So every week now, as we’re climbing the curve, getting more and more intensity of response to the situation, things are getting increasingly tense and nervous, and you can almost feel it in the the public, the whole situation.
Of course, there’s one feeling you get just by, you know, reading the news, and that presents one perspective on the world, but even going out for a walk, which is becoming increasingly frowned upon as a thing to do, you can see a certain level of tension around everybody, or most people anyway, who are out and about, a certain kind of nervousness, keep your distance, kind of this like fidgetiness, this kind of sense of unease, uncertainty, and really anxiety is creeping up all around the world.
And it’s hard not to be affected by it, maybe impossible not to be affected by this general state of unease that seems to be spreading everywhere.
In its quieter form, this would be this anxiety and this sort of creepy uneasiness, and in its more open form, it could simply be described as freaking out, panicking, and you can see that in some of the responses.
Maybe only time will tell, or it’s a matter of judgment, you know, what kind of reaction is an overreaction, a panic reaction of completely losing touch with appropriate responses and just AHHHHHH, just save me, just whenever it takes, we’ll just smash it, smash it, try to fix it, fix it, fix it right now, this sort of knee-jerk reaction of just trying to make it all go away.
And of course, as that doesn’t work, it has to simply be increased and increased and increased, this reaction.
And, you know, I’m no expert – of course, I guess it’s good to preface everything that you say, you can say “I’m no expert” – but it seems to me like there is massive overreaction underway, that it’s really hard for me to understand and accept the level of shutdown that is being brought down, and just telling everybody to stay at home and stop living life in any normal way in order to reduce the risk of a particular disease.
It’s a reaction of panic, a reaction of frustration and fear, and it’s something that it’s this feeling and this mood of anxiety is sort of taking over and spreading, and it seems like it’s up to each of us to decide where it stops.
I mean, we have to not let this take over our own lives.
Just because there’s a dangerous situation out there, and many people are freaking out and overreacting, it doesn’t mean that we need to let ourselves react this way.
It’s very easy to.
If we don’t control it, if we don’t guide our response in any way, it would be very easy to react by simply joining in on the panic, joining in on the fear.
But I think it’s useful to keep in mind, to notice, this mood of fear, and then choose how we’re going to respond.
And the first thing to say: we don’t have to follow whatever is the general mood.
Of course we’re going to be influenced by it, but we have some control over how much we want to let it influence our own mood and our own state of mind.
And then the next thing would be, well, what do we want to be our own state of mind? If we’re choosing as an alternative to the freaking out and the fear, anxiety, frustration response, if we have an alternative in mind, what’s it going to be? What is our response going to be to this? It’s like this anxiety wave is washing over the world, and now some people are going to be swept away in the wave, and others aren’t.
So I’m curious to figure out, you know, how can we possibly respond to this? What is a good response, and how can we do it?
#anxiety #stress #panic