Psychological entropy: what it is and how it affects us emotionally

In this life there is nothing that is 100% predictable except change and it is curiously change that people often refuse to accept. We tend to opt mainly for what is known or what is familiar, in this sense the phrase "the bad known is better than the good to be known". Following this thread, it is convenient to know a concept known as psychological entropy.

Psychological entropy is a concept that psychology has adopted from thermodynamics and refers to that degree of uncertainty and chaos that surrounds people, so it is necessary that People develop the necessary strategies to learn to manage or adapt to that degree of disorder that will appear at certain times in their lives and that will inevitably happen.

In this article we will see what the concept of psychological entropy consists of. and what is the relationship it has with anxiety disorders.

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What is psychological entropy?

Psychological entropy is a term from psychology that comes from thermodynamics, referring, according to this branch of physics, to the fact by which

systems have a tendency to drift into a messy and chaotic state. This applied to the field of psychology has been referring to that degree of disorder and uncertainty to which the people's lives, so adapting to it is a necessity and even an obligation that human beings have to leave ahead.

Chaos is an irrefutable fact and as such must be accepted, so human beings must live with the fact that in their lives there is nothing that is 100% predictable, so always Unexpected things can arise, since there is an important part of the events that is subject to chance, uncertainty and that is something that can generate nervousness or anxiety in the persons.

According to the concept of psychological entropy, people must accept that chaotic factor that is always present, since it will never be possible to predict what is going to happen in the future and no matter how hard you try to control all the variables of a context in order to control what is going to happen, something unexpected and out of your control can always happenTherefore, it would be more appropriate to assume that there will always be this chaotic and uncertain component.

Accepting that there is a psychological entropy, with what this concept entails, makes it easier for people to balance their mind. As paradoxical as it may seem, learning to tolerate certain chaos and uncertainty that escapes one's control helps. to find a greater degree of psychological balance, since worries about something that cannot be control. Now, we must find a middle ground, since if we go completely into chaos and allow psychological entropy to reign, it is very likely that this will cause us serious psychological problems.

In other words, both sinking into the psychological entropy of total chaos and the act of trying to combat against it, they will end up harming us on a psychological level, which will have repercussions on other facets of our life (p. g., at a relational, work or academic level, etc.). That is why the most beneficial thing would be to try to adapt to the changes that are inevitable, learn to tolerate uncertainty and not try to have everything under control seeking to maintain absolute rigidity in our life, just as we cannot let chaos reign absolute.

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Relationship between psychological entropy and anxiety disorders

Jacob B. Hirsh and his collaborators carried out in 2011 an investigation in which they studied the relationship between could exist between anxiety disorders and psychological entropy, starting from the premise that human beings are a kind of self-organizing systems that constantly seek to maintain homeostasis or balance in all or most vital areas in order to keep your own life under control and avoid as many surprises or unforeseen events as possible.

On the other hand, because human beings live in a context or environment that is constantly changing, these external changes cause those unforeseen events and surprises to cause chaos, discomfort and fear of uncertainty in people, this being the phenomenon known as psychological entropy and is that if that discomfort produced by fear of uncertainty and the other conditions at a psychological level are maintained for a long time, they will end up producing a series of mental problems, such as disorders of anxiety.

Research in this regard has found that the human brain processes anxiety symptoms in the same way as uncertainty, and is that in both cases a noticeably greater amount of noradrenaline due to increased activity in the anterior cingulate cortex that has generated increased levels of this neurotransmitter in the central nervous system.

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The importance of accepting psychological entropy

Due to the psychological problems that the fact of avoiding or not accepting the phenomenon can generate known as psychological entropy with the factors to which it is associated and that influence the life of the persons, learn to live with itSince it is something that cannot be eradicated and the more you oppose it, the more problems it could cause you.

Psychological entropy, like entropy within thermodynamics, it is a natural phenomenon that cannot be eradicated, since it is inherent to the human mind, nature and the universe, since no matter how hard we try to control all the facets of our life to avoid surprises, there will always be external phenomena that can change our course for full.

We have a clear example of unexpected external phenomena that have generated a lot of uncertainty in people's lives, due to the high degree of generated uncertainty, such as the case of the pandemic produced by the SARS-Cov-2 virus, which began in 2019 in the town of Wuhan (China), reaching to spread throughout all the countries of the world and continuing with its expansion and causing infections even in 2022, without knowing when it will be able to return to normal.

Another example is the event that occurred in September 2021 by the eruption of the volcano on the island of La Palma, which lasted 3 months, and which caused thousands of people who resided there to have to abandon their houses.

These are two clear examples of unexpected changes that can change people's lives from one day to the next, which shows that no matter how much let's try to control all areas of our life, there will always be many uncontrollable factors so we can never predict with complete certainty our future no matter how hard we try, which shows the need to adopt psychological entropy as part of life without trying to combat it or avoid it.

This chaos that surrounds everyone forces them to constantly develop new strategies to adapt to the continuous changes that arise throughout life, since if it is not done and a person does not accept the uncertainty, trying to resist, the only thing that will be achieved is suffer for a long time, and may also trigger that suffering in the development of anxiety symptoms and / or depression.

In anyone's life there can always be a degree of stability to some degree, but change will always be present and it will inevitably occur, so everyone must learn to assume those changes that cannot be avoided and also try to develop some strategies that allow a future better adaptation to the changes that come in the future, which means accepting entropy psychological.