I wake up and it is time to exist again
Exist, I say, for in this state of slumber
I may have forgotten what living is.
But I am cunning, since I can trick my mind,
Into a false sense of purpose.
The walls of my room, seem to close in, filling the air with mist
Determined to be productive, I make to-do lists.
Chores. Goals. Meetings and more
A reason. A meaning. A shore.
Anything, that makes me want to wake up tomorrow.
I dress for the camera, get out of my pyjamas,
I smile and laugh, aren’t I good at this drama?
But what should I say to the little girl next door,
who doesn’t eat anymore. Her mother worries
As she longingly stares out the window,
“Why can’t I go out to play anymore?” she complains.
She wonders if she is being punished.
She misses the company of her friends,
Her eyes remain fixated on the blue light from the screen.
How does one explain to her what lockdown even means?
She throws a tantrum, she refuses to read,
she wistfully peers out the window
hoping, counting the vehicles on the deserted street.
How do I console my grandma, who cried when the case count increased
Do I call her selfish, her tears were not for the deceased,
But for her evenings in the park, now a thing of the past.
How do I blame her, as she weeps in her wheelchair,
Glued on the bed, staring at the ceiling, all she knows is despair.
I hide her indoors, for I have experienced first-hand
What ignorance can do to a locked-up man.
I went for a walk one day, I was showered with abuses,
For putting people at risk and for being irresponsible
I tried to reason with people, but my voice was too feeble.
The voices of my other neighbours screaming
Pierce through the walls.
As the middle-aged couple get on each other’s nerves,
Being stuck together perpetually, may lead to a change in their hearts,
They may break the promise of “till death do us part”.
We bake breads as a form of therapy, I suppose
But it doesn’t last long, for we are scared
to step out when we run out of flour for the dough.
As the count keeps climbing, my heart trembles
not just for the ones that are gone
But for those who remain behind closed doors.
For the nights blend into days,
Smiles and laughter continue to evaporate
The playgrounds are as quiet as the graveyards.
The mind can be a dark place, and for some,
home isn’t a safe space.
Physically, I shield myself and my loved ones behind closed doors
But I fear for our minds, our hearts, and our sanity
am I wrong for wanting a little more?
Sneha Pathak is a young investment banker by profession and a poet by passion. She loves reading, writing and sketching. Her work has been published in eFiction India, Ashavmegh, Hindustan Times, and Terribly Tiny Tales. You can read her blog at awordseeker.wordpress.com.
Featured image credit: Jose Ignaceo Pompe/Unsplash
One thing that makes the current situation unique is that it is not a single event in a specific place and time. Humour is a coping strategy.
According to an old adage , “comedy is tragedy plus time”. This has been true for many terrible events, when after periods of shock and sadness, humour and laughter are eventually restored.
But the current pandemic seems different. People haven’t stopped joking about it. Memes and funny videos are all over social media, even while an increasing number of people across the world get sick and die. So why is this happening? Why is there no gap between the disaster and the humour created around it?
One thing that makes the current situation unique is that it is not a single event in a specific place and time. It is a rolling and continuous crisis, spreading endlessly across continents with no end in sight. The shock factor is therefore reduced compared to a single terror attack, for example. This enables people to adjust more easily to what is happening – and humour may be one of the best ways to do just that.
Of course, many people will feel uncomfortable laughing in these dire times, especially if they know someone who has been directly affected. But for others, it is not only acceptable to use humour in the face of the pandemic – it may even be a necessity.
Obviously, we do not laugh at the tragedy itself, the victims of the virus or the people who are suffering from it. But we can take aim at the seemingly absurd situation we are all in.
This is because from a psychological point of view, humour is a great defence mechanism which helps us deal with emotionally challenging situations, especially ones which are overwhelming and unpredictable. Many cancer patients and their doctors, for example, routinely tell jokes and laugh about the disease, in an attempt to cope and distract themselves from the serious situation.
Coping strategy
On top of this, the unique circumstances surrounding the pandemic may make humour more prevalent, not less.
First, many people now have an unusual amount of time on our hands. Being stuck at home with not much to do forces people to find ways to be more creative. And while the situation is serious, in our daily activities we are mostly preoccupied with more mundane tasks, such as what to do all day, how to entertain children, how not to eat too much, and how to stay sane in general.
Second, being a bit scared, tense, and in a state of alert is actually a good thing for humour to develop. These states of physiological and emotional arousal serve as driving forces in creating and enjoying humour.
Usually, intermediate levels of arousal are best. With too little, you are bored, and with too much, you are too excited to enjoy humour. Right in the middle is perfect. The laughter after hearing a good joke serves as a release of all the physiological and emotional energy that was built up, and that’s what makes us feel good.
Another important element of humour that is prominent during the pandemic is what humour researchers call “incongruity”. For something to be funny, there needs to be something odd or surprising in the situation. The current situation reveals plenty of such oddities.
Here is a joke that illustrates the point: “All this time I thought that the tumble dryer was shrinking my clothes. Turns out it was actually the refrigerator.”
The joke is built on the unusual circumstances we live in, of being stuck at home. The setup is the common knowledge that the heat of a tumble dryer can shrink clothes, but then there is a surprise. It’s not the dryer at fault, but the refrigerator, where we store our food. We resolve this incongruity by realising that we are getting fatter from eating too much when we are at home. This resolution gives as the “Aha!” moment that makes the joke funny. (And yes, analysing a joke does ruin it.)
