Our Obsession with Anxiety is Out of Control

And why our reaction to it is making it worse

In an era of self-diagnosis and victimhood culture, "I have anxiety" has become the battle cry of a generation. Gone are the days when people simply felt anxious about specific situations; now, anxiety is worn like a badge of honor, a fashionable affliction to be announced to the world.

This linguistic coup d'état, transforming a universal human emotion into a quasi-medical condition, didn't happen by accident. It's a perfect storm of social media narcissism, big pharma's relentless marketing, and a society that seems to value fragility over resilience. Scroll through any social platform, and you'll be bombarded by a cacophony of voices competing to claim the anxiety crown, as if it's a coveted prize in the Oppression Olympics.

This obsession with anxiety isn't just annoying—it's dangerous. And the way our medical experts and mental health gurus are coddling this trend is nothing short of malpractice, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy of perpetual panic.

The conversations often go like this:

Doctor: "What brings you in today?"

Patient: "I have anxiety."

Doctor: "I'm so sorry... Let me write you a prescription."

Or:

Therapist: "What brings you in?"

Client: "I have anxiety."

Therapist: "I'm so sorry... When did you start feeling this way?"

It’s all over social media now.

Big Pharma has hit the jackpot by rebranding normal human anxiety as a disease. They've turned millions into lifelong customers, hooked on pills that promise to numb unwanted feelings. Xanax, Klonopin, SSRIs – they're not selling cures, they're peddling emotional anesthesia. By convincing people that feeling anxious is a medical problem, these companies rake in billions while creating a nation of drug-dependent zombies. They're not treating anxiety; they're profiting from it.

The therapy industry has hit a goldmine with the "worried well" - a growing demographic of relatively healthy individuals consumed by their anxieties and fears. These clients, often middle-class and educated, provide a steady stream of revenue, booking weekly sessions to dissect every worry that crosses their minds.

Therapists, intentionally or not, have created a perfect business model: clients who aren't struggling enough to require intensive treatment, but are convinced they need constant professional help to navigate life's normal stressors.

This arrangement often becomes a costly, long-term commitment, with clients growing dependent on their therapist as a sounding board for every minor concern. The industry thrives on this endless cycle of self-examination, where no worry is too small to analyze, and "working on oneself" becomes a never-ending journey. It's a lucrative ecosystem where therapists are incentivized to keep clients coming back, and clients are conditioned to believe they can't cope without professional intervention.

Creating a Fear of “Fear”

We've inadvertently (or purposely) engineered a society that fears fear itself, trapping millions in an endless cycle of anxiety. By treating normal human emotions as disorders to be eliminated, we've created a paradox where the very fear of experiencing anxiety fuels more anxiety.

This fear-of-fear mentality is a self-fulfilling prophecy. The moment you feel a hint of anxiety, you panic.

"Oh no, it's happening again!"

This reaction amplifies the original feeling, spiraling into a full-blown anxiety episode. It's like being afraid of quicksand - the more you struggle against it, the deeper you sink.

We've conditioned ourselves to view anxiety as an enemy to be vanquished, rather than a natural part of the human experience. This mindset turns every nervous flutter into a potential crisis, keeping people constantly on edge, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

The result?

A perpetual state of hypervigilance that exhausts the mind and body, ironically making us more susceptible to the very thing we're trying to avoid. We've become so obsessed with feeling "good" all the time that we've pathologized normal emotional responses, creating a generation that's more anxious than ever about... being anxious.

The Mental Health Industry Feeds the Fear

Our minds can be masterful directors of dark, twisted scenarios. Don't be alarmed; this is perfectly normal. It's as if we have an internal disaster movie studio, constantly churning out worst-case scenarios:

The mind's penchant for catastrophizing is both fascinating and frustrating. It conjures up worst-case scenarios with Oscar-worthy detail:

Financial ruin that leaves you penniless and alone. The sudden, tragic loss of a loved one. Cringe-worthy moments of public humiliation that haunt you for years. Anything horrible that could possibly take place... the mind loves to create it ahead of time.

This mental dress rehearsal for disaster serves no real purpose except to keep us trapped in a cycle of worry. Our brains, still wired for ancient threats, now apply that same vigilance to modern anxieties. We're essentially running disaster simulations 24/7, exhausting ourselves over events that will likely never occur.

