Psychological entropy: what is it and how does it affect us emotionally?

Psychological entropy shows us to what extent we cannot control what we experience.

In this life nothing is 100% predictable, except change, and it is curiously enough change that people often refuse to accept. We tend to opt mostly for the known or the familiar, being in this sense very appropriate the phrase "the known bad is better than the good to know". 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 that it is necessary for people to develop the necessary strategies to learn to manage or adapt to that degree of disorder that will occur 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 relation that it has with the anxiety disorders.

What is psychological entropy?

The psychological entropy is a term of psychology that comes from thermodynamics, referring, according to this branch of physics, to the fact by which systems have a tendency to drift towards a disordered and chaotic state.. This applied to the field of psychology refers to the degree of disorder and uncertainty to which people's lives are exposed, so that adapting to it is a necessity and even an obligation that human beings have in order to move forward.

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 unexpected things can always arise, since there is an important part of the events that is subject to chance, to uncertainty and that is something that can generate nervousness or anxiety in people.

According to the concept of psychological entropy, people must accept the chaotic factor that is always present, since it is never possible to predict what will happen in the future and no matter how hard one tries to control all the variables in a context in order to control what will happen, something unexpected and out of one's control can always happen, so it would be more appropriate to assume that something unexpected will happen in the future.Therefore, it would be more appropriate to assume that there will always be a component of chaos and uncertainty.

Accepting that there is psychological entropy, with all that this concept entails, makes it easier for people to balance their minds. Paradoxical as it may seem, learning to tolerate certain chaos and uncertainty that is beyond one's control helps to find a greater degree of psychological balance, since it avoids worries about something that cannot be controlled. However, it is necessary to look for a middle ground, since if we immerse ourselves completely in chaos and allow psychological entropy to prevail, 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 fight against it will end up harming us on a psychological level, which will have repercussions in other facets of our life (e.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, to learn to tolerate uncertainty and not to try to have everything under control seeking to maintain an absolute rigidity in our life, just as we cannot let absolute chaos prevail.

Relationship between psychological entropy and anxiety disorders.

Jacob B. Hirsh and his collaborators conducted research in 2011 in which they studied the relationship that might exist between anxiety disorders and psychological entropy, based on the premise that human beings are a kind of self-organizing systems that constantly seek to maintain homeostasis or equilibrium in all or most areas of life in order to keep their 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 these unexpected events and surprises to provoke chaos, discomfort and fear of uncertainty in people, this being the phenomenon known as psychological entropy, and if the discomfort caused by the fear of uncertainty and other psychological conditions are maintained for a long time, they will end up producing a series of mental problems, such as anxiety disorders.

Research on this subject has found that the human brain processes anxiety symptoms in the same way as uncertainty.In both cases, a significantly higher amount of noradrenaline is released due to increased activity in the anterior cingulate cortex, which has led to increased levels of this neurotransmitter in the central nervous system.

The importance of accepting psychological entropy

Due to the psychological problems that can be generated by the fact of avoiding or not accepting the phenomenon known as psychological entropy with the factors to which it is associated and which influence people's lives, it is important to learn to live with it, it is important to learn to live with itIt is something that cannot be eradicated and the more one opposes it, the more problems it may cause.

Psychological entropy, like entropy within thermodynamics, is a natural phenomenon that cannot be eradicated, is a natural phenomenon that cannot be eradicated.It is inherent to the human mind, to nature and to the universe, because no matter how much we try to control all facets of our lives to avoid surprises, there will always be external phenomena that can completely change our course.

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 uncertainty generated, as is the case of the pandemic produced by the SARS-Cov-2 virus, which began in 2019 in the town of Wuhan (China), spreading to all countries of the world and continuing its expansion and causing contagions even in 2022, without knowing when it will be possible to return to normality.

Another example is the event that happened in September 2021 due to the eruption of the volcano on the island of La Palma, which lasted 3 months and caused thousands of people who lived there to leave their homes.

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 we try to control all areas of our lives, there will always be many uncontrollable factors so we can never predict with total certainty our future no matter how hard we try, which demonstrates the need to adopt psychological entropy as part of life without trying to fight it or avoid it.

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

In the life of any person there can always be a degree of stability up to a certain point, but change will always be present and will inevitably occur, so everyone must learn to accept those changes that cannot be avoided and also try to develop strategies that enable a better future adaptation to the changes that come in the future, which means accepting psychological entropy.