Why Millennials Have One of The Highest Rates of Anxiety

Video Summary: What is anxiety?

•  Your body’s response to stress
• It’s a fear response that involves our fight/ flight/ and freeze response

When we feel stressed, we tend to feel tense, have a rapid heart rate, maybe have heavy or fast breathing, sweating, or feeling tired. But with anxiety… there is a constant underlying worry that can be intense and excessive about everyday situations. It can be thought of as the ticker at the bottom of the screen when you are watching the news. Things can be going on above it and you may still be able to pretty much function throughout the day but it is still always there, underneath everything. Left untreated anxiety can make it hard to:

• Make decisions
• Concentrate
• Relax
• Sleep
• Regulate your emotions
• Communicate well in relationships or at work
• Create chronic body pain
• Lead to burnout, depression, or panic attacks

So Why Are Millennials the Most Anxious Generation?? Well – LIFE!!! Economic Problems  Our generation has now been a part of two major economic downturns (we are currently in one now)

• This has led to our generation being the first generation on track to NOT gain as much wealth as our parents did.
• This has also led to many of us to at some point in our young adult lives going to live with our parents to try and save money and get ahead.
• We also are being crushed under the weight of student loan debt and the rising cost of living.

Technology We now live in an age where technology rules our world

• We are all constantly on our phones or are in front of screens for many hours a day.
• It has created shorter attention spans and a need for instant gratification.
  • This leaves us feeling as though we have to perform at the level of robot productivity and be “on” 24/7

Our culture no longer values taking time off to have a break from work or to spend time with family. Time is money and as a capitalist society, consumerism never stops. Education We are the first generation that is dealing with education saturation due to all our parents having had the same idea to push college as the ticket to life. We all went to college thinking we would then graduate and get these amazing jobs just to see that everyone else did that as well. Now there is more competition than ever. National and Global Issues There are also things in the world that are wreaking havoc on our mental health.

• Extremely divisive politics in our country and the world
• Global warming that is creating more problems such as crazy storms and the current pandemic we are living in.

Social Issues (NOT MENTIONED IN VIDEO, BUT IMPORTANT): We are also running up against many social issues that have been around for many generations, but with each generation, we are moving more and more towards trying to change the status quo. Racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, xenophobia, ageism, ableism, homelessness, poverty, mental health, police brutality, mass incarceration, detaining immigrants, etc. have all led to us having to limit our exposure to the news. There is always a new daily devastating headline and this has made us grow numb and weary about the future of our country and world. On the Family Front…  We are the first generation to grow with high rates of divorced families

• We have to continue to navigate these challenging family dynamics as we now start to create our own families.
• If you are a parent, chances are you are working whether you have a partner or not, and that creates more stress when having to juggle working, managing a household, and raising kids.

Lacking Community or Social Interaction We all communicate mostly through texting and messaging, which until the pandemic, has made it hard to build real community. We also tend to live further away from family, also making it hard to have a close support system Overall Many of us can attest to the fact that being in your 20s and 30s is just harder than has been in previous generations. Life is constantly changing and we are having to adapt – quickly! There are the EXPECTATIONS that we have for things and then there is REALITY We were told the sky is the limit and you can be whatever you want as long as you follow this path. Unfortunately, that did not prove to be as true as we hoped. The Good News We are a generation that embraces a lot of the new ways of doing and being because we are running into walls and need something different than what previous generations have done. We are more open and willing to go to therapy. We are more open and willing to embrace holistic health. We are boundary pushers and create the change we need to make this life and world really work for us. There are many things we can do to help manage anxiety and going to therapy can be one of those things.