409. How to manage your anxiety about the future

It can feel like the world - and our future - has never been more precarious or frightening. It’s a very normal response to feel anxious about it - and in many ways, being concerned is just a sign that you’re alive, switched on, and care about the what’s going on around you. But what happens when this anxiety becomes overwhelming, and we’re consumed by worry about the future? In this episode, we unpack: • Why we’re prone to anticipatory anxiety in our 20s • The evolutionary reasons for catastrophic thinking • Why long-term anxiety rewires our brain • When it’s healthy - and not healthy - to worry • How to rebrand anxiety as excitement Happy listening! Watch on Netflix: HERE https://netflix.com/thepsychologyofyour20s Follow Jemma on Instagram: @jemmasbeg https://www.instagram.com/jemmasbeg/?hl=en# Follow the podcast on Instagram: @thatpsychologypodcast https://www.instagram.com/thatpsychologypodcast/?hl=en# Subscribe on Substack: @thepsychologyofyour20s https://substack.com/@thepsychologyofyour20s For business: [email protected] mailto:[email protected] Or favourite sources: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3086262/#:~:text=For%20some%20individuals%2C%20uncertainty%20about,%2C%20&%20Camerer%2C%202005 https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3086262/#:~:text=For%20some%20individuals%2C%20uncertainty%20about,%2C%20&%20Camerer%2C%202005 https://theconversation.com/how-chronic-stress-changes-the-brain-and-what-you-can-do-to-reverse-the-damage-133194 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24364682/ The Psychology of your 20s is not a substitute for professional mental health help. If you are struggling, distressed or require personalised advice, please reach out to your doctor or a licensed psychologist. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

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• 3:40Jemma Sbeg?

  Hello, everybody. I'm Jemma Sbeg, and welcome back to the Psychology of Your 20s, the podcast where we talk through the biggest changes, moments, and transitions of our 20s, and what they mean for our psychology.

• 4:00Jemma Sbeg?

  Hello everybody, welcome back to the show, welcome back to the podcast. It is so great to have you here. I literally landed in London back from Australia like five hours ago and the jet lag is really setting in right now, so bear with me. But I feel like this episode can't wait. I feel like this is the most pressing feeling of our generation, of our time, that needs to be discussed before like the next world disaster hits in probably the next few days. And the topic for today, that is our anxiety about the future. Our anxiety about the future of the world, the future of our lives and how to manage it.

• 4:41Jemma Sbeg?

  I don't think that I've had a conversation, a single conversation in the past six months that hasn't included some mention of an ever-present existential threat kind of lingering over our lives. That combined with all of our personal worries and anxieties about the future as twenty-somethings, meant that it kind of felt like the right time to do an episode on catastrophizing and how to stay grounded right now when our thoughts are probably going a thousand miles a minute. I'm a major catastrophier and if you are like me, the thought spirals, the negativity spirals are probably non-stop at the moment.

• 5:25Jemma Sbeg?

  And it's annoying, it's annoying, it's frustrating. It leaves little room to really think about anything else. It leaves little room to get stuff done, little room to enjoy the present for what it is. So today I want to give an explanation as to what is happening in your brain as these spirals are taking place, why your anxiety about the future is probably so dominant right now.

• 5:51Jemma Sbeg?

  B, the effect that that's having on us, so you can have a little bit of grace. If you are finding it harder to focus, finding it harder to be present. And C, most importantly, the five things that you can do to re-center. I don't wanna say re-center, I don't wanna say relax, but re-center. Renew, re-establish some good routines and some good habits to let you kind of concentrate on what you can control. What you can do, the good that you can bring to the world and. I don't wanna say be less focused, but not let the negative. Thoughts and the negative perspective be the primary ones. So without further ado, let's get into.

• 6:34Jemma Sbeg?

  How to manage your anxiety about the future right now.

• 6:41Jemma Sbeg?

  So if you're in your twenties, I think most of you are, I would say the majority of us are, who are listening to this podcast. I think the world is kind of serving us two types of anxieties about the future. The first one is the broader, high-level anxiety about the state that the world is in, which kind of just like dominates. Everything, you know, I I could go into a long list. I could talk about A I, I could talk about war, I could talk about, I don't know, fuel crisis. There's just too many things to list, right? And that, it's a lot. That is really why we are so impacted by it. Like, there's this sense of like, what? Do I worry about first?

• 7:23Jemma Sbeg?

  That is the first level of like mass uncertainty and mass anxiety that we're up against. Like, it just feels like the world is going through more changes now than it ever has before. Whether that is true or not, it definitely is a depressing and dominant feeling. The second type of anxiety that a lot of us are experiencing right now is just our anxiety about our own personal circumstances. Like, despite what's going on in the world, it's not selfish to still care about what we're up against. You know, for those of us just starting out in adult life, that's basically anyone under the age of thirty five, as far as I see it. Like, we are particularly faced with a sense of uncertainty about things that are more personal to us, about our careers. The state of our love lives, our friendships, our financial situation.

