That Funny Feeling

Hello loves!

I hope everyone is staying warm this snowy winter (snowy by South Carolina's standards anyway.) January is almost over and yet, it kind of feels like it's been 2025 forever.

A few of my friends and I were discussing that everything sort of feels. . . weird. I don't know how to explain it, but I understood exactly what they meant. Call it bad vibes, the stars shifting, or just sleep-deprived unease. Whatever it is, there's a lot of unsettled feelings going around.

While a few obvious causes of all this anxiety can be attributed to the new year, the current political scene, and unpredictable weather, I think it runs a bit deeper than that. For a while now, I think the amount of people with anxiety has been increasing to a shocking degree. It's natural for everyone to go through a phase or two of being worried about something, but the constant and chronic mass anxiety is not normal.

I've heard all the arguments. The classic "it's those dang phones ruining mental health," the "back in my day we had less than you and were grateful" lectures, and all the other excuses that seem to shift the blame wholly onto one or two generations---usually the younger ones---before ending the conversation in a 'well what can you do' way. And while there can be a TINY bit of merit to all of these arguments, I think there's something else at play.

Anxiety, in my experience, is the worst when I'm focused on something I can't control. Which isn't great because almost all of life is outside of our control. Funny how that works.

The American Psychological Association describes anxiety like this:

Anxiety is an emotion characterized by feelings of tension, worried thoughts, and physical changes like increased blood pressure. Anxiety is not the same as fear, but they are often used interchangeably. Anxiety is considered a future-oriented, long-acting response broadly focused on a diffuse threat, whereas fear is an appropriate, present-oriented, and short-lived response to a clearly identifiable and specific threat.

In other words, fear has an endpoint, usually after the threat has passed. Anxiety, on the other hand, begins to form before the threat even arrives.

Think of it this way. You're swimming in the ocean and having a good time with your friends when you see a fin. Somewhere in your mind the Jaws theme starts playing as everyone sprints out of the water. In the scramble toward shore, your adrenaline kicks in, causing your heart to race as all you can think about is getting away from the shark that is definitely only here to get you (it's not) and is probably right behind you (it isn't.) Once you're all back on land and realize that no one was hurt, your heart rate starts to go down and you catch your breath. Within a few minutes, you're back to normal, enjoying the day with your loved ones and laughing about how scared you all were.

The fear came at the sign of a "threat" and dispersed as soon as the "threat" was gone.

Now imagine it's a year later and you've returned to that same beach. You remember the last time you were here, there was a huge shark (that's probably being exaggerated in your memory) and the close call it had been. You feel a bit apprehensive looking out at the waves, trying to find some indicator that a hungry apex predator is nearby. When your friends call you into the water, you don't go out as far as usual and are on high alert to every splash and dark shape in the water. At the end of the day, after nothing happened, you laugh at yourself for being so nervous, and return the next year feeling much more confident.

There was no visible shark, but your mind and body remembered that there had been a shark once. Perhaps you'll always feel a little bit cautious around the ocean and you'll take precautions such as never swimming at prime shark feeding hours, but on the whole, it doesn't stop you from living your life. That's anxiety.

Anxiety---much like sharks---has gotten a bad rep over the years. But it, just like sharks, can't be relegated into a simple bad or good category. Anxiety serves a purpose.

Anxiety helps us stay safe. It allows us to prepare accordingly when we're about to do something risky or dangerous. Anxiety is what makes us more careful on rickety bridges or when using hot plates. It takes personal experiences and the knowledge passed on to us through others and creates a plan for when we're in a situation that could turn dangerous. It's the storm cellars of our mind; we hope we don't need to use it, but it'd be worse not to have it when a tornado comes.

The problem starts to arise when people want to live in the storm cellar permanently.

