Anxiety attack and chronic anxiety are two very common problems in our time.

In fact,
they are the biggest cause of demand for mental health specialists and in the search for
psychiatric drugs.

It is very curious that anxiety has become so common, so popular precisely at a time
when the world is relatively safer. Most countries are not at war or at imminent risk of
war. Men no longer need to prepare to kill or die, it is much safer to have children these
days and we know much more about women's health and sexuality than at any other time.
Infant mortality is much lower than in the past , we don't need to have five children for
only three to become adults, as it was the case for many generations. If someone decides
to leave the house and go their own way, or if husband and wife need to be in different
places for a period of time, we have all the conditions to maintain constant contact by cell
phone. The world has certainly evolved in many ways, but...we have never been so taken
by anxiety, by feelings of impending doom, fear of the future, or the feeling of doing
something wrong or not doing the right thing, as nowadays.

There are many different types of anxiety, traumatic anxiety, neurotic anxiety, relatioship
anxiety, social anxiety, professional anxiety, and we will explore each one in particular in
other videos, in this one, we will talk about anxiety in general and the two main anxiety
torments, the anxiety attack (or crisis), and chronic anxiety.

As we said, the world is safer, communication is much easier, we are much less victims
of natural tragedies than in the past, but anxiety is there like never before.
It's actually very easy and understandable to have anxiety these days. All the progress that
we have achieved in this time of history have a price and a side effect, and who pays is
who enjoys, who lives in that time, that is, we are the ones who pay. If it's easier to have
contact with the one we love, it's also easier for the person we love to have contact with
all kinds of other people without us even knowing it, which can represent all kinds of
danger or attractiveness. If medicine has evolved a lot, it is true that the cost of health
both for treatment and prevention of disease is high, and we need to spend and invest
more than ever in health, which leads to the need for work, at a time when it is much
more difficult to stand out in the market, and there are a lot of options for few real
choices, and from that comes the fear of making mistakes, in fact comes the certainty that
we have already made mistakes, because if the promised happiness doesn't happen, and I
could have done it differently or chosen other things, it is logical that it is my fault, or
will be my fault when people find it out.

It is true that it is much easier nowadays to learn any language, live in any other country,
have access to people from all over the world... but also because of this we are bom-
barded with information, most of it terrible, about the world, politics, inequality, crimes,
it is possible to go crazy opening a news page if we are not well aware of our emotions.

Another mental damage comes with the stimuli. There has never been a society or a gen-
eration, which has received as much mental stimulation from sex, from shopping, from
possessions, from choices as in our times. This happens through advertisements and even
the way of life that people fake or mask very well on social media. We receive a flood of
comparisons with other people, of photos that stir up our sexuality, our desire. The algo-
rithm plays with our desire to make us buy the things they sell through it.

So our mind ends like that, with the need to have money to enjoy this world that is safer
and much more stimulating than at any other time, full of sexual desire, full of desire to
buy, with the pressure of “getting it right” , because a lot of people get these things easily
and we compare ourselves a lot more nowadays; full of frustration, because it is impossi-
ble for us to be able to enjoy or buy everything that is “offered” through stimulation. We
live with that fear at the bottom of our psyche that says we are wrong, and that all the
misfortunes and humiliations in the world for that, can fall on our heads at any minute,
and who we love will suffer, and we will be the disgrace of the family or the abandoned
child.

Anxiety feeds on impotence. And people have never felt as powerless as they do today.
Whether because of what we could and would like to have, and don't have and won't
have, or because of the humiliation of seeing other people having it, or simply because
nowadays we feel completely responsible for our lives. Not religion, not God, not family,
not culture, not the King. In other words, it's easy to believe that everything bad in my
life could be different, and it's all MINE's fault. We are the first generation in history to
deal with this, and to feel it in our skin. The other generations had very well defined
roles, far fewer choices and far more people to blame. They had clear examples. With the
very fast world change that we have nowadays, even if someone has, for example, a fa-
ther who was very successful in some area, be it financial, affective, professional, aca-
demic, if he does the same thing as that father did, in the same area, he will no longer
achieve the same successful effect, because what was successful even 10 years ago, no
longer makes any difference today.