So, while humour may not get us out of this awful crisis, it can help us deal with it. We cannot change the reality of the disease or the economic impact, but we can try and change how we feel about it.
By creating and sharing humour we can cope better, and ease some of the tension due to the pandemic. That way, we can have at least some control of the situation. And what better way to do that than by having a good laugh?
A poem on the trauma of a dark past that never seems to fade.
Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
Is a fancy name given to
the unraveling of a person
the skeins of their thoughts
Slither away like snakes
On the mossed floor of their sanity
These people, always over the edge
Balanced like a teetering drunk
On a tightrope
Hanging onto their dark secrets
And singing their dark lyrics
In the forests of dreams
Wanting to say it, to mouth the words
To reveal the secrets for all to hear
But the words skirt away like crawling addicts
Running towards the source
The addiction, the damned drug
The needle with the ketamine.
And then these people die one day
With the secrets clutched to their hearts
A rape, an assault, a punch, a gunshot
A murder, a fire, a broken home
blood and antiseptic, and bleach
To wipe off the stains of blood,
Changing bedsheets to wipe off
The evidences of assaults
The rape didn’t happen
But after 16 years, when they’re
Driving down a highway and hear a scream
Their own come back.
Boyfriends and dark rooms and red lights
And floating outside their bodies
Watching their lives from afar
Somewhere, the buried rapes
Surface like sea-weed and drown the victim.
The world will say it’s a death by drowning
It’s asphyxiation from years of being muffled
Not by water
But by endless screams.
Isha Singh is an English graduate from Miranda House and has worked extensively on trauma studies for her PhD research.
During times of stress and anxiety we either dream more or remember our dreams more often, as a way of coping with challenging circumstances and new information.
Dreams are patterns of sensory information that occur when the brain is in a resting state – as in asleep. It is generally assumed that dreams only occur during rapid eye movement (REM) sleep – this is when the brain appears to be in an active state but the individual is asleep and in a state of paralysis. But studies have shown that they can also happen outside of REM.
Research from sleep studies, for example, shows that REM-related dreams tend to be more fantastical, more colourful and vivid whereas non-REM dreams are more concrete and usually characterised in black and white. Recent studieson dreaming show that during a dream (and in particular a REM-related dream) the emotional centre of the brain is highly active whereas the logical rational centre of the brain is slowed. This can help explain why these dreams are more emotive and surreal.
Evolutionary theory suggests the purpose of dreams is to learn, in a safe way, how to deal with challenging or threatening situations. Whereas the “memory consolidation” theory suggests that dreams are a byproduct of reorganising memory in response to what has been learned throughout the day.
Both theories have at least one thing in common – during times of stress and anxiety we either dream more or remember our dreams more often, as a way of coping with challenging circumstances and new information.
This is also in line with another theory of dreaming – the mood regulatory function of dreams theory, where the function of dreams is to problem-solve emotional issues.
Anxiety and stress dreams
While there is no evidence that we dream more when we are stressed, research shows we are more likely to remember our dreams because our sleep is poorer and we tend to wake in the night more frequently.
Studies show the dreams of people with insomnia (a disorder largely characterised by stress) contain more negative emotion and are more focused on the self, in a negative light. Also, the dreams of people with insomnia tend to focus on current life stressors, anxieties and can leave an individual with a low mood the following day.
‘And then I was sitting on top of a palm tree in a white plastic chair.’ Photo: Evgeniya Porechenskaya/Shutterstock
Outside of insomnia, research has found that people who are depressed, while going through a divorce, appear to dream differently compared to those who are not depressed. They rate their dreams as more unpleasant. Interestingly though the study found that those depressed volunteers who dreamt of their ex-spouse were more likely to have recovered from their depression a year later compared to those that did not dream of the ex-spouse. Participants whose dreams changed over time, to become less angry and more pragmatic, also showed the greatest improvements. The question is why?
Although our senses are dampened during sleep (with vision being completely absent), strong sensory information, such as an alarm, will be registered and in some cases incorporated into the dream itself. We also know that during times of stress we are more vigilant to threat (on cognitive, emotional and behavioural levels), so it stands to reason that we are more likely to incorporate internal and external signals into our dreams, as a way to manage them. And this may account for these changes in our dreams, when we are anxious, depressed or sleeping badly.
How to sleep better
The current thinking is stress reduction before bed and good sleep management – such as keeping a consistent sleep routine, using the bedroom only for sleep, making sure the bedroom is cool, dark, quiet and free from anything arousing – will reduce awakenings at night and so the frequency of stress-related negative dreams.
That said, using a technique called Imagery Rehearsal Therapy (IRT), mainly used for treating nightmares in people with post-traumatic stress disorder, it appears stress and anxiety associated with nightmares and bad dreams as well as the frequency of bad dreams can be reduced. This is achieved by re-imagining the ending of the dream or the context of the dream, making it less threatening.
The night I became a pink unicorn. Photo: Evgeniya Porechenskaya/Shutterstock
There is also evidence that IRT is effective for reducing nightmares in children. Although IRT is thought to be successful by giving the dreamer a sense of control over the dream, this hasn’t been well studied in people who are stressed or anxious.
That said, a recent study showed that teaching people with insomnia to be aware while they were dreaming and to control the dream, as it occurs – known as lucid dreaming training – not only reduced their insomnia symptoms but also reduced their symptoms of anxiety and depression. Perhaps then the key is to manage the dreams as opposed to trying to manage the stress – especially in uncertain times.
