Are we living in an Age of Anxiety
This is the speech a wrote a few years ago now, I think it it even more relevant now. This is my personal opinion and not to reflect the views of anyone else.
As an Artist and Independent Author, advocate for unseen disabilities it is a privilege to be here.
I am extremely humbled and excited to be talking about tonight’s topic “ARE WE LIVING IN AN AGE OF ANXIETY” as it is certainly very close to my heart.
Please leave questions about Abbey and myself until the end, and any questions about Anxiety I will answer at question time.
I ask this as,my mind races and I find it difficult to have too many changes at once, if I get out of breath don’t worry for me, I am ok, and its part of my disability,
Id like to quickly touch on a few key words, and I will answer any questions about these towards the end of my speech,
I believe we need to move away from adding extra negativity to such words as mental illness and work to towards using terms that reflect a positive message when it comes to an individual’s mental health, for myself, tonight I would say I am in a good mental health state, I am happy and excited to be here, but only a few hours ago, I was in poor mental health, because I was worrying about not being able to speak with you all here tonight.
I would also like you to think about anxiety not as a mental health illness, but more a mental health issue, and that what we are all trying to achieve a healthy state of mental awareness.
I say this because, I have a long, complex mental health history, that at certain times of my life these illnesses have dramatically reshaped how I saw the world around, this is my point of view on these key words, and why the word anxiety has for a long time had a negative Stigma, also that I do believe we are living in an age of anxiety.
If some of you are un clear what Anxiety is defined as, according to the Oxford Dictionary Anxiety is A feeling of worry, nervousness, or unease about something with an uncertain outcome.
I define Anxiety is a build-up of worry that comes from the constant inner questions we ask ourselves, and compounds every time we add an extra situation, that can come from these.
Such Things as -AM I a good mother? Father, husband or wife, friend, co-worker, do I work enough, or too much. Do I spend enough time with my kids? Are they getting the best of me? Then we add in our finances, putting food on the table, paying off a mortgage, a car, and all the other expenses our day to day living brings.
In Daily living, work, sports and many other socially interactive situations there has seems to be an increased mental demand placed on individuals to perform better, achieve more and a general migration towards what I call the “Joneses Syndrome”, where people are trying to compete against their neighbors, for example, the bigger house, or the bigger boat, the higher paying job, sending your children to the more expensive schools.
This competitive nature we have as humans, has in my opinion influenced the increased pressure and contributed to living in an Age of Anxiety,
Others might see this as a normal progression, but for myself it has been a constant struggle, and further compounded due to my mental health issues.
I can clearly see that yes, we are living in an age of anxiety. For some people- that constant worry becomes so great they are unbale to function in daily life.
You do not have to have a mental health illness to suffer from an mental health issue,
Mental illness and Mental Issue
You can be clinically diagnosed with a mental Illness such as Autism adhd, that you were born with, but may only suffer a mental health issue such as anxiety, panic attacks, depression, that effects how you function at the time it is happening, and can arise from a traumatic event such as a death in the family, and is classed as a periodic mental illness.
I do say this is my view, because it is extremely hard to umbrella Mental health under any one particular category, our brains are complex and each individual will have different mental health, for example I have Adhd, it doesn’t actualluy contribute to me suffering anxiety, if anything it has helped me solve certain issues by allowing me to think out side the box, but Ptsd came about from several traumas in my life and in turn I started having panic attacks, that increased my anxiety levels.
Throughout my life I have been clinically diagnosed with several mental illnesses and mental issues,
Yes we are able to have more than one, I was lucky enough to have more than my fair share, most of which I will hope everyone here is partly familiar with, I will only use the short terms for them, Adhd, Asd, Dyslexia, ag or aphobia, Panic Attacks, Anxiety, depression
All of these have affected my life in varying degrees at different times of my life.
To start with _Agoraphobia- AG or A phobia is described as a panic disorder and is very different from every day anxiety.
The easiest way to explain how Agoraphobia effects myself, is that it is recurrent, and there are sudden periods of intense fear which bring on sweating, trembling, nausea and the sheer fear that I am losing control of my environment. Hence why most people associated it with staying indoors. Or being frightened of going outdoors.
I’m not afraid of being outside, I get severe and intense feelings that I am unable to control what is happening around me, so staying in side became my safe place. Actually, what it became was my prison. A self-imposed prison.
But my Anxiety is where I work myself up into a mental and physical worry and I convince myself that I cannot cope emotionally. playing out certain situations in my mind, that may or may not occur and this will also result in nausea, sweating, and a dreaded fear that someone will notice that I’m not coping and might try and talk to me, see if I need help. Compounding how I already feel.
My Anxiety is also a result of certain situations that occurred throughout my life which in turn made my worry and stresses greater.
I have been fortunate in my life that I have been able to understand how my mental health impacts my life and others around me, and then been able to seek out a way to help me achieve positive mental health.
I taught myself many different techniques to help me cope and manage my life, such things as meditation, the power of positive thoughts, and learing to face the fears, a bit like someone who is frightened of spiders, puts a spider onto there hand to face their fear, I had to learn how to mentally face what scared me, to help achieve a good level of mental health, this doesn’t remove my illnesses, however it does enable me to function it situations I would have normally avoided.
Being dyslexic, I had to learn to overcome certain boundaries, and in turn lead me to write my first book.
I learnt to use as many applications the internet provides, such as grammar programs, speech to text, video and photo edit programs to help achieve a professional standard for writing my book, and also found a way to have indepenadly publish the book, because at the time I didn’t have the confidence to submit my manuscript to a main stream publishing company, And as my career as an Artist bloomed, I then also taught myself how to use social media, all while still trying to produce quality art pieces.
For the past year while trying to forge ahead as a professional artist, i also have had to embrace the fact that social media is the new bush telegraph, when it comes to promoting my art works.
In the beginning I only had an email address and was on one social media site.
Today in 2017, I find myself on three social media sites, with in those sights I am a member of over 20 pages related to art, and many more personal art pages of individual artists. I have had to learn how to #hashtag, @user and several other short form letters of the alphabet - OMG ( oh my god ) interesting use of letters, seeing the meaning of these letters has no direct link to god. LOL (laugh out loud) to the longer letter blocks ROTFL ( rolling on the floor laughing) and many more that I am still learning what the mean.
When I just get used to these, it seems the next wave of internet communication has exploded into social media, and I have to learn how to send and or make “gif”, memes and sideshows of my art, also YouTube becomes part of my life. Learning to upload videos of how I create my art, and as I get used to all of this, I then have to learn what podcasts are, and the cycle starts all over again.
Then just as I partly master these, up goes the technology and instead of using my desk top computer, I'm now using a laptop, then to an iPad and from there it's all now done on my phone.
This is only one aspect of my life, and already my mind feels exhausted.
If I take what I have just spoken with you all about, and remove that I have clinical mental health issues, I can still see that we have a huge incline to living in an age of anxiety.
I might view the world differently from others, and many may not agree, but with the rapid way our society continually moves forward with technology, and the ever close presence of the Jones's syndrome, I can only conclude that we are definitely living in an age of Anxiety.