Step 1: Replace the word “anxiety” with “Stress.”
“Anxiety” has become an insidious word in the modern parlance. It has come to mean something medical — conjures up ideas of “anxiety disorders” and the attendant medical language, and the little white pills to “calm you down.”
Anxiety is the language of the medical patient. The invalid. It’s a victim word, used by those who fear life’s wrath. Anxiety is tepid water in the bottom of the bathtub, inviting you to crouch in it, sobbing in the fetal position.
F*ck that.
Instead, embrace the violent sea of Stress.
Here is Jack London writing about his complicated anti-hero Captain Wolf Larsen in the 1904 adventure novel The Sea-Wolf. In this scene, the narrator describes Captain Larsen’s mood as he steers his seal-hunting ship into a great, impending storm:
“It struck me that he was joyous, in a ferocious sort of way; that he was glad there was an impending struggle; that he was thrilled and upborne with the knowledge that one of the great moments of living, when the tide of life surges up in flood, was upon him.
Once, and unwitting that he did so or that I saw, he laughed aloud, mockingly and defiantly, at the advancing storm. I see him yet, standing there like a pygmy out of the ‘Arabian Nights’ before the huge front of some malignant genie. He was daring destiny, and he was unafraid.”
Now that’s Stress. The great sea captain, heaving laughter up at the gods as a furious storm subsumes his ship and crew.
Stress calls you to action despite fear. Anxiety invites you to merely wallow in that fear.
Stress calls you to action; anxiety invites you to wallow.
Anatomy of a Word
Now, let’s break down the word “anxiety” by getting a bit more scientific. We’re going to bore down on the definition of “anxiety” — and how that affects our mind.
In her book Proust and the Squid, reading scholar Maryanne Wolf cites cognitive science research showing that reading a word — any word — activates all of the definitions you’re aware of. For example, when you read the simple word “bug”, your brain thinks of the spindly creature with six legs, a software bug, and the act of “bugging” your little sister — all at once. Then, your brain quickly sorts out which meaning to use based on the context.
So, when you hear the phrase “software bug,” your mind subconsciously thinks of an insect — ever so briefly. Even though we’re talking about software, that six-legged “bug” is stuck somewhere on the flypaper of memory.
So now let’s bring it back to the word “anxiety.” When you say or think the word “anxiety”, even if you didn’t mean it in a clinical way, your brain surely conjures the clinical definitions:
“social anxiety disorder,”
“generalized anxiety disorder,”
anxiety disorders like “OCD” and “PTSD”
and so on.
Your brain casts a wide net for its definition of “anxiety.” The clinical definitions just happen to be in the water.
So when you say “I feel anxious” about a job interview (or first date or airplane flight or roller coaster ride or whatever), your mind sucks up the dust particles of medical definitions like a vacuum cleaner accidentally sucking up a lego.
The dictionary sheds some more light on the topic. Many words describe our unease in this threatening universe: “fear”, “worry”, “nervousness”, “dread”, and, of course, “anxiety.” Look up the definitions of each. Only anxiety has a “medical” definition. Only that one, lexicographically speaking, invites your mind to feel “ill.”
By my estimation, far too many modern humans attach “illness” to their emotional turmoil. Emotions are temporary; “illness” has the flavor of permanence. chronic or even permanent. Emotions are temporary, fleeting. “Illness” feels entrenched.
So rather than use the word “anxiety” in your thoughts or conversations, try swapping it out for any of these stronger synonyms — or, as I suggest, use the word Stress.
From Stress to Courage
A lot has been made over the years about the ill-effects of stress on our health. But a large and muscled body of research now shows that embracing the idea of Stress increases your ability to handle stress itself.
In other words, it is a man’s attitude toward Stress, not stress itself, that makes it unhealthy.
For example, one famous study showed… [insert study here] [Mentioned in Kelly’s TED Talk? And at begging of book, I believe].
So… Call it what you want, but “anxiety” (or fear or worry or panic) is in its most elemental form a kind of Stress on the nervous system (whether temporary or long-term). You can choose whether to view this as a psychological burden or a challenge. Take this challenge with a cool head and thoroughgoing spirit, and find yourself a step ahead of the sad putzes lining up eagerly for little white pills.