Instead of fighting boredom, go along with it, entertain it, make something out of it.
What, exactly, is boredom?
It is a deeply unpleasant state of unmet arousal: we are aroused rather than despondent, but, for one or more reasons, our arousal cannot be met or directed. These reasons can be internal – often a lack of imagination, motivation or concentration – or external, such as an absence of environmental stimuli or opportunities. We want to do something engaging, but find ourselves unable to do so and, more than that, are frustrated by the rising awareness of this inability.
Awareness, or consciousness, is key, and might explain why animals, if they do get bored, generally have higher thresholds for boredom. In the words of the British writer Colin Wilson: ‘most animals dislike boredom, but man is tormented by it’. In both man and animal, boredom is induced or exacerbated by a lack of control or freedom, which is why it is so common in children and adolescents, who, in addition to being chaperoned, lack the mind furnishings – the resources, experience and discipline – to mitigate their boredom.
Let’s look more closely at the anatomy of boredom. Why is it so damned boring to be stuck in a departure lounge while our flight is increasingly delayed? We are in a state of high arousal, anticipating our imminent arrival in a novel and stimulating environment. True, there are plenty of shops, screens and magazines around, but we’re not really interested in them and, by dividing our attention, they serve only to exacerbate our boredom. To make matters worse, the situation is out of our control, unpredictable (the flight could be further delayed, or even cancelled) and inescapable. As we check and re-check the monitor, we become painfully aware of all these factors and more. And so here we are, caught in transit, in a high state of arousal that we can neither engage nor escape.
If we really need to catch our flight, maybe because our livelihood or the love of our life depends on it, we will feel less bored (although more anxious and annoyed) than if it had been a toss-up between travelling and staying at home. In that much, boredom is an inverse function of perceived need or necessity. We might get bored at the funeral of an obscure relative but not at that of a parent or sibling.
So far so good, but why exactly is boredom so unpleasant? The 19th-century German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer argued that, if life were intrinsically meaningful or fulfilling, there could be no such thing as boredom. Boredom, then, is evidence of the meaninglessness of life, opening the shutters on some very uncomfortable feelings that we normally block out with a flurry of activity or with the opposite feelings. This is the essence of the manic defence, which consists in preventing feelings of helplessness and despair from entering the conscious mind by occupying it with opposite feelings of euphoria, purposeful activity and omnipotent control – or, failing that, any feelings at all.
In Albert Camus’s novel The Fall (1956), Clamence reflects to a stranger:
I knew a man who gave 20 years of his life to a scatterbrained woman, sacrificing everything to her, his friendships, his work, the very respectability of his life, and who one evening recognised that he had never loved her. He had been bored, that’s all, bored like most people. Hence he had made himself out of whole cloth a life full of complications and drama. Something must happen – and that explains most human commitments. Something must happen, even loveless slavery, even war or death.
People who suffer from chronic boredom are at higher risk of developing psychological problems such as depression, overeating, and alcohol and drug misuse. A study found that, when confronted with boredom in an experimental setting, many people chose to give themselves unpleasant electric shocks simply to distract from their own thoughts, or lack thereof.
Out in the real world, we expend considerable resources on combatting boredom. The value of the global entertainment and media market is set to reach $2.6 trillion by 2023, and entertainers and athletes are afforded ludicrously high levels of pay and status. The technological advances of recent years have put an eternity of entertainment at our fingertips, but this has made matters only worse – in part, by removing us further from our here and now. Instead of feeling sated and satisfied, we are desensitised and in need of ever more stimulation – ever more war, ever more gore, and ever more hardcore.
The good news is that boredom can also have upsides.
Boredom can be our way of telling ourselves that we are not spending our time as well as we could, that we should be doing something more enjoyable, more useful, or more fulfilling. From this point of view, boredom is an agent of change and progress, a driver of ambition, shepherding us out into larger, greener pastures.
But even if we are one of those rare people who feels fulfilled, it is worth cultivating some degree of boredom, insofar as it provides us with the preconditions to delve more deeply into ourselves, reconnect with the rhythms of nature, and begin and complete highly focused, long and difficult work. As the British philosopher Bertrand Russell put it in The Conquest of Happiness (1930):
A generation that cannot endure boredom will be a generation of little men, of men unduly divorced from the slow processes of nature, of men in whom every vital impulse slowly withers as though they were cut flowers in a vase.
In 1918, Russell spent four and a half months in Brixton prison for ‘pacifist propaganda’, but found the bare conditions congenial and conducive to creativity:
I found prison in many ways quite agreeable … I had no engagements, no difficult decisions to make, no fear of callers, no interruptions to my work. I read enormously; I wrote a book, Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy … and began the work for Analysis of Mind … One time, when I was reading Strachey’s Eminent Victorians, I laughed so loud that the warder came round to stop me, saying I must remember that prison was a place of punishment.
Of course, not everyone is a Bertrand Russell. How might we, mere mortals, best cope with boredom? If it is, as we have established, an awareness of unmet arousal, we can minimise boredom by: avoiding situations over which we have little control; eliminating distractions; motivating ourselves; expecting less; putting things into their proper perspective (realising how lucky we really are); and so on.