What a crazy moment that we live today, wonderful and tragic at the same time. So we
shouldn’t feel bad about anxiety, it's a constant side effect of our time, of the evolution of
our world. We're going to have to live with it, we're going to have to learn not to let anxi-
ety dominate us, at the same time, We have to understand that it doesn't go away and that
sometimes it will get the better of us, or it will be more active during certain moments or
periods of our life. Anxiety is like a tiger that roars inside our psyches, that threatens us,
makes noise, and that instead of trying to get rid of it, we must live with it, and perhaps
with great skill to tame this mental beast that came to stay in our modern world.

With the feeling of insecurity and confusion of health measures that the pandemic
brought, we actually have the ideal scenario for Anxiety.
So with all this contradiction and explanation, what's the first step in dealing with this
feeling?
Is to stop denying when it appears. It is very common that when we are feeling anxiety
we try to distract ourselves, to calm down, in short, we try to avoid it, and anxiety in this
sense is like quicksand. the more you struggle and try to fight it, the more you sink into
feelings of confusion and fear, of impending doom.

If the anxiety attacks are so severe that you consider killing yourself, or think you are go-
ing to die, and you start to lose consciousness, it is important that you immediately seek a
psychiatrist who can prescribe a medication and the appropriate dose. Never take by
yourself medicine or anything that changes brain chemistry without having been diag-
nosed and prescribed by a trusted doctor. Psychiatric drugs are not treatment, they are
damage control while you go through the treatment, so no rushing to chemistry without
psychiatric help like many people do nowadays as if it were the solution, it's not.

Now if you are not in this extreme situation, suicidal or total loss of consciousness, it is
much more profitable and logical that you avoid to change your brain chemistry with
drugs, that you manage to go through this problem and manage to live with it, that you
manage to become aware that what you're going through is a moment of anxiety or an
anxiety attack.

Anxiety attacks are usually linked to moments of pressure or risk of something happening
that will leave us feeling helpless or lonely, or a failure. These are moments when our
mind realizes that these things can happen, whether comparing us to others, with many
frustrated desires for a long time, a relationship that seems at risk, a job that makes us
feel bad, or someone with who we live with that can harm us. An anxiety attack, if it is
not linked to chronic anxiety or depression, is a response to certain risks that we perceive
or imagine, in response to life situations. All these situations, thankfully, are temporary,
and most of them, imaginary.

It is possible to go through a period of financial hardship without disgracing life, it is

Anxiety attacks do have logic, both social as we've seen, and personal. it can be interest-
ing when anxiety hits, instead of you running to listen to a song, or smoke that cigarette,
or text someone, that you instead first stop and observe yourself. Feel those bad feelings,
see how you still alive, and that you are physically safe. Ask yourself what scares you so
much?
Notice the answer that comes from within. Imagine the answer happening, can you sur-
vive it? Do you know that even the worst, it passes? Can you see that these sensations
come and go? And in the same way that it is possible to approach that person that we are
really into, shivering and with butterflies in our stomachs, and in the same way that it is
possible to work even when we have the flu, we are able to live and make choices, and
even to feel good, with anxiety.

Calm yourself. If your heart starts to beat too fast, look at your own hands, count each
finger imagining a different color for each of them, do this as many times as it takes for
your mind to come back to the moment, take a deep breath, and talk to yourself , then you
can distract yourself or talk to a friend. The important thing in the face of anxiety attacks
is to regain control of your own body and not despair running around to distract yourself.

Anxiety comes and goes, but it doesn't go away, and it is a condition of our times. The
only way to live with it is to discover what woke it up in our mind, and let it exist without
controlling our body, even giving those uncomfortable sensations, we can still handling
it, there is always a moment of the day when you get better, and the situations that wake
up anxiety pass, change, and it goes back to sleep.

In relation to people with chronic anxiety, who are anxious for years and years, every day,
even if there is no risky or high-pressure situation (which is difficult nowadays), these are
people who have developed a feeling of risk or aggression usually in childhood, or al-
ready adults after a traumatic situation. In this case, you can understand the anxiety at-
tacks you suffer and respond to them as we have already taught, and in addition, psy-
chotherapy comes as a very important way for the chronic situation to improve, and it
usually improves a lot. It os like physical therapy for a member of the body that isn't
working properly, so is hugely important.

There is no magic formula or simple solution, but none of that is necessary. Anxiety is a
situation of our era, and a normal reaction to an increasingly different and strange envi-
ronment. With conscience and work we can still living with it, and well.