Anxiety is Like a Box II

Why is anxiety like a box? To find out, start with our previous blog (Anxiety is Like a Box I), then come back here to keep exploring…

Add time: anxiety changes as we develop

Anxiety does not stay the same throughout childhood. What frightens a two-year-old is not necessarily what frightens a ten-year-old. And what worries a teenager is very different from the worry of an adult. As children develop, their cognitive abilities change, their interests change and the developmental tasks in front of them change. So, anxiety changes too.

Erik Erikson was a German-American psychoanalyst best known for his theory of psychosocial development across the lifespan. He proposed eight stages of development, each involving a central psychological conflict. At each stage we need to overcome anxiety to surmount the specific conflict we face, but we also need to have a certain amount of anxiety to recognize the difficulty of the phase we are in, rather than cruising above it or below it. Here is a summary of Erikson’s developmental stages:

Infancy: Trust vs. Mistrust: Can I trust the world to meet my needs? Anxiety here centres on separation, unfamiliar people and the basic uncertainty of whether the world is safe.

Early childhood: Autonomy vs. Shame and Doubt: Can I do things myself? Children begin pushing for independence, and anxiety can arise as they test the boundaries between “I can” and “I can’t.”

Preschool: Initiative vs. Guilt: Is it okay to act on my ideas and desires? Children become increasingly curious, imaginative and purposeful, while learning what happens when their impulses meet the limits of the world around them.

School age: Industry vs. Inferiority: Can I master things and belong? Children compare themselves with others, develop skills and discover where they fit, and anxiety can accompany the fear of not being good enough.

Adolescence: Identity vs. Role Confusion: Who am I? As relationships, bodies, values and possibilities expand, anxiety can emerge from the enormous task of figuring out who we are and where we belong.

Young adulthood: Intimacy vs. Isolation: Can I let someone truly know me? Building close relationships requires vulnerability, making anxiety about rejection, loneliness and losing oneself in another person particularly relevant.

Middle adulthood: Generativity vs. Stagnation: What am I contributing? Attention turns toward creating, caring for and contributing to the next generation, with anxiety sometimes arising around purpose, productivity and whether our lives matter.

Later adulthood: Integrity vs. Despair: Can I look back on my life and feel that it was mine? As we confront aging and mortality, we grapple with accepting the life we have lived, or feeling that we have missed our chance.

So the same underlying human capacity for anxiety can look completely different at different points in development. We can also see how having just the right amount of it, not too little and not too much, helps us develop into the person we’d like to be. Anxiety doesn’t just respond to development, anxiety can affect development. A child who is excessively anxious may avoid the very experiences through which they are supposed to develop autonomy, competence and confidence. That is why, when we think about anxiety in children, we are not only thinking about today's distress. We are thinking about the experiences they may be missing along the way, and the possible effects on self-esteem and self-efficacy, our belief that we can cope with what life asks of us.

We can now see three dimensions to anxiety; It is not only about how much anxiety we have or what triggers it. It is also about where we are in our development.

Three dimensions make up a box :-)

Wait, but what’s inside the box?

Anxiety doesn't exist only within an individual. It is woven into the way human beings live together. Anxiety affects how we understand social rules and how we respond to other people.

Anxiety has a role in how we develop our sense of right and wrong, too. We need to care about not doing the wrong thing, i.e., feel anxiety about it. Anxiety can help us develop a moral compass. People with too little anxiety may not follow rules and harm themselves and others. On the other hand, too much anxiety may prevent us from questioning any authority and follow rules blindly instead  of figuring out what we believe is right.

Gossip may be another subtle way anxiety and social situations interact. When we don't know what someone meant, why they behaved a certain way, or what is happening in someone else's life, uncertainty can be anxiety provoking. Did you hear what happened? What do you think she meant? Are they breaking up? Why wasn't he invited? Gossip gives us a story where there was ambiguity. But gossip can also be a way of processing and venting when we are too anxious to speak directly to the person involved. We may be afraid of hurting their feelings, damaging the relationship, or simply not knowing how they will react. Talking about it with someone else can give us a little distance - a place to work out what we feel, what we think happened, and what we might want to say. In this sense, gossip can act as a pressure valve, releasing some of the emotional pressure that builds when we don't feel able to express something directly.

Anxiety shapes not only what we say, but also what we leave unsaid. Instead of “That hurt me,” we say, “It’s fine”; instead of “I need you,” we find a less vulnerable way of asking. And perhaps this is part of why anxiety is so deeply woven into culture: literature, movies and music give us a place to express the things that feel too risky to say ourselves; the love, anger, longing, fear and uncertainty that we struggle to put into words. Culture can become a safe place for saying what anxiety makes difficult to say in our own lives.

In other words, anxiety is not just about mental health, it is part of the fabric of being human.

So why is anxiety like a box?

Because every time we think we've defined anxiety, we discover another dimension. It can be different in quality. Different in intensity. Different depending on what triggers it. Different depending on where we are in development. And even beyond these three dimensions, when we open the metaphorical box, we see that it affects culture, morality, art and more.

Just one more thing: we can imagine anxiety as Pandora's box from Greek Mythology. Like anxiety, it is something we may be afraid to open. We imagine there is something terrible hiding inside - something we might rather leave alone.

In the original Greek myth, Pandora opens a large jar and releases all kinds of suffering and trouble into the world. But underneath all that, one thing remains inside: Hope.

Another reason the box is not such a bad metaphor for anxiety. We may be afraid of what we'll find when we open the box, but sometimes, when we are willing to look inside, we find something wonderful and unexpected.

Would you like to open your box?