But rather than fighting a constant battle against boredom, it is easier and much more productive to actually embrace it. If boredom is a window on to the fundamental nature of reality and, by extension, on to the human condition, then fighting boredom amounts to pulling back the curtains. Yes, the night is pitch-black, but the stars shine all the more brightly for it.
For just these reasons, many Eastern traditions encourage boredom, seeing it as the path to a higher consciousness. Here’s one of my favourite Zen jokes:
A Zen student asked how long it would take to gain enlightenment if he joined the temple.
‘Ten years,’ said the Zen master.
‘Well, how about if I work really hard and double my effort?’
‘Twenty years.’
So instead of fighting boredom, go along with it, entertain it, make something out of it. In short, be yourself less boring. Schopenhauer said that boredom is but the reverse side of fascination, since both depend on being outside rather than inside a situation, and one leads to the other.
Next time you find yourself in a boring situation, throw yourself fully into it – instead of doing what we normally do, which is to step further and further back. If this feels like too much of an ask, the Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh advocates simply appending the word ‘meditation’ to whatever activity it is that you find boring, for example, ‘standing-in-line meditation’.
In the words of the 18th-century English writer Samuel Johnson: ‘It is by studying little things that we attain the great art of having as little misery and as much happiness as possible.’
Neel Burton is a psychiatrist and philosopher. He is a fellow of Green Templeton College at the University of Oxford.
This article was originally published at Aeon and has been republished under Creative Commons.
New research has identified the main triggers of this psychological phenomenon, the contexts in which it happens and the types of fears involved in it.
Fear of missing out, or FoMO, is commonly described as that anxious feeling you get when you think other people might be having a good time without you. Excessive FoMO is closely related to symptoms of behavioural addiction. It often leads to undesirable behaviour such as the constant checking of social media, even in an inappropriate context, like while driving, and becoming overly preoccupied with reactions to online posts and messages.
Our new research has identified the main triggers of this psychological phenomenon, the contexts in which it happens and the types of fears involved in it. We have also suggested new design features which social media platforms could introduce to minimise this most modern form of social anxiety.
Humans are fundamentally social creatures. Our identity, beliefs and behaviours come from and are shaped by our interactions with others. From those we know well, to fleeting moments of eye contact with the strangers we walk past on the street. Previous generations may have had periods of respite from the social world. But the emergence of social media platforms and smartphones means access to social information and interaction, 24 hours a day, has never been easier.
This constant flow of interaction has an effect, and despite the adage that nothing on the internet ever goes away, social information can expire and become less meaningful after time. For example, ongoing group chats, live streaming and direct messages which expect an immediate answer. When people fail to keep up with all these battling messages and streams, FoMO rears its ugly head.
FoMO sub-categories
In our research, we looked at the situations and contexts in which FoMO may be triggered and what fears are encountered.
FoMO as a singular concept is an oversimplification. In contrast to the common idea of FoMO happening due to disconnection from the internet and social media (like losing signal or a dead battery), we found that it often happens when people are indeed connected. For example, when people have multiple devices and social media accounts and have little time or desire to check them all, they may fear missing important messages and events.
FoMO can also happen when people get frustrated by others not responding, despite receiving and reading messages. They may fear that they have missed out on previous interactions and missed out on the chance to show empathy. In addition to these, we discovered a number of sub-fears, such as:
fear of missing the opportunity to gain popularity. This happens if one is late in responding to others and in expressing empathy when needed
fear of missing valuable information
fear of being excluded from social groups due to lack of timely engagement
fear of inciting negative reactions
FoMO has been associated with feelings of stress and anxiety and concerns around how we relate to each other online and what our expectations are. This is why social networks in their current designs are seen by many as antisocial tools, aiming mainly to attract people’s attention but focusing less on a healthy and humanised interaction.
FoMO also leads to questions about the role of technology in harming people’s wellbeing and the limited availability of tools and design features to help them regulate and shape their online social presence and identity. The Google Digital Wellbeing initiative is an example of efforts in that direction, with a focus on screen time awareness and management and novel ways for managing notifications and cool-off times.
In our assessment of social media platforms we noted how design features may trigger FoMO in users. For example, the basic feature of showing how many likes a post has received may create a fear that the user is missing out on indicators of social approval – something that has been demonstrated to be linked to emotional wellbeing.
Other features, such as the double tick delivery and notification feature in WhatsApp, may create a preoccupation with social relationships. So FoMO can be triggered when a user begins wondering why friends are not responding, despite reading the message. This can be a risk since, as demonstrated within social psychological research, people often make mistakes in their explanation and interpretation of the behaviour of others.
A message left on “unread” or unanswered, for instance, may be interpreted by the sender as a snub, when in reality the recipient could have intended to do so but then lost their wifi connection or entered a meeting.
Design solutions
Technology can enhance existing problems, but it can also be used to bring about positive change. It can do so in an intelligent and interactive way. From the discussions we have had with people experiencing FoMO, we have identified a number of possible designs that could be implemented in a way that cross cut all their social media accounts, including:
Setting priority lists so that a person receives messages and notifications only for important events and topics and from selected sources, groups and contacts that they care about.
Allowing easy filtering, event recording and recapping so that a person can come back to social media in their own time without missing the temporarily available information and – at the same time – without being overwhelmed with pending notifications, content and interactions.
Enabling people to specify their social interaction protocol. For example, similar to setting privacy settings, users can specify that they do not always respond to comments and their presence online is sporadic so that others should not expect them to be fully engaged all the time.
