I am regularly afraid of running out of food, money, water (that’s new), security.
Posted yesterday at 11:00 a.m.
Consequently, I try to be prepared for all eventualities: I plan meals, savings and appropriate responses to an impressive variety of disaster scenarios… (To give you an idea, know that I have a plan to m run away if my bedroom is on fire. It doesn’t matter where I sleep.)
This anxiety doesn’t come out of nowhere: I grew up in a socioeconomic context that included some challenges that damaged my relationship to control. Times have changed, of course. I recognize the privileged position in which I find myself today, but the future remains uncertain…
Social divisions, the climate crisis, overconsumption, the cost of living (and my ridiculous desire to spend to forget all these worries) exacerbate my fears. Probably they exacerbate yours too, by the way.
In the reissue of his essay Fear of missing out: the anguish of lack (In press, 2022), the philosopher and psychoanalyst Nicole Fabre writes: “The time we live in is demanding. We are witnessing, in our apparently opulent and opulent societies, an exacerbation of desires coupled with the fear of not being able to respond to them, therefore the deployment of the fear of missing out. »
In short: we are always offered more information, designs and solutions. From this stems a growing need to foresee and to possess, which nourishes our “society of the ephemeral”. A vicious circle.
The philosopher believes that this cultural context is not enough to explain our anxiety. For her, we must also consider a trauma that we all share on different scales: that of our birth (I love psychoanalysis!).
Added to our harsh arrival in this world are the experiences that punctuate our lives. If your basic needs have not been met, for example in times of war, we will understand that you like your pantry full to bursting…
But how is it that a little voice sometimes tells us to plan more and better, when theoretically we have everything we need to sleep peacefully?
It is particularly a question of tolerance for uncertainty, explained to me Geneviève Belleville, psychologist and full professor at Laval University.
Intolerance of uncertainty is when you react strongly to minimal risk. It’s like an allergic reaction: you don’t need a lot of peanuts to get a big reaction. Nor does the risk need to be high for a catastrophic scenario to take shape.
Geneviève Belleville, psychologist and full professor at Laval University
Several factors shape our tolerance for uncertainty. Among them, our past experiences, the way our loved ones respond to anxiety-provoking events and a certain biological component.
“If we enter a nursery and suddenly clap our hands very hard, there are infants who will react while others will not wake up”, illustrates Geneviève Belleville.
(I guess pretty well the group I would have been part of.)
The director of the Center for Studies and Interventions in Mental Health also emphasizes the ascendancy of the framework from which we come.
“Socioeconomic status is an important factor of diversity, it generates advantaged and disadvantaged groups, stereotypes that lead to discrimination, classism, etc. Coming from a disadvantaged socioeconomic background will influence our relationship with money, for example. According to research, we are either more anxious or we are more carefree. »
Is there a way to find a sense of security, regardless of the nature of our baggage?
By evaluating our case more realistically, suggests the psychologist.
When we have experienced traumatic events, our memory is imbued with them. Our brain is programmed to remind us and protect us from similar risks in the future. It is therefore necessary to make the conscious effort to draw up an inventory of the things that go well in our situation.
Geneviève Belleville, psychologist and full professor at Laval University
Geneviève Belleville continues by mentioning the importance of our loved ones, at least of those who know how to bring us back to a more realistic way of thinking. A task that can also be accommodated by psychologists, who have a whole arsenal of tools against anxiety…
“There is a very cognitive component to uncertainty: people make scenarios. On the behavioral level, we will therefore expose the person to uncertainty without it being unpleasant. We can invite her to take a metro line without knowing in which direction she is going or to go to a restaurant to order things she has never eaten, for example. We can also encourage him to go through with the scenarios: what can happen worse? The more we go there, the more we understand that it has very little chance of happening. »
It requires courage, all the same, to go to the end of the scenario. Because along the way, I have the impression that I could ask myself and take the time to ask myself where my reflex to imagine disasters comes from.
Certainly, I would identify entirely reasonable reasons – it is normal to be anxious when we think of the climate future and to wish to adapt if we do not see things moving. But I would probably also find poorly dressed scars and, even worse, a fear of isolation, boredom, death…
A vertigo which, according to Nicole Fabre, may hide a solution: “My conviction is that it is by accepting to look at this emptiness, this absence, this darkness that we will find our strength. »
(I understand, but it would still be much easier if you could actually find it in a big box store.)