Читать книгу The Anxiety Getaway - Craig April Ph.D - Страница 18

Some Common Family and Societal Pressures Many of Us Perpetuate

✻Need for great friends and acceptance by peers

✻Need for clarity of direction and purpose in life (education, career pursuit, etc.)

✻Having a “good” body

✻Loving yourself or having a good self-esteem

✻Wearing fashionable clothing

✻Advancement in career, plus respect of boss and coworkers

✻Need to maintain a youthful appearance

✻Finding the “right” romantic partner to avoid being “alone”

✻Marriage by a certain age

✻Earning a bigger income

✻Driving a status-oriented car

✻Keeping up with the Joneses

With approximately 275 million people around the globe struggling with an anxiety disorder,1 it seems like few places on Earth are immune to anxiety.

US statistics suggest that one in thirteen people struggle with anxiety.2 In addition to the common genetic predisposition described in chapter 2, the most likely reason for anxiety is the influence of our society’s expectations, pressures, and desires.

That said, ultimately we as individuals are responsible for pulling our brain’s anxiety trigger, not any societal pressure. And by accepting responsibility for your anxiety’s creation, you can also empower yourself with the accountability to extinguish it. I know it’s a drag for most of us to hold ourselves accountable for our mental health, but if we want to be healthy, properly functioning adults living a life of freedom, it’s the way there.

We’ll discuss how to put out your anxiety fire by outsmarting your brain’s false fear messages soon. For now, it’s important for you to understand that you’re unintentionally encouraging your brain’s transmittal of these messages, setting yourself up to stimulate trouble with a capital A (for anxiety, that is).