The Anxiety Monster

Today, I am heading to Austin, TX, to participate in a continuing education class.  My instructor teaches us the finer points of Bowen Family System's Theory and its implications for living life within our families, congregations, and other emotional systems.  I don't have time, energy, or brain power to condense all of Bowen's work into such a small space, but I wanted to share some reflections over an article linked to the ELCA Health and Wellness page on Facebook.

The article is here for full reference:

http://www.slate.com/id/2283221/pagenum/all/#p2

Following are some thoughts on the reasons for anxiety and stress stemming from quotes in the article:

For the experts, one particularly egregious offender is America's increasing loss of community, what we might call the "Bowling Alone" effect. Human contact and kinship help alleviate anxiety (our evolutionary ancestors, of course, were always safer in numbers), yet as we leave family behind to migrate all over the country, often settling in insular suburbs where our closest pal is our plasma-screen TV, we miss out on this all-important element of in-person connection. As fear researcher Michael Davis of Emory University told me: "If you've lost the extended family and lost the sense of community, you're going to have fewer people you can depend on, and therefore you'll be more anxious. Other cultures have much more social support and are better off psychologically because of it." Another factor that adds to this problem—especially among young people—is our growing reliance on texting and social media for community, which many psychologists say is no substitute for real human interaction. When you're feeling most dreadful, you don't run to your Facebook profile for consolation; you run to a flesh-and-blood friend.

I agree with part of the sentiments of this statement.  There is no subsitute for real, human contact.  I believe there is a part of our being which longs for it.  After all, we were created to be in community.  In Genesis Chapter 2, the man is put to sleep, and a woman is created out of his rib.  To fully grasp the significance of this act of creation, one must realize the understanding of the wholeness of God.  God was complete.  Total.  Needed nothing or no one.  The more "whole" one was in being, the closer one was to God.  When God took a rib from the man, he was no longer whole.  He could only be whole while living in relationship with the woman. 

Now, one can take this as far as one likes, but I want to point out the importance of relationship in such an act of creation.  Humankind was not meant to be alone, isolated, cut off from others.  We need and crave human contact.

But, there is also a need for us to be different.  Systems theory calls this differentiation.  Not only do we need to be connected to others, but we need to know what is us and what is not us.  We need to have our own identity separate from others.  Man and woman were created differently--not the same.  Man and woman had to acknowledge their differences.

And so should we.  Part of the problem in our society today rests in maintaining a balance in staying connected and yet being separate.  Staying differentiated is a massive trick.  Too often, we get pulled one way or another.  We cling to the group, so when the group becomes worried--we become worried.  This is significant because one of the "disciples" of Bowen, a gent by the name of Ed Friedman believes society is in a regressive mode which means people are more apt to clump together and lose differentiation.  This means a heightened sense of anxiety.

One of the ways of coping is to define one's self.  Define what is me and what is not me.  Stay connected to the group, but don't be afraid of saying, "That's not what I believe."  Or "That's not where I stand."  The trick to this differentiation is to stay connected to the group and allow others to share differing opinions and I statements without leaving.  Not an easy task, but one, when done properly, allows for less anxiety.

Continuing with this tech theme, the next culprit the experts mentioned was the torrent of (often nerve-racking) information we now consume. For one thing, the amount of data we take in each day has jumped dramatically—the average Sunday newspaper contains more raw information than people in earlier eras would absorb over the course of a few years—and some neuroscientists believe that our brains simply weren't designed to handle this kind of volume. But even worse, this avalanche of data is increasingly of the alarmist, fear-igniting variety. If a TV newscast isn't covering a grisly double homicide, the anchor is teasing a story about the hidden threat in your own home. "The media does this to us," explained Evelyn Behar, a worry expert who teaches at the University of Illinois-Chicago. "It's always reporting that this thing causes cancer or that thing can kill you. We live in a culture where fear is used to motivate us."

My last class in Bowen Theory was instrumental in how I have started viewing much of life.  One of our greatest gifts as human beings is to be able to prepare and contemplate the future.  We can plan ahead for all sorts of contingencies.  Our ability to think through our safety has led us to build homes which shelter us.  No longer to many of us worry about being eaten by bears or lions or others such predators when we sleep at night.  As we have thought through other such things, we have learned to mainpulate the environment to protect ourselves from many, many things which would have threatened our livelihoods.  We have vaccines and car seats and gadgets galore to help us in this process.

But our contemplation of the future has led to some developments which are not so beneficial.  Most animals live in the present, and they deal with a present reality.  On the African Serengetti, if a lion rushes a zebra, the zebra takes off.  It's fight or flight at its finest.  Once escaping from the lion, the threat is gone.  The zebra goes back to browsing.  The chemicals which are released to help the zebra escape from the lion are used up in flight.  Anxiety levels return to normal.

Our bodies produce the same sorts of chemicals when we become stressed as well; however many times, we react to perceived threats instead of real ones.  A lion chasing you to kill you is a much bigger threat than the possibilty of a lion showing up in Houston Texas to nab you as you are eating at a side walk cafe.  But if we hear a story about a lion that escaped from a zoo in Houstion and we are near the zoo, our bodies react as if the lion has suddenly appeared.  And yet, we do not fight or fly, so those chemicals never get used up. 

In my class, some researchers have shown that when the body doesn't use such chemicals, you get a gathering of fat around the mid-section, and your arteries begin to have plaque build up.  Cholesterol might not be such a boogy-man after all.  Maybe it's chronic anxiety.

Let's take a different tact on the same phenomena.  When Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and several others were shot in Arizona, a media firestorm was created.  Stories appeared on all television screens, internet news sights, and talk radio stations.  We were bombarded with the news.  And anxiety was generated.  Folks started blaming lax gun laws, conservative talk radio, liberal anarchists, etc.  A great number of people suddenly didn't feel safe anymore and were looking to legislate measures which would prevent such an event from happening again.

But, the question needs to be asked: in what way did the shooting really affect you?  I mean, personally, how did the shooting affect you in any physical way?  Are you really threatened by such events?  Even if you were to plot the statictical reality of you getting shot in a similar manner and found the odds to be extremely small, would it change how you reacted?  If you reacted at all to this shooting, were you reacting to a real or a perceived threat?

If we are honest with ourselves, most of us were reacting to a perceived threat.  It wasn't real, and yet our bodies went into fight or flight mode.  Not exactly healthy.

It's unfortunate that we often don't take time to think about such things.  When we truly sit back and think about events in life, our anxiety can be lessened.  We don't need to get as worked up about perceived threats.  Concentrate on what's real.

And as people of faith, do we need any further guiding words than these?

²⁵“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? ²⁶Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? ²⁷And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life? ²⁸And why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, ²⁹yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. ³⁰But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? ³¹Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What will we wear?’ ³²For it is the Gentiles who strive for all these things; and indeed your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. ³³But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. ³⁴“So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today. --Matthew 6

That's Jesus, by the way.  And if we are people of faith who rely upon God, why are we so anxious?