The irony is, this constant state of alert doesn't prepare us for real challenges - it just leaves us drained and less capable of handling actual problems when they arise. It's like we're stuck in a perpetual fire drill, never getting any real work done.

These mental productions aren't signs of impending doom. Rather, they're your mind's way of running simulations, preparing for potential threats. By observing these thoughts without getting swept away in their drama, you can gain valuable insights into your fears, motivations, and the incredible power of your mind.

Some people find themselves deeply entangled in the web of their inner worlds, mistaking the flickering shadows of thoughts for concrete reality. These people often struggle to differentiate between fleeting mental events and objective truth, granting their worries and fears an unwarranted authority over their lives.

They may flinch at certain thoughts, labeling them as "intrusive" or "abnormal," unaware that this very act of judgment amplifies their anxiety. The simple appearance of a thought becomes evidence of a deeper problem, a potential threat to be neutralized.

Inevitably, these thought-entangled individuals find themselves in therapists' offices or confiding in medical professionals, seeking relief from their persistent anxiety. They describe their inner turmoil in vivid detail, recounting each worrisome thought as if it were a premonition of doom.

What they don't realize is that by treating their thoughts as facts to be analyzed and solved, rather than temporary mental events to be observed, they're inadvertently strengthening the very cognitive patterns they hope to escape.

And all too often, well-meaning professionals, trained to take these concerns seriously, may unwittingly reinforce this cycle, turning the therapy room into an echo chamber for the mind's most insistent worries.

As a psychologist, I'm blowing the whistle on the mental health industrial complex: most well-meaning professionals are making your anxiety worse. That's right – the therapy and drugs prescribed are amplifying the very fears you're desperate to escape. By obsessing over anxious thoughts, they’re not curing you; they’re teaching you to fear your own mind.

Your therapist might be your anxiety's best friend.

When Thoughts Become Intrusive

Those unbidden, often disturbing mental images or ideas that seem to pop into our minds uninvited. The very term "intrusive" implies these thoughts are unwelcome invaders, trespassers in our mental space that shouldn't exist. But this definition itself reveals a fundamental flaw in how we approach our inner world.

The modern mental health industrial complex often frames intrusive thoughts as abnormalities, glitches in our mental software that need debugging. They're treated as symptoms of underlying disorders, unwelcome guests to be evicted from our minds. This perspective encourages us to view parts of our own mental experience as foreign, wrong, or dangerous.

But here's the irony: it's precisely this judgment and fear of our thoughts that amplifies their power over us. By labeling certain thoughts as "intrusive" and trying to rid ourselves of them, we're essentially telling our brains, "These thoughts are terrifying and dangerous. Be on high alert for them!" It's like trying to not think of a pink elephant - the more you try to suppress it, the more it dominates your mind.

In Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD), intrusive thoughts take on a particularly insidious role, often leading to compulsive behaviors due to a phenomenon known as thought-action fusion. This cognitive distortion causes individuals to equate having a thought with actually carrying out the action, or believing that thinking something increases the likelihood of it happening.

For instance, a person might have an intrusive thought about harming a loved one and immediately believe they are capable of or likely to commit such an act. This false equivalence between thought and reality creates intense anxiety, driving the individual to perform compulsive rituals or behaviors in an attempt to neutralize the perceived threat.

Standard therapies that analyze or challenge these thoughts a can paradoxically reinforce their importance, leading to a heightened focus on and fear of the very thoughts the individual is trying to dismiss. This approach often traps OCD sufferers in a cycle of heightened vigilance and reactivity to their own mental processes, inadvertently strengthening the grip of OCD rather than loosening it.

The psychiatric approach of medicating intrusive thoughts sends a powerful, albeit problematic, message: these thoughts are symptoms of illness, unwanted intruders that must be chemically subdued.

This medicalization of normal cognitive processes not only reinforces the belief that intrusive thoughts are dangerous, but it also implicitly tells individuals that they are incapable of coexisting with or managing these thoughts on their own.

By reaching for the prescription pad, psychiatrists inadvertently validate the fear surrounding these thoughts, potentially amplifying their perceived threat and entrenching the very distress they aim to alleviate.

Intrusive thoughts in Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) present a particularly challenging aspect of the condition. For individuals with PTSD, these thoughts often take the form of vivid, unwanted memories or flashbacks of the traumatic event.