Let's go back to the beach day example. Imagine it's that first trip back after the shark sighting. Instead of enjoying the drive up with your friends, you're frozen in your seat and counting the seconds until you arrive with dread. When you finally get there, you ignore the nice weather and refuse to get anywhere near the water. While everyone else is having fun in the ocean and making memories, you're sitting on the sand alone, too anxious about the possibility of a shark attack to relax and enjoy the day. By the time you leave, you've let the whole beach day go to waste by staying trapped on the sand and imagining a dark fin in every wave.

Despite being nowhere close to a shark, the worry of an attack prevented you from doing anything fun. That paralysis is what can happen when anxiety is left unchecked. Being in a constant state of anxiety is unhealthy and it can cause you to be anxious towards the wrong things, like letting a fear of public speaking in a conference spiral out into an aversion of any kind of small talk.

A fun fact about me: I love sharks (surprise to literally no one.) They were one of my first childhood interests and because of that, I've gone on plenty of deep dives about them. Which is how I know that a world without sharks would be a terrible place. Without them, the ocean's food chain would fall apart, impacting not just marine ecosystems, but the entire globe. The same thing would happen in the reverse scenario. Too many sharks means not enough food to go around and boom, the circle of life is broken.

In the same way that sharks are needed to keep the planet healthy, humans need some anxiety. But not so much that it overruns our minds and consumes every thought of our day. Just like the ecosystem, we need to have balance.

Anxiety's one of those things that gets labeled as "bad," which leads people to believe that the goal in life is to have no anxiety. But that's not really possible for most people. It's hard-wired in our brains as a survival skill, just like our fight-or-flight reactions. This misguided idea that we can't have any anxiety can lead to a lot of people overanalyzing their thoughts and honestly just causes more anxiety than they started with.

We don't need to destroy it. We just need to deal with it in a healthy way.

I'm always the first to suggest talking to a professional, if only because it's a great way to get a new perspective on whatever's troubling you or to be directed to a necessary medication. It's also just pretty cathartic speaking with someone who's basically a stranger and doesn't have any preconceived notions about you.

Sometimes a change in lifestyle can help. I know it's cliché to say diet and exercise, but that really does make a difference. Just walking outside in nature is a good way to get grounded and alleviate some of those anxious feelings you might hold inside.

Finally, I think it's important to remember what anxiety is supposed to do. It jumps to the future, to the 'what-ifs' and the unknowns, so that we can responsibly prepare for whatever lies ahead. It's not a good idea to live every second at the whims of our impulses and whatever circumstances arise. But we should expect and understand the reality of life; that we can prep as much as we want, do all the research possible, and still find ourselves with an unwanted outcome. It sucks, but we just can't make the universe bend to our will.

Instead of letting that drive us down into despair, we should focus on the things we can do. I know that by myself I can't change the world, but I can do something that impacts my community for the better. Sure it's not a groundbreaking miracle or a heroic act that defeats the bad guy, but it's still something.

When our anxiety gets too big and starts to push us down, we can defy it with one small act. Because that one tiny act will lead to another and another, until we are no longer being controlled by our anxiety and fear.

Taking that first step against out-of-control anxiety can be as simple as saying hi to someone new or asking for help. Keeping it in check can be a daily routine that pushes you out of your comfort zone or choosing to directly face your fears with a crazy skydiving trip.

Whatever you do, just remember that---while yes, life can be scary and unpredictable---you are meant to enjoy it too. And the best way to fight the darker aspects of the world is by walking with hope for the future, love for those around us, and joy in the fact that we get to be alive.

Anxiety isn't bad, but it isn't meant to control you either.

Love y'all!

(Disclaimer: the likelihood of a shark attack is 1 out of 11.5 million and it's almost always a case of mistaken identity. I only used the ocean example because a friend and I recently talked about a beach trip and it put the idea in my head. Now, what IS a scary animal in the ocean is a dolphin, but that's another story.)

"For God has not given us a spirit of fear and timidity, but of power, love, and self-discipline." ---2 Timothy 1:7