Ester Fernandez: «We have integrated anxiety into our culture»

Anxiety is on the podium of the most common reasons why people go to psychotherapy. This is not a coincidence, since excess anxiety can be present in many ways. different in our lives, and that is why it can be a difficult problem to manage without help professional. Therefore, it is always useful to know the point of view that psychologists have on this topic.

• Related article: "The 7 types of anxiety (characteristics, causes and symptoms)"

The different ways in which anxiety affects us

Ester Fernandez is a coach psychologist with extensive experience in the treatment of anxiety problems.. She is also the founder and Director of Psychoconsulting, psychology center located in Barcelona. On this occasion he tells us about his experience helping people vulnerable to this type of psychological alterations.

Do you think we currently live in a culture where it is considered normal to have anxiety problems?

Definitely yes, we live in a society that has integrated anxiety into our culture, making it a characteristic of 21st century society.

We live involved in an economy where more and more consumer facilitating platforms are being erected that lead us almost compulsively to “get more”, that weave together unnecessary needs, and that invite us to have what the other has so as not to get out of normality, to be as up to date as the people around me are, to consume in an almost imperative way what others consume...

Given all this, anxiety is added to the component of the speed of thought or hypervigilance in everything around us. How many times do we feel that our head is a volcano! We are attentive to everything... and we need to be updated.

We also live immersed in a consumer society and industry that educates us in the immediacy of everything. We need to even become subjects of the urgent “unnecessary” needs, versus the impossibility of wait. We thus became the “microwave” culture.

When all these components occur in our life, and problems of any kind arise for achieve what is almost socially imposed on us, anxiety becomes vivid, exultant, but many times insufferable. This panorama has little by little become normalized, especially in cities, where I consider that higher anxiety rates are reached.

From your perspective as a professional, what are the most frequent sources of anxiety among those who come to your therapy consultation?

Different variables collude or combine. It is true that the person may already have a certain genetic predisposition accentuated by the environment that surrounds them, or the educational context in which they have lived. But if anxiety can be learned, it should be manageable, and that is what we should aspire to.

From my professional perspective, overwork, lack of time and financial resources, not wanting to be different, fear of the worst happening, relationship problems that involve the fear of being alone, even personal insecurity and low self-esteem can be in the underground mass that carries the tip of the iceberg. Although the environment that surrounds us can be a source of blessing, it can become a source of risks and threats.

Regarding the frequency of appearance of this type of problems, are there differences depending on the age of the patients?

I think so. I believe that the first and most frequent appearances take place between the ages of 18 and 35, normally without this meaning their appearance at younger ages. In fact, I have been observing it in the school context already in some 8 and 9 year old children. Many external demands, many extracurricular activities combined with schoolwork, their coexistence with each other, their academic challenges, etc.

But I think it is when we are more aware of our place in the world, or in its configuration, that doubts arise, fears, feelings of undervaluation or lack of ability to cope with everything that surrounds us and is demanded of us socially.

Then, upon reaching 65, it often flares up again due to fear of loneliness, of getting sick, of lack of ability. economic, to the loss of faculties that results in greater isolation and a greater lack of self-esteem and sense of abandonment. In short, the fear of life and the fear of death.

It is possible that for some people anxiety has been part of daily life for many years. Is it more complicated for them to believe in the therapeutic process in these cases?

Although anxiety can be considered a positive aspect because it prepares and enables us to solve problems, it can also become the worst side of the coin. When this anxiety affects us in our daily lives in a way that does not allow us to live in a way natural and facing daily responsibilities, becomes a problem that disadapts us to our life.

Many times the recovery time in the therapeutic process is proportional to the time that the disorder has been suffered. We learn to automate anxious behaviors, which are no longer filtered by the frontal lobe and they reproduce irrationally and illogically.

It is necessary, most of the time, to encounter the most unpleasant face of anxiety, to become aware of our mental health condition, and to give a twist to unlearn them and forge new ways of dealing with them through the identification of distortions in thinking and new reformulations.

However, to a large extent it will depend on the person's degree of commitment to their healing process, as well as the pharmacological treatment when the medical supervisor so dictates based on the information of our data and the visit with the patient.

What can be done through psychotherapy to overcome an anxiety problem related to the fear of not being accepted by others, for example?

From my point of view, what normally underlies this problem is lack of selfesteem or a distortion in the person's self-concept.

One of the ways to work on this aspect would be through a SWOT (identification of strengths and weaknesses), reinforcing self-esteem through the detection of its origin (perhaps in the childhood), reinforcing the self-concept and, of course, working on social relationship techniques, associated emotions, and detecting poorly adaptive or dysfunctional thoughts related to that fear.

On the other hand, we could direct the person to transfer the formulation of his objectives to her values. However, it is necessary to accept and start from the basis that every failure opens the door to success.

In addition to this, it could be that behind this fear there could also be a deep feeling of guilt, for which the person feels that he does not deserve to be accepted, and experiences it as a deserved punishment... In these cases he must work and practice his own “self-forgiveness.”

And what can you do about anxiety that is not caused by interaction with others? For example, that caused by work.

In these cases, perhaps what would be appropriate would be a rethinking of the meaning of life and work. Reorganize and order priorities.

The feeling of personal dignity, our right to decent work, our right to rest, and the importance of our family relationships and the time invested in them based on the benefit of the affection given and received.

One option could be to establish pacts with the percentages of our time and its dedication based on our priorities, understanding everything that could favor our happiness.

Is progress being made in showing excess anxiety as a real problem that requires treatment? If not, what's wrong?

The problem of trivializing our anxiety while not giving us its darkest side is one of our worst evils. We do not learn to live intelligently with anxiety, but to survive and suffer from it and that is maladaptive disorder.

The problem of not showing excess anxiety as a problem is more serious than it seems, simply because our body is continually forcing itself to produce hormones that compensate. r our level of cortisol in the blood, and the consequences that can occur on our physical health due to the resentment that some organs of our body may suffer can be serious. Anxiety perpetuated over time could cause cardio or cerebrovascular diseases.

This, obviously, does not contravene the need to naturalize it, since when we do so we learn to accept it to the right extent, which is the one that does not harm nor is it detrimental to our daily life.