#and if someone found Dear Evan Hansen a useful text in terms of their own mental health journey who am I to discredit that | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

punk-rock-pixie · 7 years ago

Note

1-100

I need to be careful what I ask for lmao

Spotify, SoundCloud, or Pandora?

Spotify

is your room messy or clean?

It’s messy rn just cuz I was looking for something

what color are your eyes?

Hazel

do you like your name? why?

Yeah. Picked it myself.

what is your relationship status?

single

describe your personality in 3 words or less

Really McFuckin Gay

what color hair do you have?

Black and blue

what kind of car do you drive? color?

Grey chevy cruz

where do you shop?

I’m a slut for Barns and Noble lately. Dropped $60 on classic ghost stories, Norse Mythology, and a Deathly Hallows journal. I’ve dropped over $100 literally in the last two months on books. I don’t work anymore though so that won’t be a thing anymore

how would you describe your style?

Sad college kid chic

favorite social media account

Youtube

what size bed do you have?

Queen

any siblings?

One older sister.

if you can live anywhere in the world where would it be? why?

The Nordic region. They’ve been doing so much right in terms of education and gender equality.

favorite snapchat filter?

The anime one

favorite makeup brand(s)

NYX, E.L.F. and Bare Essentials

how many times a week do you shower?

I shower every other day, but I wash my hair like every 3-4 days to keep the color in.

favorite tv show?

Currently, really love trollhunters.

shoe size?

Like a 7 in mens or something

how tall are you?

5′6.5″ The half is so important to me because I’ve hardly grown since 2012

sandals or sneakers?

Trick question- no shoes at all. Our feet get hurt like men.

do you go to the gym?

Rarely, but yes.

describe your dream date

Dear god. Almost any date I’d be okay with. Coffee? Sign me the fuck up. Hang around a park/go on a walk? Lemme get my heckin sneakers. Cryptid hunting in the wee hours of the night? You just won my heckin heart buddy.

how much money do you have in your wallet at the moment?

Like $30-$40 I think????

what color socks are you wearing?

None sock

how many pillows do you sleep with?

Too many for my own good.

do you have a job? what do you do?

Not anymore :)))) There weren’t enough hours.

how many friends do you have?

How many friends? Many. How many close ones? Like 3-4

whats the worst thing you have ever done?

Something I’d rather not say.

whats your favorite candle scent?

Lavender always but peppercorn and pumpkin are the ones I’ve been using lately.

3 favorite boy names

Marshal

Ethan (NOT BECAUSE OF NESTOR)

Quinn

3 favorite girl names

Rose

Sadona

Rickie

favorite actor?

Always and forever Chris Evans, but also Hugh Jackman found his way back to my heart recently. The Rock, Ramin Karimloo, Sean Gunn, Michael Rooker

favorite actress?

Zoe Saldana, Zendaya, Melissa McCarthy, Allison Janney, Julie Andrews, Maryl Streep.

who is your celebrity crush?

See above two questions, but mainly Hugh Jackman, Chris Evans, and Zendaya

favorite movie?

If you couldn’t tell, I’m hyperfixating on Greatest Showman, but also Book of Life, Monster in Paris, 1937 Phantom of the Opera

do you read a lot? whats your favorite book?

My favorite book is Dracula currently, but I also love Dodie Clark’s “secrets for the mad”, most of Shakespeare’s plays and Edgar Alan Poe’s works

money or brains?

Brains.

do you have a nickname? what is it?

I have way to many dude.

how many times have you been to the hospital?

Like 7-8 I think???

top 10 favorite songs

In no order:

-I’m counting all of greatest showman as one

-Cat Stevens: Father and Son

-Raspberries: Go all the way

-Silver: Wham Bam Shang a Lang

-Babeo Baggins: Thunder Bird

-Dodie Clark: You

-Beatles: Wanna Hold Your Hand

-Vanessa Paradis and Sean Lennon: La Seine

-Dear Evan Hansen: For Forever

-Karen O: Moon Song

do you take any medications daily?