Tech companies are conflicted between their goal of having as many users as possible on the one hand and their need to balance that with user wellbeing on the other. As an alternative, we propose a liberal and open model that allows applications and services – developed by third parties that are trusted and authorised by the user – to access their social media accounts and online usage data with the aim of helping them to regulate FoMO and the problematic attachment to digital media in general.
The hypercompetitive academic culture has ways of always keeping you on your toes.
The life of a professor is a constant balancing act where we try to juggle personal and professional responsibilities under the pervasive stress of managing expectations in an often hypercompetitive culture. There is always a fear that we may drop the ball, a sense that if that were to happen, we would be alone and the only one to blame. The system assumes that we should be old enough, experienced enough, and tough enough to withstand all the pressure that comes with the job. Being a faculty member in a university can be one of the most fulfilling career paths, but it has also become one of the most stressful jobs.
The storms of academia
As young scientists taking on a faculty position, we quickly transition from being a team member to a team leader; from never worrying about securing funding to being overwhelmed with grant deadlines; from managing a single project to planning and guiding the work and careers of several students and post-docs; from worrying about ourselves to being absorbed in worrying about everything except our wellness. The great majority of us have never developed a course or taught classes on our own, yet we are all expected to assume these responsibilities.
Many universities give good support when it comes to teaching, yet most offer very little training or help in project and team management, leadership, mentoring and conflict resolution, let alone mental health awareness and intervention. We are expected to learn everything on the job. In other words, we learn by making mistakes that we – and to some extent our students and staff – directly or indirectly end up paying for. Driven by our passion for science, we keep trying and do get better at it, but very rarely pause to assess: “At what cost?”
As the tenure clock starts ticking, stress and anxiety often begin to increase; the stakes become higher, and many begin to struggle with the ambiguity of the tenure criteria and the lack of feedback. The pressure mounts to publish papers in ‘high impact journals’, to secure prestigious grants, go on lecture tours, and fill in all the blanks in our CV. Frustration, disappointment, self-doubt or burnout are all too common throughout this journey.
Even after tenure, the pressure often does not go away. Instead, we simply transition from one type of stress to another: from being anxious about publishing and securing tenure to being worried about funding, deadlines, increased administrative duties, the pressure to secure more prestigious grants and awards, and concerns for our reputation. The hypercompetitive academic culture has ways of always keeping you on your toes. For senior faculty, the definition of success is a constantly moving target that is shaped and reshaped by the achievements of our peers and the expectations of our superiors. After achieving tenure, success becomes much harder to define, especially because the more senior we get, the less feedback we receive. What remains constant, however, is the lack of acknowledgement that faculty may be struggling, and the absence of formal or informal support from our institutions.
We constantly preach that failures provide unique learning opportunities and are the stepping stones for success. But when it comes to our own careers, many of us may feel that failure is never an option or something that we are willing to accept, admit or share. Academia is also not the place where we are likely to get second chances. Our peers may view our failure less as a potential learning experience and more as a sign that we are not fit for academia. In a culture of perfectionism and nearly constant peer pressure, the lines between disappointment and failure become very blurry.
Most of us quickly learn that we must project an image of always being in control and unshaken by all the storms of academia. We feel the need to ‘fake it’ until (hopefully) we make it. In reality we, like our students, frequently experience stress, fear and insecurity as well as anxiety, depression and burn out. As faculty, many believe that admitting we are stressed or going through a mental health crisis would be a mistake; that if we do, no one will see us the same way, and that it may compromise our relationship with our students, our colleagues and our superiors. In the absence of a collegial and supportive culture, and with many professors spending most of their time in their office only surrounded by computers, a faculty position can be emotionally, mentally and physically draining. It should not be this way, and no one should suffer alone.
Too high a price to pay
Often, we do not realise until it is too late that poor work-life balance and pretending that we are on top of everything comes at a great cost to our health, wellbeing and our families. Pressure, stress and anxiety frequently translate into sleep deprivation, exhaustion, irritability and isolation, all of which negatively affects our quality of life and our interactions with students and colleagues. Chronic stress is also a major risk factor for developing many psychiatric and cardiovascular disorders: I have come to learn this first hand after suffering two heart attacks during the past three years.
We have to equip new postdocs and faculty with the necessary resources and training to manage their new responsibilities, navigate the pre-tenure period and handle their mental health challenges. I am happy that my university – The Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne – has started to recognise and prioritise more professional training and support for faculty, but more work is still needed. As a community, we need to pause, reflect and work together to systematically assess why faculty, but also students and staff in our universities, experience so much stress and so many mental health problems. This, and normalising the conversation about mental health, are crucial steps to tackling the mental health crisis in our campuses.
While researching the topic, writing and reflecting on my experiences, I realised that there are many things that I could have done differently; I wish I’d had the courage to admit that I was not a superhuman, to seek help to handle my mental health and the daily struggles to achieve work-life balance. From how I managed my time, job expectations and my wellbeing to how I failed at times to fulfil my responsibilities towards my family, I learnt there is no such thing as suppressing your feelings or hiding your struggles. If you do not deal with them, they linger in your head, mess up your sleep pattern, impact your health, and affect the lives of people around you. I regret not taking the time and initiative to seek the assistance of experts and to follow structured training programs that could have helped me with my new responsibilities and to manage my mental health and support my students and colleagues.
