Martha Beck on overcoming anxiety and finding your purpose

We need creative solutions to social problems. What we don’t need is the anxiety that comes with not having those solutions. Uncertainty about the future makes humans edgy enough. So, what can we do to better understand, accept and manage such anxiety?

Martha Beck, a Harvard-trained sociologist New York Times– The authors of Bestelling have found that answering the question to be long and difficult. Beyond anxiety: Find curiosity, creativity and your purpose in life. Big Think caught up with Beck to discuss the book, why the modern world has made us so uneasy, and what we can do to calm our nerves in the face of our fears.

Think a lot: What was your journey from your last book? Methods of integrity (2021), write this? What was the thought process from the topic of integrity to anxiety?

Beck: I’m desperately need it, so I write self-help. I had almost all the normal psychological problems except for a real mental illness, [so] I spent a lot of time meditating and thinking about how to make my life better. The combination of observing life as it unfolds and my inner life took me along A method of integrity. I have found myself suffering whenever my actions do not line up with my deepest sense of truth. When everything was lined up, I would not suffer. I’m happy and things will go well. That was the book.

Then people came to me and said, “I really believe in what you’re saying. I’m getting as close to sincerity as I can, but I’m always scared. I’m very worried.” It was not my experience, so it baffled me. Then I realized that it took me probably 10,000 hours of sitting meditation before realizing I wasn’t worried.

I remember once, as they always do, something terrible was happening in the world, and I was sitting in meditation. What did you think, “Why can you feel calm in these circumstances?” Another part of me was, “Do you mean the situation in your bedroom? Because my situation was all in my bedroom.” I began to learn that most of my anxiety was based on something that was not true.

That’s the link between the two books. The deepest lie we tell ourselves is that we should fear.

Think a lot: Can you tell me more about that?

Beck: Despite being the safest people in history, we are in eternal terror. This causes what I call an “anxiety spiral.” Due to negative bias, our attention goes first to what worries us. We pay more and more attention to media, online algorithms, and more. [These, in turn]the most attention-grabbing thing feeds us back, and it is usually unsettling.

You’re doing your brain on one level, and you’re doing it on a much larger level of society. As a result, the entire population is caught up in anxiety and is unable to go outside.

Think a lot: Have we suffered more recently than we did, say, 100 years ago, or can we have these conversations because talking about anxiety is relatively broken?

Beck: I think we’re experiencing more, but there are a few reasons for this. The first is the size of the population that conveys horrible things in large spaces and various social situations. There is so much more on the planet today, and we are communicating faster than ever. Again, we are most interested in horror everywhere in the world.

[Another reason is that] We live in increasingly unusual environments. Before the Industrial Revolution, we awakened to the sounds of wind and rain, perhaps the oceans and rivers, the sounds of each other, the sounds of animals, the songs of birds. I’ve just read a study that shows that listening to bird songs improves mood and health indicators. (I got a recording of bird songs that I listen to during the winter.)

Separated from nature, from small physical tasks that are easy to wrap around the head, living in an increasingly unnatural world due to evolutionary existence and physiology. We are deprived of what calms us, and we are overexposed to things we have never heard of without telecommunications.

So, yeah, we’re more worried.

Think a lot: How do you define anxiety, in contrast to fear, for example?

For example, neuroscientist Joesph Ledoux, who is believed to have discovered a “fear circuit,” article In 2015 he lamented that he used the wrong terminology. What he called a fear circuit is threat detection because the feelings of fear come later and involve other circuits. He said, “There is nothing more truth than language, or anything that gets in the way of science.”

Beck: everytime. It gets in the way of the truth of our living experiences.

Think a lot: Many mental interpretations occur after the first sensation, right? It’s how you evaluate those physical signals that will become your reality.

Beck: absolutely. I sharply distinguish between the interpretations and language we pretend to be emotional impulses, the healthy instincts that drive us to action when we have actual dangers and anxiety.

Feeling an emotional impulse, “Oh, I had an irrational idea that the economy would collapse. I don’t have evidence of it, so I’ll clean it up.” However, we are not inclined to perceive irrational fear as irrational. We read them as real environments: “In the room I’m with now, there’s a predator who says, ‘The economy is crumbling.’ ”

We are very wonderfully worded creatures who are very sensitive to fear. We are storytellers. Anything that makes us fear not from the events in the room, but from the spiritual depiction of the idea, I call anxiety.

Think a lot: What do you think about the role of the body in anxiety?

Beck: I realized that when someone is in a life where they are not working for them, one of their first reactions was emotional tension. I’m also physically nervous. It’s like fighting situations where their bodies don’t feel right – [for example] They are in the wrong job or in the wrong relationship,

Their bodies are closed. They don’t want to be touched, so they get sick. I think that’s because we are the only species that force ourselves to do something for years. My body keeps saying “No”

Our bodies are always trying to bring us back to truth. When we do not return to the truth, the tension between our bodies and what we live also manifests itself as anxiety.

The anxiety isn’t bad. It’s just stupid.

Think a lot: What do you think about the idea of ​​”eliminating” or “removing” anxiety?

Beck: The anxiety isn’t bad. It’s just stupid. If you want to hear it, it’s fine. Remember talking to animals [yourself]it is a language-related animal.

If I say, “I’m trying to eradicate you,” this is not something you’ll be calm to hear. You should say, “Can you calm down and relax your anxiety?” My way is kind. Because we don’t tell people to do things that are calm and calm. But I can ask you to say a kind sentence to your fears. You can do it even if you don’t feel it.

Essentially, our anxiety parts are like small, frightened animals. Such, internal self-talk is something you can force yourself, even if you don’t feel it. You cannot force yourself to feel calm or caring, but you can act kindly to yourself.

Think a lot: Your book also touches on life’s purpose, creativity and curiosity, which are important for managing anxiety.

Beck: Your purpose in life is to experience something uniquely excuse for being. [Ralph Waldo] Emerson “Then beauty is a unique excuse that exists.” Joy, compassion, love, enlightenment, lighting, wisdom – [these are] In the end, it makes life more enjoyable in that moment.

Following something that calms anxiety will lead you to a feeling of compassion and connection. At that point you will find great joy in hurting what will help you and healing what will expand. You will find joy in something that positively affects others. I’ve never worked with clients – and this is following thousands of clients. It appears to be embedded in our biology.

Joy is our ultimate purpose for existence. When we are not unsure, curiosity leads us to our specific purpose. All our curiosity is concrete. I might be more interested in watercolor than you. You may be more interested in journalism. But our curiosity serves our hearts and minds. They are useful to others too. Curiosity is the link that takes you into your unique way of service.

Joy is our ultimate purpose for existence.

Think a lot: We are looking at how it can enter a flow state rather than an anxious state.

Beck: No one in a panic will produce anything out of panic that can help others. Many believe that panic is necessary to motivate them. They believe that if they don’t have anxiety, they are not motivated. But in reality, we are far more motivated by fear by things like love, charm, joy than we do.

Think a lot: I’m trying to think of examples of creativity born out of anxiety, but they are against each other.

Beck: Anxiety is a field of barrenness. It does not produce crops.

Think a lot: Unless you’re supposed to write a book about it.

Beck: that’s right. When I was interested in it, I felt anxious to write.

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