My Anxiety: Hey, it’s me Again

**Jenna Leung (ISB G10)**

Jenna is an all-too-relatable victim of anxiety. She hopes her article will be helpful to you suffering also from anxiety (which isn’t exactly a good thing…).
In her article, Jenna uses her expertise in fighting off her anxiety (and memes) to provide an explanation for why we are anxious and how exactly we can get rid of this queasy stomach feeling.

Anxiety? Ew, disgusting. Everyone’s probably experienced this nasty little thing at least once in their lifetime before because I sure have. The alarm that goes off every day is the first to welcome my anxiety at 6:30 in the morning. And from that point on, my anxiety follows me around like that boy playing the trumpet at the girl (down below for reference and visualization). You might have always wondered why anxiety seems to love bothering us, so I’ve created a short “explanation” on things you might want to know about anxiety.

Imagine you’re a zebra living in the grasslands of Africa, and maybe besides occasional photoshoots by overly eager humans, the only things you do are sleep, eat, and survive from predators. The difference between you and those humans isn’t simply the fact that you have four legs and stripes—it’s the choices you make.

Zebras make decisions that affect or solve their immediate problems. You find a nice patch of grass to munch on to satisfy your hunger. You look for a stream to quench your thirst. You gather in herds to protect one another when predators are near, and you move on when the predators leave. The choices you make as a zebra are almost always focused on immediate problems. Most animals, like zebras, live in an Immediate Return Environment — the outcomes of their decisions are instantly “returned”.

Now switch back and imagine you’re a human (hopefully you don’t need to imagine this). Humans live in what researchers call a “Delayed Return Environment”, which essentially means the majority of the decisions you make currently will benefit you in the future. For instance, you save money now so that your children have enough for their school fees, or so that you have enough for retirement later on, whereas zebras would worry about being attacked by a lion. The constant uncertainty we live in is the main cause of our concerns. Unfortunately, the human brain was never built to deal with this type of fast-paced and stressful environment, and voila—anxiety!

”Anxiety is why we may experience panic attacks, overthinking, avoiding situations, and even procrastination…”

Let’s rewind all the way back to the earliest modern humans with brains similar to ours, the Homo sapiens sapiens. With brains relatively the same size, we pretty much have the same “thinking system” and functions as humans hundreds and thousands of years ago. We’ve seen the invention of cars, planes, phones, and TikTok in the timespan of just 100 years. Yet modern society, only in the last 500 years, changed from an Immediate Return Environment to a Delayed Return Environment. Clearly, many things can happen in the time span of 100 years, but in terms of the evolution of the human brain, not much at all. The brain took thousands of years to evolve for the Immediate Return Environment, yet in the blink of an eye, society has switched to a Delayed Return Environment. Compared to these rapid technological advancements, our brains were not fit to adjust to these changes. Thousands of years ago, we had to face many life-threatening situations, for example, running from an animal of some sort. But in modern society, rather than having to deal with those life-or-death situations, we worry about long-term problems. However, due to our brains not being built to solve problems that would only occur in a Delayed Return Environment, we struggle to cope with them. This is one of the many reasons we experience anxiety and chronic stress, eventually throwing us into the cycle of anxiety.

Anxiety is why we may experience panic attacks, overthinking, avoiding situations, and even procrastination (I feel you). Living in constant uncertainty and chronic stress is definitely a problem for all of us, and many of us don’t know how to deal with our anxiety. So, what methods can we use to improve or “fight” against anxiety in such a stressful environment?

You can measure things — while you’re probably never going to know exactly the amount of money you’re going to have in the future, you can at least reduce some of that uncertainty by calculating some of your savings now, or how much you spend each month. Or, if a lack of sleep is causing you anxiety, you could record the number of hours you sleep every day to help you with creating a consistent sleeping schedule. The act of measurement, while it most likely won’t help solve our problems immediately, will clarify what we need to focus on in order to overcome it.
Distinguish between feelings and facts. Anxiety is often created because of our negative emotions (e.g. worrying, self-shaming, stressing). It’s really difficult to realize these feelings aren’t true (subjectively), but one method you can try is to record your thoughts (especially when your anxiety “comes”), and jot down a word describing how you feel. If you write your worries down on a daily basis, you’ll be able to see that your negative feelings are, once again, not reality and that they were created in your mind.
Similar to the second tip, something effective you can try out is to make a mental note, or physically note it down, of the things you’re thankful for. It’s important to keep positive (yes bE pOsitiVe) and to learn that everything we experience in life is temporary—the bad things in our lives won’t last forever.