No but I should probably get back on them.

what is your skin type? (oily, dry, etc)

Normal to oily

what is your biggest fear?

Abandonment :) Also I have claustrophobia

how many kids do you want?

I mean if we’re talking baby goats, as many as I can afford.

whats your go to hair style?

I kinda just brush my hair back and hope for the best

what type of house do you live in? (big, small, etc)

It’s not a mansion, but it’s pretty big

who is your role model?

@thatsthat24

what was the last compliment you received?

From @mild-soapog something about how I deserve a wholesome life and honestly I just love Elle???

what was the last text you sent?

“Hey, how are you feeling?” to a former coworker

how old were you when you found out santa wasn’t real?

I grew up Jewish so I never really thought it.

what is your dream car?

I don’t really care tbh. I’m pretty happy with the one I have.

opinion on smoking?

You do you just not around me cuz I will cough like a mad man.

do you go to college?

Soon

what is your dream job?

Professional film or stage actor or singer/guitarist in a band

would you rather live in rural areas or the suburbs?

suburbs

do you take shampoo and conditioner bottles from hotels?

Nope. I’m a good noodle.

do you have freckles?

Several

do you smile for pictures?

Yes, but only after make a bunch of stupid faces

how many pictures do you have on your phone?

659

have you ever peed in the woods?

Yes and uh 4/5 would not recommend

do you still watch cartoons?

Yup

do you prefer chicken nuggets from Wendy’s or McDonalds?

Neither.

Favorite dipping sauce?

hek dude idk

what do you wear to bed?

Usually like a tank top and underwear. if it’s super cold I’ll wear sweats too

have you ever won a spelling bee?

Have I ever even competed in one????

what are your hobbies?

Guitar, singing, ukulele, drawing, writing poetry

can you draw?

I’d say so

do you play an instrument?

Check hobbies with the addition of bass guitar

what was the last concert you saw?

I think it was a Beatles tribute band???

tea or coffee?

Both

Starbucks or Dunkin Donuts?

Starbucks

do you want to get married?

Honestly, first let me find someone local that will love me for more than 4 months

what is your crush’s first and last initial?

HJ, EJ, EN.

are you going to change your last name when you get married?

You mean… IF I get married

what color looks best on you?

Blacks and purples

do you miss anyone right now?

Several people

do you sleep with your door open or closed?

usually closed

do you believe in ghosts?

Yes and no???

what is your biggest pet peeve?

chewing with your mouth open, snoring, pen clicking, leg jiggling (if it’s in my peripheral vision)

last person you called

My crush actually. He and I are friends and I asked if we wanted me to hang with him after school since he had to stay up until I had my callback scheduled

favorite ice cream flavor?

Chocolate chip cookie dough and cookies and cream

regular oreos or golden oreos?

What the shit are golden oreos

chocolate or rainbow sprinkles?

Rainbow cuz I’m queer

what shirt are you wearing?

A black tank top

what is your phone background?

a greatest showman wallpaper

are you outgoing or shy?

it depends on the situation

do you like it when people play with your hair?

Yes but ONLY IF THEY ASK BEFORE HAND.

do you like your neighbors?

I don’t even know my neighbors

do you wash your face? at night? in the morning?

Both

have you ever been high?

nope

have you ever been

Nope

last thing you ate?

Like half a pizza

favorite lyrics right now?

Idk my favorite currently, but these are the ones that keep circling my head

“When the world becomes a fantasyAnd you’re more than you could ever be‘Cause you’re dreaming with your eyes wide openAnd you know you can’t go back againTo the world that you were living in'Cause you’re dreaming with your eyes wide open

So Come alive”

summer or winter?

Winter

day or night?

Night

dark, milk, or white chocolate?

All????

favorite month?

October-November

what is your zodiac sign

Scorpio

who was the last person you cried in front of?

