Today@Dal

Posted Monday by The Globe and Mail:

Officially, anxiety is defined by excessive, debilitating worry that significantly interferes with a patient’s ability to function at home and at work, often causing physical side effects such as panic attacks. But the state of being anxious is also becoming de rigueur in our daily lives.

Take your pick: According to media sources, journal articles and bloggers, there’s status anxiety, social media anxiety, test anxiety. Squabbling sisters can claim “sibling rivalry anxiety.” Electric-car owners might suffer, according to one newspaper report, a case of “out-of-range anxiety.” If you aren’t feeling anxious right now, what’s wrong with you?

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Part of the problem is that students don’t learn the proper coping skills for what [guidance counsellor] Easton calls “garden-variety” anxiety, the stress that results after a fight with a best friend or failing a test. And after years of well-meaning “participation” ribbons and well-meaning but permissive parents, the counsellor watches competition in the higher grades sink many students.

“Now they are in a shark pool, fighting their way into university,” Easton says. “If you have no coping skills and those things come along, you just basically shut down. Those kids will just say, ‘That’s it, I’ve had it, I am crawling under the covers.’ ” That makes the situation only worse: “Everybody has crappy days,” she says. “Unfortunately, [hiding] doesn’t help inoculate them from the stresses of daily life.”

“We are basically taking normal life and saying this is a sickness,” says Dr. Stanley Kutcher, a psychiatrist at Dalhousie University who specializes in anxiety among adolescents. He suggests that the lesson not being taught is that anxiety is a gift inherited from our ancestors to protect us from threat and to kick-start ambition. To fight it, we have to face it. “Anxiety is a driver for skill development, it’s a driver for adaptability,” Kutcher says. “If you’re anxious about your test, then, for crying out loud, go and study.”