But it is never too late: this is exactly what I am doing now. I have come to terms with the fact that balancing my life with my work means saying “no” more, traveling less, prioritising my health and family, and giving up on trying to please everyone or do everything that can be done. To make more time for myself, my family, my research and my students and group members, I have decided to start by reducing the size of my team, by giving up certain grants and by further consolidating our research programs. I am now more comfortable opening up and discussing my own difficulties with team members and colleagues. I am also more sensitive to the struggles of those around me, and having them share their mental health challenges has been equally therapeutic. At the community level, I plan to organise a series of lectures and activities in 2020 to help normalise the conversation about mental health on campus. I would like to advocate for joint community-based initiatives that create an environment where people struggling with stress and mental health issues feel supported and are not afraid to be excluded.
I hope this article will help others in academia feel comfortable speaking out about their struggles and mental health challenges, and sharing their thoughts, feelings and experiences. As faculty, we cannot take care of our students if we do not learn how to take care of ourselves.
Hilal A. Lashuel is an associate professor and director of the Laboratory of Molecular and Chemical Biology of neurodegeneration in the Brain Mind Institute at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne.
The film explores a craftily articulated premise which extols the power of meditation and its potential to affect our lives.
The Portal follows six individuals who undergo a personal transformation from trauma and struggle to calmness, self-acceptance, and compassion towards others. These personal changes are intertwined with much contemplation about the broader struggles facing humanity and the role of technology.
The underlying claim is that stillness is not only a portal for personal transformation, but also a portal that ignites human potential for global transformation. The filmmakers contend that meditative practice has the power to move humankind from being on the verge of disconnection, chaos, and crisis to connection, calmness, and enlightenment.
While this might seem far-fetched, the film – slickly produced with stunning imagery – effectively captures our individual and collective challenges, highlighting the benefits people have experienced through various contemplative practices, and offering a hopeful vision of human potential.
Noise and haste
The movie begins with a powerful cacophony of noise, voices, and images – building up to a feeling of distress and a call to action that “something’s got to change”.
This sense of disruption, disconnection, and chaos then unfolds through the lives of six people from a range of backgrounds.
Poster for the movie The Portal. Photo: IMDB
The experiences of the individuals are developed through the course of the film, skipping between their stories, supported by recurrent images and music. Their issues – abuse, violence, career-ending injury, stroke, suicide, loneliness, depression, stress, intrusive thoughts, debt, emptiness – will be familiar to many adults, young and old.
Extending beyond the individual narratives, futurists and philosophers explore the state of the world and the role of technology. Some viewers will likely agree with the causes attributed to these problems, others will not.
One commentator observes that almost every problem that we are facing is human-generated. We are living in a time when many of our social systems are unstable, with technology accelerating life faster than we can adapt to it.
The film proposes meditation is the solution to these problems, providing a way to realise our human potential.
Each of the featured individuals finds resolution through stillness, achieved through forms of contemplative practice: guided meditation, yoga, prayer, or quiet reflection. A growing number of studies, reviews, and meta analyses suggest contemplative practices correlate with beneficial outcomes, but also point to how little is known about these techniques].
The film makes meditation accessible, supported by the personal experiences of everyday people – including a university student impacted by a traumatic childhood, a soldier suffering from PTSD, a Rabbi recovering from a stroke, and an athlete trying to rebuild her life. Each individual finds ways that work for them to create stillness, calming the chaos experienced within.
The viewer is subtly invited to join in. Near the end of the film, the cacophony of images returns, this time with the chaos transforming into calmness and offering a few meditative moments of stillness.
No quick fix
Importantly, those featured in the film demonstrate that meditation is not a panacea, and also not an escape. It’s a practice they develop and consistently prioritise.
Each person, struggling with various traumas, learns to not ignore their past, but rather to accept and sit quietly with it. Meditation becomes an approach for the characters to face and accept their challenging histories, rather than avoid or be destroyed by them.
The film also points to the potential for contemplative practices to develop collective well-being. Through meditation and stillness, the individuals develop compassion for others, opening up the possibility for connection.
The film ends with a hopeful vision, suggesting the beautiful transformation that could emerge if each of us were to embrace our individual potential and contribute our part to the world.
Modern life seems chaotic. There may be power in stillness. Photo by Florian Wehde on Unsplash
Hopeful but sceptical
The stories in this film are compelling, though at times hard to follow. The images and music are engaging, but the driving story and key messages are at times unclear. The statements and claims by the futurists and researchers featured deserve continued debate and study by the scientific community.
Is meditation the answer to changing the world? The personal transformation of six individuals is a far cry from global transformation. Then again, change occurs one person at a time, and perhaps in stillness, creative solutions to the problems facing our society can indeed emerge.
A lot of the conversation around mental health focuses on mental illness, but mental wellbeing doesn’t just mean the absence of symptoms.
“Mental wellbeing is the sense of being comfortable with who we are and what we are and where we sit in the world,” says Chris O’Sullivan from the Mental Health Foundation in the UK.
While the term “mental health” usually conjures thoughts of mental ill-health, like depression, anxiety and addiction, researchers like O’Sullivan say it’s important to think about mental wellbeing as more than just having or not having symptoms.
Instead, it can be helpful to think about mental health as a spectrum, on which you’re position is likely to fluctuate throughout life.
Mounting evidence suggests positive mental wellbeing is linked to our physical health and the connections we build with others. Here are some practical, everyday things to keep in mind for your mental wellbeing. Note: If you’re in the thick of a severe mental illness, these tips might not be useful for you.
