Ester Fernandez: "We have integrated anxiety into our culture".

We talked to a psychologist expert in the treatment of anxiety problems.

Anxiety is on the podium of the most common reasons why people go to psychotherapy.. This is no coincidence, since excessive anxiety can be present in many different ways in our lives, and therefore can be a difficult problem to manage without professional help. For that reason, it is always useful to know the point of view that psychologists have on this subject.

The different ways in which anxiety affects us.

Ester Fernandez is a psychologist coach with extensive experience in the treatment of anxiety problems.. She is also founder and Director of Psicoconsulting, a psychology center located in Barcelona. On this occasion he talks to us about his experience helping people who are vulnerable to this kind of psychological disorders.

Do you think we currently live in a culture in which 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 the 21st century society.

We live in an economy where more and more platforms are erected to facilitate consumption that lead us almost compulsively to "get more", that interweave unnecessary needs, and that invite us to have what others have in order not to leave the normality, to be as up to date as the people around me, to consume almost imperatively what others consume ...

In the face of all this, to anxiety is added the component of the speed of thought or hypervigilance in everything that surrounds us. How often 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 what we need until we become subjects of the urgent "unnecessary" needs, versus the impossibility of waiting. We thus become the culture of the "microwave".

When all these components are present in our lives, and inconveniences of any kind arise to achieve what is almost socially imposed on us, anxiety becomes vivid, exultant, but often insufferable. This scenario has gradually become normalized especially in cities, where I believe that higher rates of anxiety are reached.

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

There is a combination of different variables. It is true that the person may already have a certain genetic predisposition accentuated by the environment that surrounds him or her, or the educational context in which he or she has had to live. 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 lead to fear of being alone, even personal insecurity and low self-esteem may be in the subway mass that carries the tip of the iceberg. While the environment around us can be a source of blessing, it can become a source of risks and threats.

Regarding the frequency of occurrence of these kinds 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 18 and 35 years of age, normally without this meaning its appearance at younger ages. In fact, I have been observing it in the school context already in some children of 8 and 9 years of age. 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 already more aware of our place in the world, or in its configuration, when doubts, fears, feelings of undervaluation or lack of ability to cope with everything that surrounds us and is socially demanded of us arise.

Then, when we reach the age of 65, the fear of loneliness, of getting sick, of the lack of economic capacity, of the loss of faculties, which results in a greater isolation and a greater lack of self-esteem and a feeling of abandonment, often returns to the forefront. In short, the fear of life and the fear of death.

It is possible that for some people anxiety has been part of everyday 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 us and enables us to solve problems, it can also become the worst side of the coin. When this anxiety affects us in our day to day life in a way that does not allow us to live in a natural way and face our daily responsibilities, it becomes a problem that makes us unsuitable for 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 are reproduced in an irrational and illogical way.

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

However, much will depend on the degree of commitment of the person with their healing process, as well as the pharmacological treatment when the medical supervisor so dictates under the information of our data and the visit with the patient.

What can be done from 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 a lack of self-esteem 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 childhood), reinforcing the self-concept and, of course, working on social relationship techniques, associated emotions, and detecting maladaptive or dysfunctional thoughts related to this fear.

On the other hand, we could direct the person to transfer the formulation of his or her objectives to his or her values. However, it is necessary to accept and assume 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/she does not deserve to be accepted, and lives it as a deserved punishment... In these cases, he/she should work and practice his/her own "self-forgiveness".

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

In these cases perhaps what would be convenient would be a rethinking of the meaning of life and work. Reorganize and prioritize.

The feeling of personal dignity, our right to a decent job, 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 according to our priorities, understanding everything that could favor our happiness.

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

The problem of trivializing our anxiety as long as it does not give us its darker 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 the 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 our Blood cortisol level, and the consequences that can arise in our physical health due to the resentment that some organs of our body may suffer can be serious. Anxiety perpetuated in time could cause cardio or cerebrovascular diseases.

This, obviously, does not contravene the need to naturalize it, because when we do so we learn to accept it in the right measure that is not harmful or detrimental to our daily life.