This challenge bespeaks a man with a courageous heart. A fortitude built into the sinew of a muscular frame. What some people call balls.
One final quote for you to ponder, this one from William Faulkner:
“Be scared. You can't help that. But don't be afraid.”
Step 2: See “anxiety” as neutral
The human body is a very queer thing. Like you, it contains multitudes.
And this anxiety-stress-worry-fear thing, this undulating caterpillar of experience, runs on complicated physiologic systems. It can grip you, confuse you, worry you, and terrify you.
But what it cannot do is kill you.
Not in and of itself.
Whatever “anxiety” “Stress” is, it cannot fulfill its own destiny. It moves and breathes, writhes in the veins and neurons. But in the end, from the most telescopic understanding of this mechanistic universe, science reveals it to be essentially gutless and impotent. Anxiety Stress is an emperor with no clothes. It marches naked through the crowds of amused onlookers, beaming with proud narcissism, exhorting its power with head cocked back and upraised arms into a triumphant ‘V’ — even as men of reason suppress muffled laughter with hands cupped over their mouths.
Anxiety Stress has no power because it exists on an essentially neutral plane — like the tiny, electrical flickering of neurons, or the mundane pumping of blood through the veins, or the casual release of hormones.
A look into the physiological mechanisms reveals that “anxiety” or “stress” — and in fact any word to describe such experience — simply overlays human subjectivity onto an otherwise dull clockwork.
The Natural Philosophy of Stress
I recently listened to a program by the Stanford professor and translator of science, Andrew Huberman, in which he spoke about the topic of stress. I was struck, at the outset of his talk, how flatly he spoke about it. From the point of view of a man of science, the stress machine works exactly as it’s supposed to.
Observe Huberman’s neutral language, voiced in his affable and resonant tone, introducing the idea:
“Stress at its core is a generalized system… It’s a system to mobilize other systems in the brain and body. That’s what stress really is. It’s designed to be generic… It wasn’t designed for one thing.”
Huberman explains that stress operates on what’s called the sympathetic nervous system, a subdivision of the autonomic nervous system. It’s an intricate link of the spinal cord and many organs from the eye to the heart to the gonads. Here is what it looks like:
Hmm… Boring!
Seriously though, look at it. It’s just a bunch physical machinery clanking along. Gears and levers and wheels. The whole factory apparatus just chugging away.
As Huberman explains, it is generalized. It is generic. It runs with the regularity of the locomotive: loud and clanking but always en route to predictable stops and starts.
What Stress Looks Like
Let’s start at the top of your body, in your skull, inside your brain, at the top of your neck.
Here sits the amygdala.
The amygdala is the king of this particular system, kind of the stress Grand Poobah. The amygdala — Latin for “almond” — is indeed the shape of the mealy nut. It’s general function is to make emotions salient. It helps you feel.
Cascading down from the amygdala are a series of —— whatever. [Give example and explain process of stress].
Born of the origin of our species, From the perspective of evolution, This multifaceted system - The Stress system has varied functions: to ready one for action, to protect one from predators, and to imbue the human species with its primal élan vital.
From the perspective of evolution, the Stress system imbues the human species with its primal élan vital.
The stress system helps you wake up in the morning. It gives you boners. It makes you feel fear. It Stress is also triggered when under threat (often called the “fight or flight” response).
The point is, stress can be good or bad — which is really another way of saying that it’s neither. It just happens. It is necessary. And as you’ll soon see, without stress, the human system wouldn’t be able to function at all.
One final way to look at it: What could the physical system of anxiety or stress do, exactly? What power does it have? You could literally hold each one of the stress-system organs in your hand. You could hold your heart in your hand, you could hold your brain in the other. You could squeeze them.
What kind of sorcery is that?
It’s not sorcery at all.
07/26/2023:
Moving forward: Add TED Talk stress study (Step 1). Add “anxiety” disorder research (Step 2). See: Kelly Stress book.
The stress system helps you wake up in the morning. Stress is also triggered when under threat (often called the “fight or flight” response).