“There’s very strong evidence for the role of exercise in both prevention and treatment of mild and moderate depression and anxiety,” O’Sullivan told DW. “So doing some exercise, even though when you’re in the pits of depression it’s the thing you’ll least likely feel like doing, can help.”
Although technically “being active” doesn’t just mean running and working out — it can also include activities that increase your heart rate, like gardening, vigorous cleaning, and cycling to work — studies show the positive effects are higher when these things are combined with moderate to high intensity exercise.
Going outdoors has also been shown to improve people’s state of mind — in a 2015 study, scientists compared the brain activity of healthy people after they took a 90 minute walk in a natural setting or an urban one. Those that took a walk in nature had reduced activity in the prefrontal cortex, which is a region active when we’re anxious or focusing on negative emotions.
Eating well
A growing body of literature suggests eating well — a balanced diet rich in fruit and vegetables and low in processed foods — is a key part of feeling well. Nutrition, or lack thereof, has been found to affect the formation of human brain cells, particularly in the part of the brain that is associated with mood regulation.
Recent research has found a link between bad eating habits and bad moods, finding that a plant-rich, anti-inflammatory diet can help prevent depression. This is in part because of the way inflammation affects our gut microbiota, which increasing evidence suggests has a remarkable impact on our mood and behavior.
A healthy diet, O’Sullivan adds, also means being conscious of how much alcohol you drink. “Monitoring and controlling your relationship with alcohol drugs is a big one,” he says. “A lot of suicides are associated with alcohol use.”
Sleeping sweet spot
While it’s not known exactly how long it would take a person to directly die from lack of sleep — an American high school student once stayed awake for 11 days and 25 minutes — many of us know that not getting enough at least makes us feel a bit closer to death.
Research shows that sleep deprivation can negatively affect our mood, concentration and even our emotional intelligence.
“Generally, we don’t sleep as much as we should,” O’Sullivan says. “But we know sleep is very closely related to mental health.” Whether enough is five hours or eight and a half is dependent on the individual, but experts recommend finding your sleeping sweet spot — and try sticking to it.
For people who aren’t able to sleep through the night, like shift workers and parents of young children, studies have shown that short naps of around 20 minutes— long enough to doze off, but not long enough to enter a deep sleep — are a fairly effective way of catching up.
Mindfulness
It might be a concept you’ve heard of but aren’t so clear on — mindfulness. O’Sullivan defines it as “paying deliberate attention to what is happening as it happens.”
It’s “not yoga or visualization,” he says, but more like a frame of mind where we are conscious of what is happening to our mind and body, while managing our attention and emotions. This can be particularly helpful in bringing us out of rumination, where we repetitively go over negative thoughts.
“It’s not always the best thing to learn mindfulness when you are depressed or in a period of acute anxiety but learning mindfulness as a tool to keep you well when coming out the other side can be really helpful in preventing relapse,” O’Sullivan says.
It’s also about recognizing feelings as ephemeral and fluctuating. “We all have ups and downs, and experience periods of good mental health and challenges,” O’Sullivan added. “And it’s something we can all work on just the same as our physical health.”
Community
Most human beings crave connection. There’s evidence that belonging to a group and social connectedness are as important for our health as diet, movement and sleep. But despite myriad modern inventions for connection, O’Sullivan says “being lonely is a problem of our time.”
“Loneliness is as bad for our health as smoking,” he says, referring to research comparing the influence of a lack of social relationships on death with the well-established risk factors associated with smoking.
Social connections and being able to talk to people about your problems are important, he says, “not just for people who have a mental illness but for everyone — people are increasingly hyper-connected on digital devices but not connected in real life.”
But if doing all of these things all the time seems overwhelming, O’Sullivan says he often tells people to identify “which ones you would like to work on — find a few things that are really good for you and prioritize them.”
Most importantly, he adds, it’s about “finding what works for you, and trying.”
This was originally published in DW. Read the article here.
While some Insta-influencers try to keep it real, others set impossible standards that can leave us feeling dissatisfied and inadequate.
More than 200,000 people follow the Instagram account of Victoria van Violence from Berlin. They see picture-perfect photos of her on the beach, at festivals or at home with her dog.
But the captions on her photos with the most likes (upwards of 10,000) might surprise you. They don’t seem to fit into the highly-curated, seemingly perfect world of Instagram: “Everyone has a crappy time sometimes, we just don’t talk about it,” she writes on one photo. “Negative feelings, failures, break-ups, job losses, etc. are stigmas in our society. They don’t fit the perfect picture, neither in real life, nor here. But it’s completely normal.”
The Instagram-influencer, whose real name is Victoria Müller, is open about regularly seeing a psychologist and her experience with depression. “A constant high stress level, not being able to switch off, always having to deliver — burnout happens in many professions,” she told DW.
Constant comparison
On Instagram, there’s a constant opportunity to directly compare yourself with others. And it’s not only in the sense of numbers of followers and likes. “Others have a cooler or a more exciting life — you can do worse in all kinds of areas,” says van Violence.
“I used to do more modelling jobs and share the professional pictures, but I realised I didn’t want this perfect world anymore,” she says. “I don’t want to go to events and wonder whether people think: ‘Oh, she doesn’t look like she does in her photos.'”
For some time now, she has been addressing more and more serious topics in her posts, such as climate change, online trolling and mental health. Now, she says, that’s what people talk to her about at events.
