Eco anxiety in Perth

[Bookgirl]

Hi, we are in the middle of a horrible heatwave here and its causing me a lot of anxiety thinking about the future and generally just stressing out about it all.  Just seems so insurmountable and i feel overwhelmed.  My 15 year old son gets angry at me for being pessimistic but its hard to be optimistic when its over 40 degrees for a long time.  I just feel like i am sinking right now.

[Eagle Ray]

I know war is very distressing. Unfortunately humans have been carrying out war activities for a long time. If you can try to see things in perspective, pretty much most of the world was impacted for years during WWII and it would have seemed like a dire time for many people. But people did endure through and the world continued. There would have been people then who greatly worried about their children's future too. Similarly, Covid did a lot of harm and was very disruptive, but again the world has progressed through that and although it is still with us it is far less of a problem and things are settling down. The same thing happened with what was known as the Spanish Flu a century ago. The world does keep going. As much as it may seem things are getting worse and worse, things really ebb and flow and if you look back at historical events over centuries you can see that. Basically life is always in flux. Even with climate change, yes things are changing and it's a concern but humans will increasingly make adaptations that are more and more attuned to the situation and what is needed. We are a bit late to the party and there are impacts, but innovations are happening to change the way we do things that are now more future-focussed and wiser. Those changes are happening across business, agricultural, technological, government and educational sectors. There are many people doing important work in this area. To put things in perspective, human life expectancy was much shorter a century ago, so we have had significant gains along the way as well.

I'm just wondering if it may help to discuss things further with your GP if you find you keep spiralling? If you can understand that there is an overactive process in the way your brain and nervous system are reacting, I wonder if that can help distance you a bit from the strong feelings you are getting? So like you can be an observer of your own thought processes, if that makes sense? I know it can be quite a challenge to extricate yourself from thought processes when in the midst of them. I do wonder if at least looking into the hormonal aspect may help too, just in case it's a factor. I certainly couldn't stop intrusive thoughts when I was being affected by significant drops in hormone levels and for some people those changes apparently do affect the brain where we have hormone receptors which in turn affect things like serotonin and dopamine levels. When we don't have those neurochemicals in sufficient amounts we can feel pretty bad and our usual buffers against things that can impact us are not there. Basically it becomes a challenge to emotionally regulate. In any case, I hope the new med may start to help soon, but if you don't see an improvement it would be good to see the GP again and they can look a bit more into it.

Take care and sending you kindness and peace,

ER

[Bookgirl]

As i said this has always been a trigger of mine. My son says the same thing about history.  I think the difference is with technology that all of this stuff is beamed directly to your phone in real time. In WW! much of what was happening a lot of the world wasn't aware of. In WW2 you knew someone in your family died weeks later. My dad grew up in the blitz in london. He was 6 and his house was blown up but his family survived. I wish my nana were around to talk to about it. She was alone in london getting bombed with a small boy and i can't imagine how frightened she was. I often think of her and think she must think i am a real loser. But today as i say they tell you every day on every hour about the worst things in life. We see the deaths of children by bombs in real time. IF someone drops a nuclear bomb we will all know as soon as it happens. But at the same time when i woke this morning i thought well if death is just going to sleep i am not scared of that. I am more scared of living in this age in fact.

[Bookgirl]

Every day i fight this compulsion to look at the news even though i know it will only make me worse. Its this feeling that i must be prepared. I don't know how. What am i going to do? Can't do anything except worry and i guess that's what keeps me going back.

[Eagle Ray]

Hi Bookgirl,

My mum was born 3 years before the end of WWII and she said she remembered the blackout blinds they had that were always pulled down at night in case of air raids. This was in Adelaide. Her dad was part of a team that would go on roofs at night to look out for planes. Both Darwin and Broome were bombed and Japanese submarines got into Sydney Harbour. So what I am trying to say is people lived with the fear of war very close to home at that time. It was not just on the other side of the world. So I am trying to convey that things are not getting worse and worse. If you can understand that your brain is escalating in worry but that threat is not imminent and things are not worsening in a linear fashion, perhaps that may help. Unfortunately there are cycles of conflict that have been occurring throughout human history and looking at the news will always mean being exposed to some kind of conflict in the world.

I am wondering if you can use awareness to catch yourself when your thoughts are escalating leading to the compulsion to look at the news on your phone. If you can recognise it is never making you feel any better and is trapping you in a cycle of worry, you may be able to redirect yourself to other activities that are actually beneficial. Like you I have a phone but I only occasionally look at the ABC news website just so I have some idea of what's happening in the world. But if something sounds distressing or harrowing I will often choose to not open the article. Often the title already tells me what's happened and that is enough. If I do choose to read an article on a distressing topic I read the text but often do not watch the embedded videos. I have a trauma-sensitive nervous system and I know it is like over-filling a cup that can't contain anymore stuff that activates my nervous system in a traumatising way. I know to affirmatively say no to that exposure.

With me I spend much more time on my phone researching things of interest to me, watching interesting and entertaining YouTube videos, listening to podcasts of interest and reading books I've downloaded using the Kindle app. So instead of my phone being a source of distressing material, it is quite the opposite. Is there a way you can build a new relationship with how you use your phone and what you orient yourself towards?