Honestly, I have no fuckin clue lmaooooo

#pixie interrogation #punkrockpixie #anonymous

4 notes · View notes

ongames · 7 years ago

Text

Why 'Dear Evan Hansen' Is The Broadway Show Parents Need To See

“Does anybody have a map? Anybody maybe happen to know how the hell to do this? I don’t know if you can tell. But this is me just pretending to know. So where’s the map? I need a clue. ‘Cause the scary truth is I’m flying blind. And I’m making this up as I go.”

So goes the first song in “Dear Evan Hansen,” one of the most buzzed-about shows this Tony Awards season. “Does Anybody Have a Map?” is sung by two mothers who are struggling to connect with their teenage sons, and as some have noted, the number is basically a parenting anthem.

Starring Ben Platt (of “Pitch Perfect” fame), “Dear Evan Hansen” tells the story of a high school senior with social anxiety who, through a misunderstanding, becomes enmeshed in the aftermath of a classmate’s suicide. Although the plot of musical centers around the titular protagonist and his high school world, the theme of parenthood is also a key component of the show.

Rachel Bay Jones plays Evan’s mother, while Jennifer Laura Thompson and Michael Park play the parents of Connor Murphy, a troubled student who dies by suicide early in the show. All three actors are parents themselves, and their powerful performances speak to the love and heartache of raising children today.

Jones, Park and Thompson spoke to HuffPost about their emotional roles and the way this play has interacted with their own parenting experiences.

Jones, who has a 14-year-old daughter named Miranda, told HuffPost she believes songs like “Anybody Have a Map?” really resonate with parents. “You have absolutely no idea what you’re doing. You read so many conflicting books, and advice from everybody is so different,” she said.

“And when they become teenagers, they change, and you sort of wake up and realize they’re not your baby anymore,” she added. “Because they’re not communicating with you the way that they used to, you don’t have any idea how to handle the things that come up, ― you don’t know what’s going on. Sometimes you think you do, but then you find out you have absolutely no idea.”

Jones believes that parents can connect with the show from the very beginning, as the opening scenes show groups of family members “trying understand each other and completely missing.”

Thompson echoed her co-star’s sentiments. “The books will tell you what milestones are going to be hit, what cures nighttime crying and feeding problems, and all of the issues that the average child will go through,” she told HuffPost. “But there’s really no such thing as an average child. Every child is made up of a different set of challenges and those are the things, the unexpected things that make us all flounder as people.”

The actress has a 13-year-old son named Tommy. In a way, “Does Anybody Have a Map?” takes her back to the day she brought her baby home from the hospital.

“I thought, ‘They’re gonna let me leave with this person?’ I couldn’t believe it,” she said. “I didn’t feel responsible, didn’t feel prepared, even as much as I’d read and set up nursery and had all the things I thought I needed. I was terrified.”

She continued, “We spend a lot of time being scared early on. Everyone will tell you that nothing can prepare you for parenthood. It’s gonna change your life. And people who don’t have children just brush it off as, “Yeah, yeah, I get it.” But It’s really so far beyond what you can expect that there’s no comprehending what that phrase means until you have a young being in your presence that belongs to you.”

For Jones, the play spoke to her on another level, as her character Heidi is a single mother like she is in real life. Though she has a long-term partner now, she and her daughter’s father separated when Miranda was very young.

“There’s a very specific kind of relationship that develops when it’s just the two of you against the world ― especially when there’s hardship, when there’s not the support of family close by,” she explained.

“And that has been the case for me with my daughter. Struggling to keep us afloat, struggling to give her the things she needs to make life gentler for her while really being in it as a working person is something I know very well. So I come to this with my own experience,” she added.

In addition to drawing from their own experience for their roles, the actors have also brought lessons from “Dear Evan Hansen” to their parenting.

Park said this was particularly true for him. The actor has three kids, 19-year-old Christopher, 17-year-old Kathleen and 13-year-old Annabelle. His character Larry is a corporate lawyer dealing with the aftermath of his son’s suicide and his regret that he wasn’t able to get through to Connor.

In many ways, playing Larry has changed Park’s approach to raising his children and his understanding of the value of communication.