While talking about these things seems to be appreciated by van Violence’s followers most of Instagram remains a perfect world.
But the images posted can sometimes be far from reality. Faked scenes, a decent dose of Photoshop and even plastic surgery are common in the world of influencers and users.
Images on Instagram can sometimes be far from reality. Photo: Reuters/Dado Ruvic/Illustration
When the brain’s reward system is activated
More than 500 million people use Instagram every day — that’s equal to the entire population of the EU. Why are we so enamoured by Instagram? What happens in our brain when we use it?
Dar Meshi, a neuroscientist at Michigan State University, was the first person to examine people who use social media using an MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) scan. The brain scan showed which brain regions are active when we post or like something or when someone likes our posts.
When the like notification appeared, the brain’s reward system was active. This region is called the ventral stratum. It’s also active when we’re presented with food, drinks, sex and money — and during drug consumption.
The anticipation of success
A messenger substance in the brain that is often associated with social media is dopamine. Experiments with money have shown that it’s released when we anticipate success. This is how researchers explain why you keep hanging on to the slot machine — or why you keep looking at your phone.
Researcher Meshi cannot confirm that dopamine and social media use are connected. But he suspects that the anticipation of activating the reward system is what makes social media so attractive.
Our reward system is not only activated when we receive likes. It’s also active when we like others’ images or just check out what our friends are doing. Meshi explains this by saying that our status in the group is very important to us and that we want to be liked by others.
Where is the line?
Social networks can easily activate these small social rewards. At any time, can we connect to hundreds or thousands of people and we don’t even have to go outside.
Users who post more on social media were found to be happier. Photo: Pixabay
Meshi doesn’t want to call this an addiction; the implications are too strong, he says. He says that there has never been anyone who has lost custody of their children because they’re too dependent on social media, for example.
But he quotes studies and cases where people have trouble sleeping, concentrating and have even lost their jobs because they couldn’t get away from social media for long enough. One study Meshi was involved in found that people who are more likely to take risks are more likely to both be addicted to drugs and more likely to be addicted to social media.
Active users happier than passive users
In two other studies, researchers asked their subjects several times a day via text message if they had used Facebook in the last five minutes and how they felt. If they had used Facebook, they felt worse. The researchers couldn’t say whether this was just because the participants had to reflect on their behaviour in front of researchers.
But what they found out was that the users who were more active, who posted more and got more likes, were generally happier than the passive users, who were just scrolling.
The researchers suspected that the passive users would constantly compare their real lives with the seemingly perfect lives of others without getting any likes themselves because they were not posting anything. But it could also be that people who are already in a bad mood are generally posting less.
A healthy habit?
Media ethics professor Petra Grimm wonders whether the urge to compare ourselves is innate or culturally conditioned. “It becomes problematic when the comparison leads to devaluation or when superiority is established,” she told DW.
Constant comparison can also prevent young people from finding out who they actually are, Grimm said. “If I follow influencers in their way of life, e.g. what clothes I wear, what I consume and how I live, while at the same time trying to portray myself as unique, I can hardly concentrate on my own wishes.”
A new vision of social media
But who should be responsible for the mental health of users on the platforms? The platforms themselves are interested in keeping users on their smartphones for as long as possible and they are experimenting with how to keep users’ attention the longest.
For Grimm, this means the social media organisations themselves are responsible. But, she says, it would be naïve to expect them to make changes that pose a risk to their business model.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi clicks a selfie. Photo: Reuters
That’s why she has a different vision. “There should be a kind of publicly funded model, preferably in a European network,” she says. “A platform that ensures data protection, privacy and considers mental health.”
“We can’t let these American players dictate the rules,” Grimm told DW, suggesting that a new platform could work with current Instagram influencers that are interested in using a different app with clear rules set out.
And the influencers?
Influencer Victoria van Violence says that Instagram’s unreliable algorithms are irritating for her and others. “It’s frustrating when another new algorithm prevents people from seeing my images,” she told DW.
The 30-year-old is also sure that the platform will change again, as will the influencer job itself. On Facebook, almost no influencer is now as active as on they are Instagram, she says.
If you ask van Violence about responsibility, she points to the influencers themselves. “People who create content in a professional setting need to be more transparent,” she says, speaking again about how unrealistic a lot of the content is on Instagram. Media ethicist Grimm would also like to see more influencers who advocate a conscious approach to social media.
What’s good for us?
Grimm sees a big gap in school education: “There is a huge need for prevention work in schools,” she says. She thinks teachers should explain the business strategies of the corporations behind social media platforms, and young students should be given more information and opportunity to reflect on the consequences of social media use.
Van Violence, who spends two to six hours a day on Instagram for work, deliberately spends less time on the platform when she’s not feeling well and spends time with her friends and family instead. “I am aware that this Internet world is not real. Today, a thousand people tell you how great you are, tomorrow it could be quite different. If you don’t have a stable network in the real world then you don’t have anything anymore,” she says. The influencer actually finds her part-time job as a radio presenter more sustainable.
But neither Victoria van Violence, Petra Grimm, nor Dar Meshi demonise social media. They say it’s a unique opportunity to connect with other people. “I can get information in an unconventional way and exchange and learn from very different people,” says van Violence.
We can shape the way we use social media, she says: “If the people I follow give me a bad feeling, for example, I should really stop following them.”
