Trying Hard to Manage Increased Anxiety - Time Out #346

Covid-19, was here for 2 years and its incredible after-effects have vanished forever?

I certainly wish that were true, but this wish hasn't been granted yet, in my humble opinion, dear readers in Our Town and far beyond.

And, I am not talking today about the virus itself, but one of the basic human emotions it brought with it, day after day, week after week and month after month. Certainly a lingering problem.

ANXIETY.

Oh, my, does that word bring chills to my body and unrest to my mind. Also, of course, to millions of you all over Planet Earth that are similarly affected. The daily anxiety we have actually produces more anxiety, doesn't it? Which is worse, the anxiety or the anxiety resulting from the anxiety?

O.K., just why did it accelerate during the recent viral pandemic? Being the questioning fellow I have always been, I believe much of our anxiety has its origin all the way back to the start of the 24-hour news coverage era, when Ted Turner et al. launched CNN, June 1, 1980. This moment-in-time was followed years later with the mass appeal of the information age, i.e., the surge of the Internet. Around this same timeframe, of course, was the mass purchase of personal devices; electronic devices of all types, most noticeably, individual cell telephones.

And, thus, the proverbial "snowball" of informational overload was metaphorically gaining super-speed, falling down the mountain, and resulting in constant subliminal anxiety to our fellow human users. Oh, and how incredibly easy it was/is to get hooked into this web of dependence, checking personal electronic devices every few minutes to get your brain-chemical rewards, much like Pavlov's legendary dog and its constant food reward.

Then, to add loads of gasoline to the sensational news-flash flames, Covid-19 erupts. This microscopic virus starts showing up in early 2020, and by that spring, it is absolutely the topic of every consistent 5-minute breaking news update throughout the world. The death, illness, economic destruction, and utter chaos the virus caused, kept the sensational news feeds and all the media outlets on overload for 2 long years. It made the old fear-tale of Johnny "crying wolf" coming to eat you seem real multiple times per day, if not multiple times per hour. Finally, the wicked pandemic began winding down early this year, and the hope was we could get our mental anxiety under control.

Not so. Now the world is watching the Russian invasion of independent Ukraine, and the ultimate possibility of a worldwide nuclear showdown among global superpowers. As I was growing up in Our Town in the early 1960's, I vividly remembered our President John F. Kennedy vs. Russian leader Nikita Khrushchev facing off regarding Soviet missiles, merely 90 miles from Our Country in Cuba. I also remember the daily updates of the Vietnam Conflict in the late 60's/early 70's, televised each evening on the 6 p.m. newscasts. Now, we have had 24/7 news coverage of the Ukrainian war since its inception in late February. If we choose to watch the media information of this eastern European tragedy, we see horrible event after horrible event, viewed like a modern, continuous motion picture, only we know it is stark reality, not a movie! Each news outlet attempts to outdo its peer in sensationalism, trying to capture a larger audience of viewers. And, of course, this war is producing negative economic issues that were slowly recovering from 2 years of the pandemic disrupting supply chains, etc.

Wow, these recent world events are certainly anxiety-producing.

Maybe, I will just take a deep breath, and count to 10.