Kind regards,

ER

[Bookgirl]

First, thank you and to everyone who listens to my spiralling on here. I read that the kind of OCD i think i have needs constant reassurance and that i need to try and work on that. Just saying that you have no idea how much it helps me to have someone respond when i am at my worst.  I have managed to go to work this week which has helped focus my mind away from other stuff.  I still have to work on not doomscrolling and also going to the shop and not actively looking for a newspaper so i can check the headline.  There all kinds of ways my anxiety plays out.  I have some new medication so hopefully that will help too.  

[Eagle Ray]

Hi Bookgirl,

It must be so challenging at times. I am imagining that maybe searching for that info in the news is like a way of feeling like you have some control by getting the information, but then the information is stressful and can make you feel worse. I think compulsions can take lots of different forms for different people.

Thank you for sharing your experiences as I'm sure it benefits others and it has benefited me in leading me to reflect about myself. Although I don't formally have OCD as such, I have had some OCD-like thought processes for as long as I can remember. For me it was my largely internal thought processes that did not come out in external behaviour so much. From a very young age as a child I would build categories of things in my mind. For example, if we were driving through an industrial warehouse area, I would could create an imaginary shop out of the objects I saw. I would remember the objects, such as various sized tyres, spools of wire, all sorts of stuff. It was totally involuntary and I would keep recreating this imaginary shop in my mind. This probably sounds completely weird, but because my childhood environment was mostly very stressful, it was like the only control of my environment was what was in my own head. I would create lists of all the animals I could think of for different letters of the alphabet, or of towns in Australia or in other parts of the world. I would build a vast catalogue of information in my head and go over and over it. I could not stop this process. Interestingly, in more recent times, as my nervous system has learned to settle more, I don't do this much at all now. But until fairly recently my brain would still fixate on building these categories of information that in and of themselves have no purpose other than for my brain to fixate on something it can control.

I have a friend with OCD who is very concerned about germs and will only wash the dishes with boiling water from the kettle. She also collects vasts amounts of certain things, such as clothing from op shops. She has an entire room of her house dedicated to her regular op shop purchases with rows of clothes racks that make it look like a clothing store. Like me she had overwhelming experiences of powerlessness as a child, so it is like these are some things she can control now that give her a sense of security. She is very hypervigilant and I also have been very hypervigilant throughout my life. For me it is slowly starting to calm down and obsessive thought processes have started to calm down with it.

So I think there is definitely hope for gradually shifting patterns and states of thought. It is really important to be kind and patient with yourself. I think understanding the patterns can help, but also hopefully the medication will help too and you can work towards some easing of the feelings of compulsion.

All the best,

ER

[Bookgirl]

Hi, yes i would have certain routines as a child like before sleep that i did to make me feel safe. I had a bad breakdown when i was 18 with lots of rituals that i sometimes do.  I have managed to keep off the news and weather til today.  Feel ok but my heart starts racing like i have an adrenalin rush when i see a trigger and it takes a while to calm down.  Trying to concentrate on the here and now but its hard.  One day at a time i guess.

[Eagle Ray]

Hi Bookgirl,

Yes, taking things one day at a time sounds like a good idea. I think breaking things down into smaller components and just focussing on the here and now can kind of buffer against worrying about bigger picture things that can sometimes escalate in our minds.

Sometimes I use grounding exercises which can be helpful when feeling anxious. One thing a psychologist taught me once in her office was to look around the room for a couple of minutes just observing what I could see and pick up through my senses. She also got me to sense the feeling of my feet on the ground. As I looked around her office I noticed things like an indoor pot plant on top of a bookshelf with vine leaves cascading downwards. The plant was catching the light through the window. I also noticed artwork on the wall. After a couple of minutes she got me to tell her what I had noticed and I described it to her. It really did bring me back more into the here and now and into my body. Sometimes reconnecting with our body and surroundings can actually calm an overactive mind. I just thought I'd mention that in case it is helpful.

I hope you have a peaceful weekend.

ER

[Bookgirl]

Not feeling well again today. Been reading the news which is always bad. Plus it was supposed to rain this weekend and it isn't and its just warm.  Fixating about it. Just makes me feel depressed with all the change.  I try and accept it. None of my friends seem to notice or say anything. How can they not notice how warm it is?

[Eagle Ray]

Hi Bookgirl,

If it helps to make you feel a bit better, I live a few hours from you in WA and we have had some drenching rain today and thunderstorms. I think the weather system must have just tracked further south. I've just been in Perth a few days actually and you are not wrong that it is warm for the time of year. I know some people do not notice it, but certainly a few people I spoke to when I was in Perth did. So yes it is real, but I think it is making that adjustment to accepting it as kind of the new normal now. I think a combination of El Niño and climate change is keeping it that way and a warmer than usual winter is predicted, but things are expected to at least cool off a bit in June with a bit more rain then. I think it is gradually coming to terms with reality.

I find if fixating is happening then distraction by getting immersed in something can help. I'm about to do that now myself with some photo editing which I love doing. I think it can help to recognise that fixating on something is like trying to make everything feel ok by going over and over something hoping that you can find a way to change or control the situation through thoughts. But there are some things we cannot change this way and we get stuck in a loop. I wonder if there is a way you can let go of trying to control things mentally by going over them? If you can really just let go you may find your body starts to calm down and experience some relief. I wonder if there are any exercises in letting go you could try with your psychologist in the safe and supportive context of therapy?

Take care,

ER