Unlike typical intrusive thoughts, which might be dismissed as random mental noise, PTSD-related intrusions carry the weight of lived experience and intense emotional charge. They can hijack attention, triggering a cascade of physiological responses that mirror the original trauma.

Psychiatric interventions approach these intrusions as symptoms to be managed or eliminated, reinforcing the idea that they are abnormal and dangerous. However, this perspective again inadvertently amplifies the distress associated with these thoughts.

So we end up in a vicious cycle. Our brains, already primed to generate potential threat scenarios (a perfectly normal function, by the way), churn out a dark thought. We immediately judge this thought as "intrusive" and therefore bad. This judgment triggers fear and anxiety, which in turn makes our brains even more likely to generate similar thoughts in the future. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy of mental distress.

The result? Not only are we dealing with our mind's natural tendency to envision worst-case scenarios, but we're now also afraid of the very process of thinking itself. We've turned our own cognitive functions into bogeyman, creating a state of constant vigilance against our own minds.

The emphasis on this internal world through therapy and drugs doesn't liberate us from disturbing thoughts. Instead, it chains us more tightly to them, creating a never-ending battle against our own mind.

When Thoughts Become Facts

In the fast-paced world of modern healthcare, a person in distress often finds themselves revealing their innermost thoughts to a mental health professional. This vulnerable moment, meant to be a step towards healing, can inadvertently become the start of a problematic cycle.

In the rush to diagnose and treat, clinicians may take these revelations at face value, mistaking the patient's internal narrative for objective reality. Thoughts about a partner's perceived infidelity are accepted as evidence of relationship issues. Frustrations with a boss are interpreted as signs of workplace conflict. Even more concerning, fleeting thoughts of suicide are often immediately equated with a genuine desire to die.

This approach fails to recognize the complex, often contradictory nature of our inner worlds. It doesn't account for the fact that our thoughts can be temporary, exaggerated, or completely divorced from our actual desires or intentions.

The clinician's reaction to these revelations is often fear-based, further reinforcing the patient's belief in the "reality" of their thoughts. A therapist's alarm at hearing suicidal ideation, for instance, can confirm the patient's worst fears about their mental state. This fear-driven response can lead to over-diagnosis, unnecessary medication, or overly cautious treatment plans.

In the worst cases, therapy becomes a forum for endlessly replaying and reinforcing these fears. Sessions revolve around dissecting every anxious thought, inadvertently giving them more power and presence in the patient's life.

This approach often results in patients becoming more entangled with their thoughts, more afraid of their inner experiences, and ultimately, worse off than when they started. Rather than learning to observe their mental landscape with detachment and equanimity, they're taught to fear it, fight it, or numb it - none of which leads to genuine, long-lasting mental health.

The irony is palpable: in their earnest attempts to help, mental health professionals may be unwittingly exacerbating the very issues they aim to resolve, all by mistaking the ever-changing theater of the mind for immutable reality.

Quick Fixes Lasting Consequences

When anxiety strikes, the desire for quick relief is understandable. But reaching for a pill to escape uncomfortable emotions sends a dangerous message to your brain: these feelings are intolerable and must be avoided at all costs. This reinforces the perceived threat of anxiety, paradoxically making you more vulnerable to future attacks. It's like telling your brain, "Sound the alarm louder next time – these emotions are truly dangerous!"

But the problems don't stop there. The very drugs prescribed to help often create a host of new issues, turning a temporary struggle into a long-term battle.

Take benzodiazepines, for instance. These drugs, including household names like Xanax and Klonopin, are anxiety's quick fix – and a potential trap. Their calming effect can be felt almost immediately, but at a steep price. Dependency can develop in as little as 10-14 days of regular use. What follows is a vicious cycle: as your body adapts, you experience rebound anxiety – often mistaken for a worsening of the original condition. This leads to higher doses or additional medications, deepening the dependency.

Withdrawal from benzodiazepines is notoriously difficult, often mimicking or amplifying the very symptoms they were meant to treat. Many patients find themselves stuck, afraid to stop the medication that's now part of their problem.

Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors (SSRIs) present a different, but equally concerning, set of issues. While not addictive in the classical sense, they do create a type of chemical dependency. As your brain adapts to the increased serotonin levels, you require higher doses to achieve the same effect and your brain adapts to the drug.

