The paradox of modernity is that we are afraid of death, but every day we kill life, spending it on unnecessary fuss, redundant information, fears about the future, chewing on the past. Anxiety, which has become an epidemic of the XNUMXst century, prevents us from being aware of the current moment.
Psychologies: If we compare today and the situation ten or thirty years ago, how much more disturbing has society become?
Dmitry Kovpak, cognitive psychotherapist: Today, every 14th inhabitant of the Earth suffers from clinically pronounced depression. Compare: in the 0,05th century, 5% of the entire population suffered from depression, in the middle of the 20th century – 2020%, by the end of the XNUMXth century – more than XNUMX%. And by XNUMX, depressive disorders will come in second place among all diseases as a cause of absenteeism and disability, after cardiovascular diseases – such is the forecast of WHO and the World Psychiatric Association.
Of course, such a diagnosis is made more often today than a hundred years ago. There are two reasons: firstly, we think about the quality of life much more often and turn to specialists. In the XNUMXth century, a miner or worker, leaving work, was in no hurry to see a psychoanalyst – he had no time for it. Secondly, the understanding of disorders has expanded. People have panicked throughout the history of mankind, but the diagnoses of panic disorder, agoraphobia, obsessive-compulsive disorder appeared about half a century ago. And since then, the list of diagnoses has been growing. In general, the XNUMXst century is the century of anxiety and depression.
Why does anxiety occur?
It is associated with globalization and information overload, as well as traditional internal problems of a person regarding the specifics of his thinking and system of relations. We are involved in a much larger volume of thoughts and concerns than before, we always want to get ahead of ourselves. Society’s demands on us have increased: we are trying to meet new social norms and demands for the level of education and competencies.
Endless background information noise forces us to constantly scroll the screens of computers and smartphones.
This gives rise to mental chewing gum and comparisons: who is resting on which beach, which country he went to, where he got a job and what he acquired. Society constantly demands that we prove our success. If earlier we had a rest from the informational noise, coming home, now society drags us into super-intense social interaction at any time of the day.
British psychologist Robin Dunbar calculated how many personal contacts we can maintain at the same time – in the 80s of the XX century, the “Dunbar number” was 150. And today it turns out that we can have thousands of contacts that have a psycho-emotional impact and drive us crazy with likes, comments, trolling. The conditional Big Brother in the face of the upcoming virtual reality captures us more and more.
Our personal lives have become public in many ways. Therefore, the level of stress has increased, and it drags along physiological tension: bodily discomfort, muscle clamps, pain, sleep disturbances, dysfunction of organs and systems. In a worse version – psychosomatic diseases. The problem is also that humanity is growing quantitatively: there are already more than 7 billion of us. Closeness on the planet. It will be even bigger in the future.
Probably, the endless crisis adds stress to the Russians: either oil falls, or the dollar. Can you adapt to constant change?
Yes, in our economy and politics “not diarrhea, so scrofula”. Since perestroika, we have been in a permanent state of change, against which the Brezhnev stagnation no longer seems so bad and harmful.
Taoist sages urged to accept the reality of the current period, whatever it may be. In order to more easily experience stress, it is necessary to live in the present in two most powerful senses at once: now (in time, in the moment) and here (in the surrounding reality). This formula – here and now – was adopted from Buddhists by psychologists of various directions.
What concerns do clients have with psychotherapists today?
Most often with fear for their health: fear of a stroke, heart attack, a dangerous contagious disease. Internet users and TV viewers constantly read and hear: watch yourself, look so as not to get hit by a car or catch bird flu. Our contemporaries massively become hypochondriacs. They react to the slightest signals of the body and look for symptoms of the disease, and whoever looks for it will always find it. A swollen lymph node or a pimple jumped up – is it cancer?
Anxious expectations have a snowball effect. An “anxious person” begins to quickly respond to various information, he tenses up, and this becomes a bad habit. His life turns into hell: he constantly scans himself and the surrounding reality for “treason”: suddenly something goes wrong, bursts, cracks, explodes, hurts, swells up.
Many of us spend a significant part of our resources looking for this danger and fixate on unpleasant sensations. And the object of their fears “plays along” with them: from excitement, adrenaline is released, blood pressure rises, the pulse quickens, and so on. “Well, I told you that it would be bad for me!” In the language of psychologists, such a phenomenon is called a self-fulfilling prophecy.
But is it possible to live completely without anxiety?
There is adequate anxiety, it is an assistant and protector, it warns of danger: for example, you are standing on a roof and you may fall – here anxiety is appropriate and protects you from unnecessary risk. Chronic anxiety is always excessive, it does not bring any benefit, moreover, it splashes into the body, gives rise to increased muscle tone and stiffness, and can lead to psychosomatic diseases. Therefore, be attentive to your body, be in contact with it.
We have two extremes: we either pay attention to any sneeze, or completely ignore bodily signals until we are “pinned down”. We get used to living in such tension that we do not notice muscle spasms.
Animals do not create or store mental garbage. We ourselves have learned to be anxious and depressive
We must learn to relax from our smaller brothers. You take a cat, and it “flows” down your arms. It is common for animals to use natural stretch marks – if something is stiff, tired, they stretch. Joke: “How do you relax?” “I don’t stress!” is a recipe for optimal behavior.