“I say this all the time. I’m so grateful for ‘Dear Evan Hansen’ because it has made me a better communicator with my kids, it has made me a more open human being in the relationship I have with my wife, and it has made me a better parent,” Park told HuffPost. “I’ve benefitted in ways that I cannot articulate as a husband, as a father and as as son.”

Though Larry had become a bit closed off from his son, Park urges his fellow parents to be open and persist in their efforts, even when it feels impossible.

“I beg you to reach out and never stop communicating with your son or daughter or grandparent or your uncle or your aunt,” he said. “Never stop communicating. Try and try again. And when the door shuts, find a way to open that door again.”

Evoking the Act I finale “You Will Be Found,” Park said he believes both parents and teens need the reminder that they are not alone. “At the end of the day, that’s what the show is all about: being found, knowing you aren’t going through this by yourself,” he explained. “Someone is always out there for you.”

“Dear Evan Hansen” is a show that feels very relevant today, as it tackles the theme of being a teenager on social media and the way the internet affects high school life.

“I think social media tends to magnify the issues that we all have with feeling connected, feeling disconnected, feeling less than, trying to one-up each other, trying to connect with each other,” Jones explained. “It exacerbates all of these issues that have always existed, especially in the life of a teen.”

In the play, the parents only enter into the social media world their kids inhabit in a few times, and when they do, the experience overwhelms them. “I find that’s pretty real, when I touch on what life must be like for my teenager in her world of social media ― it is overwhelming.”

Park said he believes technology and social media are “double-edged swords” because they has the ability to bring people together for powerful causes but also inhibit one-on-one communication between individuals.

“When my daughter is downstairs and texting me to come down and make a sandwich, there’s a problem there,” he joked, adding that he doesn’t mind using technology restrictions as a punishment though. Ultimately, he said of social media and technology: “I’m grateful, I’m dismayed, I’m confused and happy all at the same time.”

Another theme is the connection between class and parenting, particularly as Heidi struggles to make ends meet between her job as a nurse’s aide and time spent at night school studying to become a paralegal. Meanwhile, Connor’s mom, Cynthia, leads a more affluent life.

“The show really deals with class issues in a beautiful way, in a really profound way,” said Jones. “These two mothers are both completely worthy moms. But when you’re a working class mother, you unfairly idealize these wealthy women who are able to be whoever they want to be as a parent, and that makes you feel inadequate all the time because you cannot provide for your kid what these perfect moms are able to provide.”

Although it’s true that wealth provides more opportunities, both Jones and Thompson said they feel none of that really matters when it comes to being a good parent.

Thompson said she believes the play crushes some of the images of perfection that parents idealize. “Just because you have money and seem happy has nothing to do with your quality of life,” she said. “Nobody knows what goes on behind closed doors.”

“Dear Evan Hansen” has received nine Tony Award nominations, including Best Featured Actress in a Musical for Jones. One of her most poignant moments is her solo number, “So Big / So Small” ― an emotional song about her split from Evan’s father and journey as a single mother.

“It really somehow gets to the heart of everything that we feel as parents,” said Jones. “The need to be known by our children and forgiven for our flaws. The need to show our kids that even if we’re flawed and even if we mess up over and over and over again, that we really do love them and really are here for them. And that they have us always to come home to.”

The actress said she’s amazed that the songwriters, Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, are two young, childfree men.

“I’ve known those guys for a long time, and I’ve always said they write the best mom songs,” she said. “I think they just happen to have really great relationships with their moms, and they really understand all of us.”

Jones, Park and Thompson said that one of the most powerful parts of their work in “Dear Evan Hansen” has been the response from other parents.

“I’ve received a couple of letters from mothers thanking us for telling this story, particularly Cynthia’s story or the mom’s story, because it’s not one that’s talked about very much,” Thompson said, adding that she’s also been moved by the response from fans waiting outside the theater.

“There are so many times when there’s a teenager waiting to get a signature but there’s a parent behind them in tears thanking me for telling this story,” she said.

