Approaching and Re-stating the Question of Global Anxieties: Some Suggestions for Psychology and Therapy Studies

Abstract

Anxiety caused by the psychosocial reality of war, pandemic, natural disasters, or poverty, among other factors, may be studied from two kinds of methodological premises: first, the deep and unencumbered perception of anxiety as a metacognitive process indicating diminution in energy levels and normative expression or behaviors of individuals. The subject finds oneself in a situation that is out of sync with the environment, and experiences low emotive valence. Anxiety is cognitively visible as a state of depression that continues to intimidate and demoralize the person. It represents a dispirited state of the individual as it encounters a world of depleted resources, and as it constantly fears for its existence or survival. The collective cognitive fear that underlays human survival also creates preconditions for global anxiety. Global anxiety is a global category – an obscure, introspective moment in the lives of peoples within a territory or among migrant populations across frontiers. Secondly, it could indicate toward historically localized expressions and as such anxiety could be studied pluralistically – as its pre-conditions arise in times and locations. Yet on the whole, if we were to analyse the causal variants or consequences of anxieties on a quantitative scale, we could possibly determine how conditions conducive to emotional redressal could be procured or administered for well-being and the Human devolopment index. In either case, the need to identify, analyze and alleviate the pressures and tensions causing anxiousness, and to diminish or palliate physiological conditions that induce anxiety remain our conscious rudder for anxiety studies.