How to be in touch with the body and not become a hypochondriac?
It is worth practicing a reasonable attitude – both to life, and to yourself, and to the body, and to the psyche. With the help of the simplest, most natural and useful solution – the skill of mindfulness. This is not so much knowledge – after all, you can read a lot about yoga, meditation and other Eastern practices, but this will become an empty load in your head or a book gathering dust on the shelf – but a skill that needs to be developed and trained.
Mindfulness stops unnecessary races in the head, allows you to get rid of excess garbage and, as a result, excess tension. Reality is a great teacher and helper. Living in the present in every sense of the word is both a medicine and a truly healthy lifestyle.
How to train the skill of mindfulness?
Definitions will help us here. Mindfulness practices today are called mindfulness practices. If we observe ourselves, we will notice how distracted we are. We have constant jumps of thoughts: why did I buy this? Why did I do it? Why did I say or answer like that? We try to chew on the past, which can no longer be returned and cannot be corrected.
Instead of a reasonable acceptance of the lesson – thought, gained experience, ready for future situations – we turn on and listen to a worn-out record. It keeps us from living in reality. To be attentive, conscious – to notice where you are now in time and space.
You can learn mindfulness skills from the simplest. Watch how you go to bed: if you shrink into a bagel, curl up into a ball, then this is an attempt to take a safe fetal position. This is how a person “in a pen” sleeps, closing himself off from the world and expecting aggression. How do healthy calm people or healthy children sleep?
They are scattered throughout the space of the bed, like starfish, they are open to reality.
These are simple examples of how we can diagnose ourselves and detect stress. Look around: the shells do not fall, the ceiling does not fall, mad dogs do not attack you – your thoughts, habits of demanding from yourself and life attack like mad dogs. The rules learned from someone drive us into a corner. This needs to be revised, otherwise we will remain zombies.
Mindfulness isn’t just a religious practice, is it?
There is a similar concept in cognitive behavioral therapy – mindfulness. This is the ability to notice what your head is filled with and concentrate.
For example, a meditating person is extremely focused on contact with reality. From his point of view, we are zombies, unawakened. We seem to be awake, but as if we are sleeping in reality – we are constantly in dreams. Before they could open their eyes, they were already loaded with something – thoughts about work, money, relationships. And we often do not notice anything around – no weather, no sunrises, no sunsets, no nature, no loved ones, no architecture.
People do not communicate, even when they are together – they are constantly on gadgets. They rejoice at how well they killed time. In fact, a part of their lives just passed at that moment. And they will be scrolling the same social networks tomorrow, filled with the same mental garbage, which will steal their time in the same way. This is the most paradoxical thing: we are afraid of death, but we are not afraid to kill life in this way.
The ancient sages advised to constantly remember death …
“Memento mori” – “remember death” – this is not the motto of suicides, it is the awareness that your life is finite. What are you spending it on? To these extra stresses and fuss? Remember what you fussed and worried about a year ago. How useful was it to you?
In addition to the mindfulness tool (“here and now”, mindfulness practices) – the “Eastern” toolkit, there is a Western toolkit. We got it from the Greeks. The amazing ideas of Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus, Socrates were reworked by modern American psychologists and psychotherapists Albert Ellis and Aaron Beck.
Any up-to-date and specific recommendations?
For example, keep a special diary. While we are in the labyrinth of thoughts and habitual reactions, it is difficult for us to be critical of the contents of our head. Therefore, it is necessary to upload it to external media. With its help, we learn to notice specific situations in which we become sad, anxious, irritated, physiological responses, physical discomfort arise – from muscle tension to headaches, from trembling knees to nausea.
The technique is called SMER. We draw four columns: Events, Thoughts, Emotions, Reactions (this column is divided into two – physiological and behavioral). In the first, we write down the trigger – an event, a conversation, a meeting: what exactly provoked us to an undesirable reaction. In the column “Emotions” – what you felt.
It is important to build on either the event or emotions and try to scatter the situation across all four “shelves”
What were these events, what were the experiences, what emotional and physical sensations arose in the body, what was the behavioral reaction. The most important thing is to notice and write down: what slipped in the head between the event and its consequences, what chain of thoughts developed and dragged us to a certain conclusion, “pressing” the buttons of excessive stable experiences.
And one day, after several recorded cases, a magical thing will happen: we will see that in very similar circumstances, in a very similar way, with the help of typical thoughts, we reach a very similar state – bodily, emotional and behavioral. We will notice at what point our usual stereotypes kick in and the rules that Ellis and Beck have described emerge.
For example, “I must do it this way.” Or the catastrophization of events (“The crisis will break out again”, “I will be fired”, “I will get sick”). Frustration intolerance (“I can’t stand this, I won’t survive”) – we suffer from a lack of relationships, but we are afraid to meet a potential partner, to talk to him, because we don’t want to experience pain and disappointment.
Value judgments (everything is subject to external and internal rating) – there will always be someone better, smarter, wittier, so should we try to match? All these are limiting beliefs, and they need to be found and removed, replaced and trained with alternatives in order to reduce anxiety and return to the present.
About expert
Dmitry Kovpak – Psychotherapist, Chairman of the Association for Cognitive Behavioral Psychotherapy, Vice President of the Russian Psychotherapeutic Association.