“Just the other night, a lovely woman with her daughter walked up to Rachel Bay and me and explained that the show was so important and was very emotional,” Thompson recalled. “They said her son had committed suicide and the young woman was his sibling. They were so moved and touched by the story being told, and that felt very rewarding.”

Jones said she believes “Dear Evan Hansen” helps people understand each other. “So often, there’s a generational divide that starts in the teenage years that never fully heals until we’re parents ourselves and we begin to understand.” she explained, noting that teens in the audience come away a better sense of their parents’ experiences, while parents are remembering what it feels like to be a teenager.

She said she constantly hears positive feedback from kids and parents ― especially single moms and children of single moms. “So many women are thanking me for this portrayal of Heidi,” she said. “So many children are thanking me for allowing them to see their mother and the struggles that she must’ve gone through.”

Added the actress, “There’s no more gratifying experience for me as a person than to to hear that come back to me, that in any way the show we’re doing is connecting people in this way.”

If you or someone you know needs help, call 1-800-273-8255 for the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline. You can also text HELLO to 741-741 for free, 24-hour support from the Crisis Text Line. Outside of the U.S., please visit the International Association for Suicide Prevention for a database of resources.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

Why 'Dear Evan Hansen' Is The Broadway Show Parents Need To See published first on http://ift.tt/2lnpciY

1 note · View note

newstfionline · 7 years ago

Text

Prozac Nation Is Now the United States of Xanax

By Alex Williams, NY Times, June 10, 2017

This past winter, Sarah Fader, a 37-year-old social media consultant in Brooklyn who has generalized anxiety disorder, texted a friend in Oregon about an impending visit, and when a quick response failed to materialize, she posted on Twitter to her 16,000-plus followers. “I don’t hear from my friend for a day--my thought, they don’t want to be my friend anymore,” she wrote, appending the hashtag #ThisIsWhatAnxietyFeelsLike.

Thousands of people were soon offering up their own examples under the hashtag; some were retweeted more than 1,000 times. You might say Ms. Fader struck a nerve. “If you’re a human being living in 2017 and you’re not anxious,” she said on the telephone, “there’s something wrong with you.”

It was 70 years ago that the poet W.H. Auden published “The Age of Anxiety,” a six-part verse framing modern humankind’s condition over the course of more than 100 pages, and now it seems we are too rattled to even sit down and read something that long.

Anxiety has become our everyday argot, our thrumming lifeblood: not just on Twitter (the ur-anxious medium, with its constant updates), but also in blogger diaries, celebrity confessionals, a hit Broadway show (“Dear Evan Hansen”), a magazine start-up (Anxy, a mental-health publication based in Berkeley, Calif.), buzzed-about television series (like “Maniac,” a coming Netflix series by Cary Fukunaga, the lauded “True Detective” director) and, defying our abbreviated attention spans, on bookshelves.

While to epidemiologists both disorders are medical conditions, anxiety is starting to seem like a sociological condition, too: a shared cultural experience that feeds on alarmist CNN graphics and metastasizes through social media. As depression was to the 1990s--summoned forth by Kurt Cobain, “Listening to Prozac,” Seattle fog and Temple of the Dog dirges on MTV, viewed from under a flannel blanket--so it seems we have entered a new Age of Anxiety. Monitoring our heart rates. Swiping ceaselessly at our iPhones. Filling meditation studios in an effort to calm our racing thoughts.

Consider the fidget spinner: endlessly whirring between the fingertips of “Generation Alpha,” annoying teachers, baffling parents. Originally marketed as a therapeutic device to chill out children with anxiety, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder or autism, these colorful daisy-shaped gizmos have suddenly found an unlikely off-label use as perhaps the an explosively popular toy, this generation’s Rubik’s Cube.

But the Cube was fundamentally a cerebral, calm pursuit, perfect for the latchkey children of the 1980s to while away their lonely, Xbox-free hours. The fidget spinner is nothing but nervous energy rendered in plastic and steel, a perfect metaphor for the overscheduled, overstimulated children of today as they search for a way to unplug between jujitsu lessons, clarinet practice and Advanced Placement tutoring.