The emotional blunting often experienced with SSRIs is not a sign of healing, but a dulling of your emotional range – the good along with the bad. Most people report emotional blunting as an adverse side effect as it mutes positive emotions, can decrease empathy and leads many people to feel emotionally detached from loved ones.

Perhaps most alarmingly, a significant number of SSRI users report persistent sexual dysfunction, a side effect that can continue long after discontinuing the medication. This is not just a quality of life issue; it's a fundamental alteration of human experience and connection.

The medication can trigger a spectrum of unforeseen and potentially severe side effects. These may include an uptick in intrusive thoughts, suicidal ideation, and deteriorating mood. Furthermore, patients have reported experiencing mania, heightened agitation, disrupted sleep patterns, and a host of other adverse health impacts. The breadth and intensity of these effects underscore the complex nature of pharmacological interventions for mental health issues.

I strive to impress upon my clients that emotional numbing is not synonymous with genuine mental healthcare. Despite what marketing campaigns or well-meaning professionals might suggest, it's not simply a "coping tool" or a benign aid to "get by."

What we're dealing with are potent, synthetic compounds, engineered in laboratories, that profoundly alter brain chemistry in ways not fully understood by modern science. These medications interact with our most complex organ in intricate and far-reaching ways, carrying the risk of severe, potentially life-altering consequences. It's crucial to recognize that dulling our emotional responses isn't healing—it's masking symptoms at a potentially steep cost.

A pernicious cycle often unfolds: the side effects of these medications are misinterpreted as new or worsening symptoms of mental illness. What began as a struggle with anxiety and worry morphs into a more severe psychiatric diagnosis, triggering a cascade of additional prescriptions.

This pharmaceutical snowball effect doesn't just compound the original issue—it can create entirely new problems, leading to iatrogenic harm. The result is a downward spiral where treatment inadvertently begets further disability, trapping patients in an ever-expanding web of diagnoses and drugs, each purportedly addressing issues that are consequences of previous interventions.

The Path to True Mental Freedom

What if, instead of fearing our thoughts, we learned to observe them without attachment? This skill, often overlooked in traditional therapy, is the key to mental freedom.

By regularly observing our inner experience without judgment, we can learn to navigate our mental landscape with grace and ease. Therapy shouldn't involve endlessly rehashing our weekly woes or fixating on our fears. Instead, it should teach us to detach from our inner world, recognizing thoughts as passing events rather than concrete realities.

So what would you have to talk about in therapy?

Emotions are adaptive and necessary when tied to real-life challenges. But when they're triggered by the illusions our minds create, they become false alarms, hindering our ability to live fully.

Our current mental health system, with its focus on dissecting every anxious thought, amplifies these false alarms. It's time we recognize that our ego-driven minds, designed for survival, are prone to imagining threats not just to our physical well-being, but to our emotional survival – rejections, failures, and perceived slights.

By practicing defusion from the content of our mind, we can learn to differentiate between helpful emotional signals and unnecessary mental noise. This approach doesn't numb us to life's experiences; rather, it allows us to engage more fully with the present moment, free from the constraints of our mind's often misguided narratives. It's a radical shift from our current treatment paradigms, but one that holds the promise of true mental freedom.

Can therapy be helpful when someone is feeling anxious?

Yes, but with important caveats. Therapy is truly beneficial only when a person is trapped in a cycle of avoidance and responding to their inner world as if it's objectively real. In these cases, effective therapy should guide the individual to observe their inner experiences with detachment and without judgment, creating a space between thoughts and reality.

The therapist's role should be to supportively and motivatingly engage the person in exposure to what they fear, helping them tolerate the experience. This approach, paradoxically, can decrease anxiety over time as the individual becomes more grounded in the present moment and realizes that what they've been avoiding is far more frightening in their imagination than in reality.

These effective therapy approaches are typically short-term, averaging fewer than 20 sessions total. This stands in stark contrast to the years many people now spend in open-ended therapy, often without significant improvement.

We must be radically honest about how standard therapeutic approaches and medications keep people locked in a vicious cycle. Our default state is one of resilience, but many common interventions inadvertently reinforce the idea that anxiety is an insurmountable problem rather than a natural, manageable part of the human experience.

Effective therapy should aim to break this cycle, empowering individuals to face their fears and rediscover their innate ability to cope with life's challenges. It's not about endlessly talking about worries or numbing feelings with drugs, but about learning to navigate anxiety with courage and presence.