generally bent toward a negative predisposition. We also have a pretty good idea if we are always looking on the bright side of a particular event or situation.
By the same token, we know if we are willing to take chances or try new things.
Our Actions (what we do)
I believe that this is one key to dealing with anxiety, fear and depression. This idea came about by observing the behavior and the attitude of my son who is in the middle of his third year in college. He was experiencing extreme anxiety and pressure because he was trying to look into many different areas of business to try to figure out what he was going to do once he graduated. When he figured out exactly what he wanted to do, his anxiety levels and the stress and pressure he was experiencing were significantly reduced. He experienced peace.
Who is the least afraid or the least anxious in a high stress situations? The one who knows exactly what to do and how to do it. I have experienced this first hand working as an emergency room physician for over thirty years.
There is one thing that I have noticed and have written about in my books that I believe causes a lot of anxiety, stress, despair and hopelessness. It is a big conundrum and it is the problem of AIMLESSNESS.
It is what I call the zombie walk. Just moving forward arms outstretched reaching for the next thing to come into your path.
We know from statistics that the majority of Americans do not have a particular goal that they are striving for. Also the stats tell us that even if they do have a goal, it isn’t written down, or there is no plan as to how this goal will be reached or implemented. This is AIMLESSNESS and it is rampant in our population.
Two numbers immediately jump out when looking at this graph. One, only 20 percent of people actually bother to set goals. Number two, only 6 percent of people who set goals actually reach them. That means that only 6 percent of the population derive the benefits of “goal management.”
Many people will look at a number or graph like this and think, “set some goals, big deal, I’ve heard that many times.”
In reality, setting goals is not the point of all this. When we think about this from a Christian and faith point of view, setting a goal and pursuing a God given purpose is already a given. It comes with the territory. It’s like when you buy a new car, you assume that it comes with air conditioning.
Well, we as humans have built in goals that were designed and created for us that are encoded in our DNA. Many people will not believe this idea, but it is true. We were created with different talents and gifts and we are to use those gifts in the service of others. Of course, we are free to ignore those gifts and goals, but I would argue that if we do that, we are the ones who lose.
One very important concept that I have discussed in my books is that the important part of this whole idea is not goal setting. That is already taken for granted. It is goal-management that is the key here. This is where the real and true benefit comes from.
Here is an excerpt from my second book Discover Your Passion, Empower Your Spirit
When we are closer to discovering our passion and we can see the characteristics of that passion in our lives, we can use goal management as a tool to help us on our way. Here are some of the benefits of goal management (after we have discovered our passion):
- Provides direction—remember the rubber dinghy and rowing in circles?
- Clarity of focus—clarity of focus helps to maintain that direction.
- Sense of control or power—remember that if there is no sense of control, you feel powerless at work and powerless in life. When you set a goal, you are in control. You decide how you are going to go about reaching that goal, including the plan for implementation.
- Gives energy and motivation—you know exactly where you are headed, so you are motivated.
- Gives you a sense of purpose—you know you aren’t wasting time. You feel confident and assured.
- Brings a sense of satisfaction and fulfillment when you achieve a goal. Your self-confidence soars because you focused on the goal and you reached that goal. You feel confident and powerful, able to reach just about anything you truly want to achieve.
So if we go back to the stats, we can see that only about 6 percent of the population experience this energy, motivation, sense of purpose and feelings of satisfaction and fulfillment. It isn’t hard to envision that 94 percent of the population could be susceptible to feelings of anxiety and depression.
By the way, having a purpose is important for our own particular sense of well being. It is integral to the actualization of our own particular gifts, talents and potential.
Here is an excerpt from my upcoming book The Pain Paradox
Purpose and meaning are not only critical as a basis for our identity, but when it comes to endurance and resilience, they provide the impetus and drive that help us to overcome difficult circumstances that will inevitably come up.
For example, theoretical research identifies purpose as a developmental asset (Benson, 2006) and an important component of human flourishing (Seligman, 2002). Empirical research finds that it is associated with greater levels of happiness (French & Joseph, 1999) and resiliency (Benard, 1991).
According to Seligman (2002) there are three primary paths to happiness. The first route involves experiencing as many of life’s pleasures as possible and results in short-term happiness. ( I wasted 20 years on this one.)
The other two routes produce longer lasting, deeper forms of contentment.
The second, also called the good life, involves becoming deeply involved in those activities in which one excels and losing oneself in the process, ( this is one descriptor of passion as outlined in my book, Discover Your Passion, Empower Your Spirit, this is known as “flow”.)
The third, the meaningful life, involves pursuing a path in which a cause or an institution supplies a sense of commitment to something greater than oneself. This is purpose that has punch and imbues us with a sense of “why?”
“He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.” ― Friedrich Nietzsche
So what happens when you are aimless and drifting? Well, it’s just like a ship that’s in the middle of the ocean in a big storm that has lost power. It is at the mercy of the waves coming at it. If it gets hit broadside, it is more at risk of being overwhelmed and capsizing.
When we are undecided and we are aimless and drifting we are way more likely to be anxious and depressed. We are at the mercy of all the waves that come with just existing. It is a tough world out there and everything that we are engaged in is difficult.
Our jobs are difficult, marriage is difficult, being a student and getting a degree is hard, starting or running a business is hard, raising children is hard, dealing with health problems is hard, working and saving for retirement so that we can be financially secure in our old age is hard. Nothing in this life is easy. We can all agree.
Why make it harder by drifting and aimlessness? What do we do ? How do we figure out purpose ? How do we use passion to formulate goals ?
I would start with passion.
Once you have a better idea about passion, I would pursue purpose and authenticity.
Why Study Near Death Experiences? They Shine Light on Purpose and Meaning
It is my belief that people are anxious, depressed and unfulfilled because they are not living out their lives in the power of their authentic self. The self that God had in mind when he created us.
My definition of the the authentic self is: who we were meant to be, doing what we were meant to do, using the gifts we were meant to use, with the love we were meant to share.
From my own personal observation and experience, it seems clearly evident that people are anxious and unfulfilled because they are living out a false or human interpretation of who they are and are pursuing goals and desires that have been foisted upon them by society, culture or other people. True freedom comes with authenticity. True power and vision are derived from a personal relationship with Jesus which allows for an authentic expression of who we were created to be.
Discover Your Passion. Find Your Purpose. Be who you were meant to be.
The relief and gratitude that you will experience will last for eternity.
YBIC
Johnny Cavazos
Authentic Self Series (3 book series) Paperback Edition (amazon.com)