Psychology of anxiety

The real test of character is how long we get along with what's not in our control. To be irritated with and trying to get rid of what doesn't suit us makes us brittle and brash. Anxiety is 'feeling bad about feeling bad'. Instead of passively yielding to anxiety, we must be proactive to embrace anxiety and to continue our survival struggle instead of meekishly quitting. There are people and things being an inevitable part of our lives; there is no need to be irritated with them. And what is evitable must not be confronted.

Desiring to remain unperturbed in this life, rife with strife, makes us prone to mental stress. What we suffer is not stress, it's distress – the negative side of stress – defined as 'physical or emotional discomfort, suffering, or alarm, particularly of a more acute nature when we stress about the stress'. Eustress, by contrast, is 'a healthful, stimulating kind and level of stress', achieved only when we accept stress, not seek its absence. Importantly, we can change our stress mindset, experts say.

In Kafka's short story, The Burrow, the badger-like animal is vain about his burrow, finding it a sanctuary against external threats and a self-assured safety against internal turmoil. But he is still nagged by the fear of unnamed and unseen enemies, whether real or imagined. The animal has a paradoxical relationship with his safe haven, as do all the victims of existential anxiety. He feels protected in his burrow, but simultaneously, he is consumed by the fear that it can be compromised. The inner turmoil makes him nostalgic, yearning for a simpler life filled with universal threats and dangers instead of self-invited individualistic anxieties.

Anxiety is the progeny of paranoid reason. An anxious person, though, lives in a solipsistic world; he remains weary of other people's opinions, taking them as reactions. The burrow symbolises the man's desire to construct a rational sanctuary in the chaotic world. That's what is expected of him as per survival of the fittest.

Another paradox the rodent faces is that the very entrance of the burrow, which ensures sustenance by providing fresh air and food, is also the gateway for the existential dangers. Accepting the paradox stops anxiety from becoming fatal.

Our society fulfills all the criteria to be labeled as the breeding place of anxiety: here rights are just a dictionary entry; here public relations become the master key to social security; here law is held in abeyance if some big guns fall into its radar.

During our earthly stay, the pursuit of unalloyed peace to the point where its deprivation proves suffocating is futile per se. Anxiety must not be allowed to outdo our survival instinct. Yes, it does have telling physiological and psychological effects. Nevertheless, the 'why' to live gives us a reason to survive under the weight of anxiety.

A large number of victims of anxiety are mostly found in the jobbed community. The frequency of apathetic official orders, professional injustice, and exploitation vis-à-vis hierarchical subjugation cause anxiety in the exploited workforce of Orwellian Boxers. The credo of a workplace mentality that delays everything to be done in the nick of time says that it's an art to handle the rush and rash, keeping mental equanimity intact.

The intriguing corollary of Murphy's law helps the anxious people to deflect the forboding anxiety, saying that the more you fear the happening of an incident, the more likely you are to make it happen. Though a bit hyper-real, it warns us against sliding seamlessly into overthinking and brooding moods.

The habit of avoiding pain and fear of caving in under pressure also causes anxiety, leading to weakened self-trust. The attribution of inimical effect to every challenge makes one neophobic. Fearing failure as a bad teacher stops us from stepping into unchartered areas. According to scientists, one way of neurogenesis – formation of new brain cells – is to welcome unfamiliarity. The more eventful a person's life is, the less anxious he is.

To recall the experiences involving paroxysms of anxiety where we came through successful mitigates the scare of next anxiety attacks. So what we need to shatter the cloud of anxiety is to dare, act, and move forward.