Anxiety and the unequal high performance society

In the last thirty years, inequality has not only increased in the West, the world and Sweden, but also anxiety. In addition, the performance requirements have increased and hence also the stress.

How to deal with this? There is a lot of advice to be had that is valuable. Three physical training sessions of at least one hour each per week make the brain repair itself and become stronger and endure stress better.

Rest without demands

Getting enough rest helps if you are tired. A trick for falling asleep with anxiety is to lie down and think that I don't need to fall asleep. It's enough that I lie here and close my eyes. It also gives rest. Then you can try to let go of all thoughts. All thoughts are okay but just let them go as they arise. Breathe in slowly through your nose high up in your head and down into your stomach and out through your mouth or nose depending on what makes you calmer. This can help you fall asleep. If I'm feeling down, a nap often restores the happiness completely. A power nap, a nap of 20-30 minutes, during the day when you are down can do wonders.

Sign of energy

But if you are rested, anxiety is often the body's way of saying it has energy. So doing something positive you need to do can help with anxiety. Intense, physical activity often helps very well. Anxiety was, among other things, a signal to us to start running from wild animals or other threats. Therefore, the anxiety energy is connected to our movement energy. After a strength and conditioning session, I often feel very calm and harmonious, even if I had anxiety before. Steam is also a limited amount of energy. Even if in the moment it feels like it will never go away, it will. Exercise can help you make it go away faster.

Dealing with anxiety and obsessions

Anxiety can be dealt with in different ways. Obsessions can be ignored, played with or lived out in the head so that they appear unreasonable. Obsessions often only have those with too high a moral or need for control. The best way to get rid of them is not to take them seriously, let them come and go and live them out in your head.

Alcohol, drugs and other addictions do not help in the long run against anxiety. Often they even break us down the moment we take to them. But there are a lot of fun things to do in life such as bowling, going to a cafe with a friend, walking with or without a friend in nature, watching an uplifting film or reading a book, going to a museum or visiting a castle. The best pleasures does not include abuse. For our brain, seeing new environments is linked to better chances of survival. Therefore, walking makes us happier.

Allow yourself to fail

Anxiety can be dealt with by allowing yourself to fail. If you are too nervous about a task, you can go in to make it wrong. Often it leads to just discovering that there were more ways to do things than you knew before. In addition, it becomes easier to make decisions if you have a bit of a shitty attitude. Anxiety can often be that one does not feel sufficient control. If you don't feel like you're grossly sloppy, the solution is often to learn to make mistakes in less serious areas. When we are relaxed, equal, friendly, free and moderately playful our brain often makes the best decisions. As long as you haven't acted out your worst thoughts, you're probably fine. We don't want to vent our worst thoughts, but the brain doesn't understand the word no. That's how you think: I'm not going to eat sweets, so the brain hears I'm going to eat sweets.

Fast-paced music like rock helps me with anxiety anyway. Here is my playlist.

Forgiving oneself and others for our shortcomings and also forgiving ourselves for having difficulty forgiving also helps.

Taking care of a fellow human being like your old parent if you don't have children or the children of someone you know can also help.

Fairly large challenges helpful

It can help to have just the right amount of tasks at work and or in your free time. These may be slightly challenging beyond our comfort zone because then we will be happier when we forget about ourselves while solving these tasks. It is called flow.

There are all the good and necessary ways to deal with stress and anxiety.

But ultimately we must combine these individual strategies with recreating a red-green society for all. Equality societies promote mental health and social ability.

Jan Wiklund is right about the moral destruction of inequality

I quote Jan Wklund who, like me, points out that individual strategies against anxiety are not enough:

"Nevertheless, I believe, this development must also be attacked on a collective level. Just the individual is not enough, even if it is important in the meantime.

The fundamental errors, if one can now speak of such, I think are

- That all responsibility is placed on the individuals. The entire neoliberal society has conspired to instill in us the notion that everything is our own fault and that we only have ourselves to blame if something goes wrong. Nevertheless, it has been calculated (by, among others, Branko Milanovic) that if you earn more than the global average, it mostly depends on pure luck – mostly on who your parents were. And whether something goes wrong depends very much on social traps, i.e. the fact that we are not alone in making our choices, we do so in a context that we cannot influence.

- That the all-overshadowing goal in the entire society is economic growth - which, moreover, is admittedly assumed to happen in a way that is impossible. Or to put it plainly, that the whole society is focused on more and more being able to be bought, and that this is best done if the market is allowed to roam free without being influenced by political agreements. Which is demonstrably – after 2008 – not true. And by the way, it's doubtful that "more" is what people actually want, see https://gemensam.wordpress.com/2024/06/13/vad-star-ivagen-for-lyckan/

- That society is increasingly stratified, among other things due to the above, into a small group that "succeeds" and a large majority that at best keeps its nose above water.

And we can't do anything about this ourselves. A little more active trays could do a lot. A habit of trade union and political action could also make us more competent for slightly larger projects, see https://gemensam.wordpress.com/2015/03/09/hur-bidrar-vi-till-en-intelligent-systemkritisk-opposition "

Recess

Moralism prevails over practical politics.

30 habits that make you happier

Normal to not always have maximum happiness

Treat yourself to rest and pleasure quite often

Create a good position for yourself despite the social situation