What Stress Looks Like
Let’s let the man of science explain further:
[Quote Huberman]
[Conclude]
You could seize your beating and bloody heart in one hand, and your gooey brain in the other. You could squeeze them.
Step 3: Let anxiety disintegrate into Nothing
Alright, friends, here’s where it gets trippy.
My contention from the start has been that the concept of “anxiety
Anxiety is not your problem. The concept of anxiety is.
You deem it a problem and so it becomes one. Deeming anxiety a problem is the problem.
[Article under construction. Rest coming soon.]
What happens when you
the sympathetic nervous system looks like, the system on which stress operates:
Look, the point is… This ancient brain-body system thing births the sound and fury of a thousand men drunk with running in the general direction of their own fear. But from this same system also arises courage. It’s the neurobiology of intense, adrenalized experience mediated by the cognitive and intentional systems that gives rise to bravery itself. Only from within this system does Man find his deepest and most creative — indeed his most violent — soul. All positive movement, all outcomes worth achieving, arise from the system that wakes you up.
Who are you to question the system that God — or whatever else — gave you.
To deny this clockwork is to cower in the face of the thunderous boulders avalanching down upon him
running in the general direction of their own fear.
besotted by fear.
Stress is Good For You
Stress Builds Strength
Stress Invites Courage
This, of course, arises from the legacy of evolution via natural selection; we are cavemen. Inexorably, indomitably civilization drives forward. But just as steadfast runs genetic code in our bodies. But Our world has changed but our flesh has not.
Huberman goes on to explain the varied functions of the system: to ready one for action, to protect one from predators, and to imbue the human species with its primal élan vital.
Without stress, it seems, the human system wouldn’t be able to do a thing.
that gave Homo sapiens precisely these brains and bodies
This, of course, arises from the legacy of evolution via natural selection which gave Homo sapiens precisely these brains and bodies. Our world has changed but our flesh has not; we remain cavemen.
All that said… But Huberman also insists that the caveman story is too narrow.
Speaking into the mic from his broadcast studio, attired in black button-up shirt and wearing a salt-and-pepper beard,
[Somehow begin to explain in simple terms the actual physiology. ]
impressed upon the world with a simple colorless background,
It runs with the regular [ ] (albeit loud and clanking force) of the locomotive, en route to predictable stops and starts.
From this, this ancient brain-body system thing, is born the sound and fury of a thousand men running in the general direction of their own fear. besotted by fear. But from this same system also arises courage. It’s the neurobiology of intense, adrenalized experience mediated by the cognitive and intentional systems that gives rise to bravery itself. Only from within this system does Man find his deepest and most creative — indeed his most violent — soul.
To deny this clockwork is to cower in the face of the thunderous boulders avalanching down upon him. Only in this varied casecan he find the soul and the way of the Warrior.
“good” and “bad” uses of the system — noting that the body needs stress (i.e. anxiety) to the same degree that it loathes it.
Alright… Let’s break down some of the science: How so-called “anxiety and stress” operate in the body.
We’ll start with two sides of your body’s nervous system:
1) the sympathetic nervous system
and
2) the parasympathetic nervous system.
First thing I’ll say is that I hate these terms. I’m sorry scientists, but these terms are f*cking stupid. They are longwinded — and also confusing because “sympathetic” in this context has nothing to do with our common sense of sympathy.
So let’s come up with two much better terms:
1) The “get ready” system
and
2) The “calm down” system
But sadly, scientists are not writers, and they care more about
Let’s replace these two terms with
It all starts with a part of the brain called the
After researching this quite a bit, I’ve found it helpful to start with what’s called the sympathetic nervous system.
It’s a tad confusing, but this aspect of our physiology has nothing to do with our common definition of sympathy.
Observe the neutral language Huberman uses when describing stress: “Stress at its core is a generalized system… It’s a system to mobilize other systems in the brain and body. That’s what stress really is. It’s designed to be generic… It wasn’t designed for one thing.”
An interesting understanding of the human mind and brain in modern science is that much of our ex
Worry — and Irrational worry — is part of the human experience.
See - Good anxiety book.