From financial pressure, relationship issues and job strain, there aren’t many people who don’t feel anxious at some point in their life. However, when anxiety becomes more than a little nervousness, irritability or over reactivity to a situation, it can cause insomnia, migraines, nausea and panic attacks. And with the number of 15-16 year olds reporting feelings of anxiety or depression more than doubling in the past 30 years (1), we’ve a lot to learn about how to reverse or better still, prevent the impact of our worrisome ways.
So why is it that we seem to be more anxious than previous generations? Although we might be familiar with the typical causes, symptoms and classifications of anxiety such as trait anxiety and PTSD, there is an ever present, lesser-known modern day monster at work which is contributing to ‘Generation Anxiety’. And that is FOMO disorder. The Fear Of Missing Out.
We live in 24/7, 365 days a year digital age. Connected to an endless stream of messages, emails, news and photo updates of our friends doing no end of exciting things, it makes us feel like we should be socializing, active and productive; all of the time! And if we aren’t doing those things, we feel like we are missing out, so we continue our digital conversations just to show we’re keeping up with all the fun. Living this way means there is always something for us to react to. And it’s exhausting!
With recent research (2) suggesting that people spend up to 9 hours each day (that’s more than we sleep), looking at our TV’s, computers, smartphones or tablets, its no wonder our eyes are square and our mind and bodies are struggling to cope with the new threat in the modern day jungle. What we need is an effective, easy and sustainable tool to counteract the impact of our anxiety inducing screen addictions. And the answer? A meditation practice which medical researchers have good reason to get excited about.
The relationship between digital, anxiety and our stress response systems
Anxiety in its variety of guises is the consequence of an overactive brain alarm system – one where the alarm bells keep on ringing and ringing long after it has served any useful survival function. In this digital age, our alarm systems are all too often in a state of hyper-arousal, primed to respond to the next threat in the shape of a work email, Facebook post, or mobile message. Physiologically speaking, our sympathetic nervous system (SNS) is in a near constant state of ‘fight or flight’ response, despite the absence of a threatening predator.
This over activity of the SNS or stress response system triggers a constant cascade of physical, emotional and hormonal responses in the body, which if sustained over long periods of time, can negatively impact our health. The release of high levels of the stress hormones noradrenaline, adrenaline and cortisol, can cause chronic high blood pressure and damage to the cardiac arteries – a symptom often seen in anxiety sufferers. According to a recent meta-analysis (3), anxiety is a significant risk factor for coronary heart disease and heart attacks in both men and women – a risk factor further exasperated by incidents of childhood anxiety (4).
Anxiety sufferers in particular, need to retrain the nervous systems to reserve only the best fighting responses to useful everyday functions such as getting out of bed in the morning or responding to a deadline. This then allows the parasympathetic nervous system (PNS), the best friend and counterpart to the SNS, to kick in. Restoring the mind-body to its natural state of being – the PNS is one dominated by rest, calm and harmonious functions, all of which we could do with more of in our hectic lives.
How meditation can help cure our anxious friend, FOMO
Living with anxiety can wear you down and prevent you from using your talents and abilities to lead an enjoyable and productive life. For anxiety sufferers and chronic digital users alike, meditation has been shown to lessen the impact of stress on the body, improve health and increase experiences of happiness and calm in everyday life. A notion confirmed by William Stixrud, a clinical neuropsychologist, who after his first meditation session felt sure he had finally discovered an antidote to his chronic anxiety.
With personal testimonials such as these, medical researchers are waking up to the importance of how meditation can help treat a variety of health conditions. In particular, a technique called Vedic or Transcendental Meditation, where the silent and effortless repetition of mantra is used to slowly settle the mind of its chatter, has been shown to be effective in treating a range of anxiety disorders, from trait anxiety to PTSD.
In a meta-analysis of 146 studies, which examined the effects of various relaxation and meditation techniques on trait anxiety, Transcendental Meditation was found to be twice as effective at reducing anxiety compared to other methods. Similarly when assessing anxious symptoms, a study of teenagers who learnt this mediation technique confirmed a significant reduction in blood pressure compared to a control group. And more encouraging still, these positive effects continued for four months after the study ended.
Meditation reduces anxiety by soothing the overactive fight and flight responses both physically and emotionally. The alarm bells are switched off for most of the time, until a genuine need arises, leaving calm and contentment to reign. And with no negative side-effects, the ability to practice anywhere, anytime, and results often seen after a first session of meditation, we’ve a good reason to step away from our screens for at least a few minutes each day.
Naomi Wright supports mission-led visionaries reach and inform others about the transformative message of holistic health and wellbeing. Currently working with Will Williams Meditation who provide meditation in London, Naomi is interested in how modern science together with eastern wisdom can advance our understanding of how to prevent and treat dis-ease within the mind-body.
- Nuttfield Foundation (2012) Increased levels of anxiety and depression as teenage experience changes over time. http://www.nuffieldfoundation.org/news/increased-levels-anxiety-and-depression-teenage-experience-changes-over-time
- Mary Meeker (2014) Internet Trends http://qz.com/214307/mary-meeker-2014-internet-trends-report-all-the-slides/
- Roest AM et al. Anxiety and risk of incident coronary heart disease: A meta-analysis. Journal of the American College of Cardiology, 56 (1): 38-46, June 29, 2010
- Janszky I, et al. Early-onset depression, anxiety and risk of subsequent coronary heart disease: 37 year follow up of 49,321 young Swedish men. Journal of the American College of Cardiology, 56 (1): 31-37, June 29, 2010
- Barnes VA et al. Impact of transcendental mediation on ambulatory blood pressure in Africa-America adolescents. American Journal of Hypertension, 17 (4): 366 – 69, April 2004
- Eppley KR et al. Differential effects of relaxation techniques on trait anxiety: A Meta-analysis. Journal of clinical psychology, 45 (6) 957 -73, 1989
