Emotional anguish: the indefinable fear that paralyzes

Emotional distress is like a whirlpool that catches everything. It imprisons us from the inside, filling us with fear, anxiety, restlessness and even indefinable sadness… It is a kaleidoscope of adverse emotions that cause not only a characteristic psychological discomfort, but also its physical symptoms can become truly limiting.

Byung-Chul Han, a well-known South Korean philosopher and essayist, expert in cultural studies, defines today’s world as the society of fatigue. If there is something that proliferates among us, it is anxiety and emotional anguish. For Dr. Han, the cause of all this is in our culture of performance, in that virus that we are inoculated from as children where we are tried to guide us towards success, towards that high solvency in almost any plane of our existence.

Thus, in addition to the pressure from our environment for us to stand out and achieve success, we are introduced very early into the culture of multitasking. You have to do many things at the same time and in a short time. It is the law of a jungle where not everyone survives or integrates effectively, where it is common to get trapped in the “ angst”, that German term that evokes everything that is narrow, oppressive and that produces suffering.

Emotional distress: what is happening to me?

When we talk about emotional distress, the same controversy always arises. Is anguish the same as anxiety? Or are they two different psychological conditions? It should be said that until not long ago it was preferred to leave the term anxiety on the philosophical level, differentiating it from the clinical one. There we have, for example, Søren Kierkegaard, defining this dimension as that fear that we sometimes experience when we realize that our future is limited, and that the quality of our life depends on our choices.

Sigmund Freud, for his part, differentiated “realistic anxiety” from “neurotic anxiety,” the latter being a pathological condition.. Something that moved away from those purely philosophical reflections. All of this leads us to intuit that, in essence, what there is in reality are two types of anxiety, one that we could call existential and another that, by itself, has very defined features and that according to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-V) often appears as a symptom of various psychological disorders.

Let’s look at some features.

Emotional distress paralyzes us. While anxiety generally has a nervous and activating component, anguish is like a blockage in the face of uncertainty, towards something that we cannot control or foresee. When this shadow arises, worry intensifies, becomes obsessive, Catastrophic thoughts and despair arise.Events, such as taking an exam, having to make a choice, waiting for an answer or an event, or even Having to face something for which we do not feel qualified usually generates anguish.Likewise, there are studies that tell us that There are people with a greater predisposition to experience anxiety. The reason for this is in our neurochemical universe orchestrated by hormones and neurotransmitters. Thus, an increase in adrenaline or a reduction in gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) makes us more or less prone to experiencing this distressing state. Emotional distress also comes with abundant physical symptoms: dizziness, digestive problems, pressure in the chest, tiredness, muscle tension…

How can I treat my emotional distress?

Poets, writers and painters channeled their anguish through art. Now, most of them were experiencing existential angst. That recurring feeling in human beings, since we can rarely completely detach ourselves from that understandable emptiness when we look at ourselves and our future. However, the moment that sensation, that emotion, blocks us and corners us in the corner of helplessness, we must act.

To quote Byung-Chul Han once again, something he reminds us is that We are forced to live with uncertainty. And uncertainty is the direct trigger of emotional distress. Therefore, anyone who thinks that this condition can be resolved with psychotropic drugs is wrong (as long as we are not facing an extreme case). What we need is to learn to manage the ups and downs of this society, to better handle the unforeseeable, to face with greater resources what we cannot control.

To achieve this, we have different proposals. Approaches such as cognitive behavioral therapy, acceptance and commitment therapy or mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT) can help us do this.. The benefit of these frameworks is multiple. On the one hand, we can reduce and work on our anxiety, negative thoughts, and adverse emotions that block us. On the other hand, we will get to the root of the problem. We will change our vision of what surrounds us to feel more capable and responsible for ourselves in an always complex, always demanding world.

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