According to data from the National Institute of Mental Health, some 38 percent of girls ages 13 through 17, and 26 percent of boys, have an anxiety disorder. On college campuses, anxiety is running well ahead of depression as the most common mental health concern, according to a 2016 national study of more than 150,000 students by the Center for Collegiate Mental Health at Pennsylvania State University. Meanwhile, the number of web searches involving the term has nearly doubled over the last five years, according to Google Trends. (The trendline for “depression” was relatively flat.)

To Kai Wright, the host of the politically themed podcast “The United States of Anxiety” from WNYC, which debuted this past fall, such numbers are all too explicable. “We’ve been at war since 2003, we’ve seen two recessions,” Mr. Wright said. “Just digital life alone has been a massive change. Work life has changed. Everything we consider to be normal has changed. And nobody seems to trust the people in charge to tell them where they fit into the future.”

For “On Edge,” Ms. Petersen, a longtime reporter for The Wall Street Journal, traveled back to her alma mater, the University of Michigan, to talk to students about stress. One student, who has A.D.H.D., anxiety and depression, said the pressure began building in middle school when she realized she had to be at the top of her class to get into high school honors classes, which she needed to get into Advanced Placement classes, which she needed to get into college.

“In sixth grade,” she said, “kids were freaking out.”

This was not the stereotypical experience of Generation X.

Urban Dictionary defines a slacker as “someone who while being intelligent, doesn’t really feel like doing anything,” and that certainly captures the ripped-jean torpor of 1990s Xers.

For these youths of the 1990s, Nirvana’s “Lithium” was an anthem; coffee was a constant and Ms. Wurtzel’s “Prozac Nation: Young and Depressed in America,” about an anhedonic Harvard graduate from a broken home, dressed as if she could have played bass in Hole, was a bible.

The millennial equivalent of Ms. Wurtzel is, of course, Lena Dunham, who recently told an audience at the 92nd Street Y in Manhattan, “I don’t remember a time not being anxious.” Having suffered debilitating anxiety since age 4, the creator, writer and star of the anxiety-ridden “Girls” recalled how she “missed 74 days of 10th grade” because she was afraid to leave her house. This was around the time that the largest act of terrorism in United States history unfolded near the TriBeCa loft where she grew up.

But monitored by helicopter parents, showered with participation awards and then smacked with the Great Recession, Generation Y has also suffered from the low-level anxiety that comes from failing to meet expectations. Thus the invention of terms like “quarter-life crisis” and “FOMO” (“fear of missing out,” as it is fueled by social media apps like Instagram). Thus cannabis, the quintessential chill-out drug, is turned into a $6.7 billion industry.

Sexual hedonism no longer offers escape; it’s now filtered through the stress of Tinder. “If someone rejects you, there’s no, ‘Well, maybe there just wasn’t chemistry …,’” Jacob Geers, a 22-year-old in New York who works in digital sales, said. “It’s like you’re afraid that through the app you’ll finally look into the mirror and realize that you’re butt ugly,” he added.

If anxiety is the melody of the moment, President Trump is a fitting maestro. Unlike his predecessor, Barack Obama, a low-key ironist from the mellow shores of Oahu, the incumbent is a fast-talking agitator from New York, a city of 8.5 million people and, seemingly, three million shrinks.

In its more benign form, only a few beats from ambition, anxiety is, in part, what made Mr. Trump as a businessman. In his real estate career, enough was never enough. “Controlled neurosis” is the common characteristic of most “highly successful entrepreneurs,” according to Mr. Trump (or Tony Schwartz, his ghostwriter) in the 1987 book, “The Art of the Deal.” “I don’t say that this trait leads to a happier life, or a better life,” he adds, “but it’s great when it comes to getting what you want.”

Everything had to be bigger, bolder, gold-er. And it made him as a politician, spinning nightmare tales on the stump about an America under siege from Mexican immigrants and Muslim terrorists.

But if Mr. Trump became president because voters were anxious, as a recent Atlantic article would have readers believe, other voters have become more anxious because he became president. Even those not distressed by the content of his messages might find the manner in which they are dispensed jarring.

