Why Am I So Depressed/Angry/Anxious? Nothing is Wrong?!
Sometimes folks come into therapy and say, “I don’t know why I’m so sad, anxious, angry or depressed. Nothing is wrong in my life right now”. Let’s unpack that a little bit. First I want to talk about the limbic system - our fight/flight/shutdown response and its function.
When humans feel threatened or unsafe, the limbic part of our brain is activated. When our limbic system is activated, the frontal lobe part of our brain “shuts off”. You may notice that when you are triggered or stressed your memory is impacted. You may not be the best at communicating your needs or thoughts. You may be “spacey” or start to feel anxious or sad “without reason”. Dear human, I am here to tell you what capitalism and today’s society won’t. There are indeed reasons your body is feeling anxious and/or depressed beyond what is happening directly to you. Most of these factors impact our nervous systems safety responses, meaning that most of us are living in a pretty chronic state of dysregulation and activation. This essay won’t cover all of them, but hopefully will address a few of the key ones and help recognize others that may be at play.
Housing and food are basic human needs (and rights). Going back to theories such as Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, if humans do not have access to basic needs we cannot achieve feelings of safety and self identity. When our basic needs are threatened by a pandemic, rising costs, inflation beyond our means and fear of landlords or banks, our nervous system is activated. This very old and smart part of being a human realizes that without housing and food, we cannot survive. Hence, survival alerts go off in our system often activating fight/flight. Fight/flight energy is felt as what we label as “anxiety”. Our heart races, our arms and legs feel restless, we feel like we need to “get out of here”, our attention is split in a million directions and good sleep is hard to come by.
Environmental factors impact us daily. Without being a spiritual person I can acknowledge that on a biological level, humans are inherently dependant and connected to the earth. Our nervous systems recognize that without the earth sustaining us, we cannot survive. We need the earth for water, food, housing and community. In order to ignore the status of our environment and how corporations continue to damage it, we all need to be in some form of disassociation. Disassociation is shutdown response that our nervous system activates when we cannot escape harm or danger. It is pretty evident that our world is literally and figuratively on fucking fire. Species are dying. Our food is contaminated. Corporations are polluting our water and global warming is indeed - a thing. Humans are not meant to live in disassociation. When disassociation becomes a consistent coping mechanism to live and cope with our environment, depression kicks in. Before we enter into disassociation, we need to be in a state of fight/flight for a period of time first. You may notice yourself getting angry about environmental changes and impact and then hitting a “wall”. That is because our nervous system has come to understand that our anger won’t protect us from forest fires. Thus, it shuts us down to the threat so that it is less impactful on us. Except, it very much still is.
Feeling safe is inherently important for us to live within a securely attached space internally and externally with ourselves and other humans. Fear cannot coincide with secure attachment. Unless you are part of the 1%, I am going to assume you feel fear. You fear our government, the state of the environment, our healthcare system, our financial systems, insecure housing, financially insecurity amongst other things. If “fear” feels like too intense of a word, you can replace it with “mistrust”. If you are a part of a marginalized community, BIPOC, queer, disabled, chronically ill or live with an ongoing mental health challenge, you experience fear for being who you are, as well as carry generational fear and trauma. For example, I as a queer-identified person do not just carry my own trauma of experiencing homophobia, but also the trauma of those who died from the AIDS pandemic and of trans folks who continue to die by violence today. Even if my own circle of humans makes me feel safe, I inherently carry un-safety in my body when I witness or hear about violence towards the queer community.
These are just a few of the impacts our environment and capitalist society have on our nervous systems every day. The next time you catch yourself shaming yourself for “Being depressed even though nothing is wrong”, take a moment to look at the world around you and how it impacts all of us as humans who are connected to each other. In today’s society, we have been taught to have an individualist and neoliberal view of ourselves and others. In reality, this goes against the historic function of our nervous systems which have kept us alive as a species for centuries. Of course we are fucking anxious and depressed. Did you take your meds today?