Mental health
fromPsychology Today
5 hours agoIs Too Much Information Fueling Your Anxiety?
Anxiety disorders have increased significantly, likely due to technology's impact on information overload and intolerance of uncertainty.
We tend to think of the five-day workweek as a law of nature, as certain as the rising of the sun. But it's nothing of the sort. The five-day workweek is a human invention that was introduced just over a century ago to solve the specific problems of the industrial age. By now it's so ingrained in our lives that we've forgotten we created it in the first place-but we did create it and we can also un-create it.
Sitting in the audience, listening to these professionals in perfect harmony, brought me back to my days in the band. I wasn't good, it was mandatory, and I played the trombone. I desperately wanted to quit. We couldn't have backpacks in school, so I walked through the halls lugging my trombone in my right hand and books under my left armpit. This made me a perfect target for a bully or two to come up behind me and smack the books out from under me.
Even when our own lives are relatively stable, constant exposure to war, political unrest, climate crises, and humanitarian suffering activates the brain's threat system. The nervous system is not designed to distinguish between danger that is physically nearby and danger that is emotionally vivid or repeatedly witnessed. Over time, this creates chronic vigilance. When people observe patterns of harm, exclusion, or dehumanization playing out publicly, the body registers risk.