“In addition to the normal chaos of being a human being, there is what almost feels like weaponized uncertainty thrown at us on a daily basis,” said Kat Kinsman, the “Hi, Anxiety” author. “It’s coming so quickly and messily, some of it straight from the president’s own fingers.”

Indeed, Mr. Trump is the first politician in world history whose preferred mode of communication is the 3 a.m. tweet--evidence of a sleepless body, a restless mind, a worrier.

“We live in a country where we can’t even agree on a basic set of facts,” said Dan Harris, an ABC news correspondent and “Nightline” anchor who found a side career as an anti-anxiety guru with the publication of his 2014 best-seller, “10% Happier.” Mr. Harris now also offers a meditation app, a weekly email newsletter and a podcast that has been downloaded some 3.5 million times in the past year.

The political mess has been “a topic of conversation and a source of anxiety in nearly every clinical case that I have worked with since the presidential election,” said Robert Duff, a psychologist in California. He wrote a 2014 book, “Hardcore Self-Help,” whose subtitle proposes to conquer anxiety in the coarse language that has also defined a generation.

The Cold War, starring China, North Korea and Russia, is back, inspiring headline-induced visions of mushroom clouds not seen in our collective nightmares since that Sunday evening in 1983 when everyone watched “The Day After” on ABC.

And television was, as Marshall McLuhan famously wrote, a cool medium. Our devices are literally hot, warming our laps and our palms.

“In our always-on culture, checking your phone is the last thing you do before you go to sleep, and the first thing you do if you wake up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom,” Mr. Harris said. “Just today, I got an alert on my phone about the collapsing Arctic ice shelf. That’s scary as hell.”

Push notifications. Apocalyptic headlines. Rancorous tweets. Countless studies have found links between online culture and anxiety. But if social media can lead to anxiety, it also might help relieve it.

The “we have no secrets here” ethos of online discourse has helped bring anxiety into the open, and allowed its clinical sufferers to band together in a virtual group-therapy setting. Hence the success of campaigns like #ThisIsWhatAnxietyFeelsLike, which helped turn anxiety--a disorder that afflicts some 40 million American adults--into a kind of rights movement. “People with anxiety were previously labeled dramatic,” said Sarah Fader, the Brooklyn social media consultant who also runs a mental-health advocacy organization called Stigma Fighters. “Now we are seen as human beings with a legitimate mental health challenge.”

And let’s remember that we survived previous heydays of anxiety without a 24-hour digital support system. Weren’t the Woody Allen ‘70s the height of neurosis, with their five-days-a-week analysis sessions and encounter groups? What about the 1950s, with their duck-and-cover songs and backyard bomb shelters?

That era “was the high-water mark of Freudian psychoanalysis, and any symptom or personality trait was attributed to an anxiety neurosis,” said Peter D. Kramer, the Brown University psychiatrist who wrote the landmark 1990s best-seller, “Listening to Prozac.” “And then there were substantial social spurs to anxiety: the World Wars, the atom bomb. If you weren’t anxious, you were scarcely normal.”

Scott Stossel, editor of The Atlantic, whose “My Age of Anxiety” helped kick off the anxiety memoir boom three years ago, urged people to pause, not for deep cleansing breaths, but for historical perspective.

“Every generation, going back to Periclean Greece, to second century Rome, to the Enlightenment, to the Georgians and to the Victorians, believes itself to be the most anxious age ever,” Mr. Stossel said.

That said, the Americans of 2017 can make a pretty strong case that they are gold medalists in the Anxiety Olympics.

“There is widespread inequality of wealth and status, general confusion over gender roles and identities, and of course the fear, dormant for several decades, that ICBMs will rain nuclear fire on American cities,” Mr. Stossel said. “The silver lining for those with nervous disorders is that we can welcome our previously non-neurotic fellow citizens into the anxious fold.”

#anxiety #worry #age of anxiety

0 notes

yes-dal456 · 7 years ago