• 8:09Jemma Sbeg?

  Our twenties are defined by a lack of definition. Which is deeply exciting because everything is possible and also deeply stressful because we are literally staring at a blank slate and there's a lot of responsibility that comes with the beginning of something. The very fact that we are at the beginning of our adult lives is unsettling, but also it means that we're less established, such that those two levels of anxiety we're talking about combine forces, right? Yes, we have that anxiety about our personal lives and what we want from our future. But it is more destabilized, we are more destabilized by what is going on in the world. We are more sensitive to what is changing.

• 8:53Jemma Sbeg?

  Because we probably don't have the savings of people who are older than us, we don't have the experiences of people who are older than us, we don't have the skill set that protects against some of the economic and like socio-political and workplace uncertainties. So basically, all that's just to validate what you're probably experiencing right now, which is a lot of fear. And to say it goes without saying that our generation, our age group is more primed to be anxious than most. And often, that anxiety and that rumination is actually the only sense of control that we have. What I think a lot of us need to be more, I don't know, more kind to ourselves about

• 9:36Jemma Sbeg?

  is that our anxiety is the coping mechanism right now. You may have heard a specific word for this, it's called anticipatory anxiety. And it's essentially when we borrow stress, suffering, fear from the future by attempting to problem solve a hypothetical situation that hasn't happened yet in the present.

• 10:00Jemma Sbeg?

  Basically, a complicated way of saying, we think that we can avoid future anxiety by making it a today problem. The issue is is that that's entirely irrational. No level of thinking about something can change what is going to happen. But that doesn't matter. Like, that's the reason it is a form of anxiety, because it is irrational. Let me break down for you why, why despite this irrationality, our brain likes to pursue this path of future fear. Even when it doesn't necessarily make sense or doesn't necessarily help us, like. Why do we find ourselves worrying so continuously about things that we cannot change when that feels so impractical? There are a few reasons. Reason number one is just this illusion of certainty.

• 10:45Jemma Sbeg?

  Essentially, constantly thinking about all the potential horrible ways. Or the horrible futures we could face. At least it gives our mind something to do. At least it gives our mind a sense that. We're doing something productive about our fear because we are being cognitively mentally preventative. As is I think the case with all overthinking. We don't actually fear the situation. We fear that we won't be able to cope with the situation. And so to remove that primary fear in advance. We run through all of these scenarios because it gives us a sense that like we are practicing.

• 11:27Jemma Sbeg?

  What we would do if we were in that scenario mentally. Like that's, we're rehearsing things going wrong so that we're gonna be better at handling it when they obviously do go wrong. The problem is, we're just thinking about the worst case scenario. We're not thinking about how we would survive it. We're not actually doing any of the coping when we're imagining the world falling apart. You know the quote, um, I don't know what it is, like the the thing we fear the most is fear itself. I always thought that this is what it was talking about. Our fear of uncertainty is the ultimate fear because it's just revealing all the ways that we are weak all at once. You know, at our core, we hate uncertainty. Humans hate uncertainty.

• 12:10Jemma Sbeg?

  Whether it's an exam result, whether it's waiting for a text back, wanting to know if you ever find. Love, if you ever find your place, wanting to know if, what's gonna happen in the world. The blank space ahead of us, we don't like it. Because ambiguity is where anxiety can be most imaginative and creative. Because it's where there are the least constraints. Because there's, there's nothing we can predict. Studies have provided so much evidence from this, like I feel like you guys just know this from feeling it, but to give you some of the research. Um, there was a two thousand and eleven study, for example, that tested seventy eight participants on their fear of uncertainty. And these participants were divided into three groups.

• 12:53Jemma Sbeg?

  Basically, the experimenters, the researcher said, we're gonna show you some pictures. For one group, they said, we're gonna show you some pictures of something neutral, like vegetables, whatever. The second group, they said, we're gonna show you pictures of something that's really, really terrifying. We're gonna show you pictures of violence, of snakes, of terrible things.

• 13:12Jemma Sbeg?

  In the third category, they didn't tell them what the picture would be. They said, there may be some pictures of some neutral things, there may be some pictures of some scary things. This group had the highest level of anxiety of any of the other groups. Even the group that knew a hundred percent of the time, they were gonna see the scary image. You would imagine that that group would be the most fearful, right? Because there was a hundred percent chance they were gonna see something they didn't wanna see. But what this study really revealed was that, again, it's not the fear. It's the uncertainty about whether what's gonna happen will be good or bad. It's that fifty fifty chance that means that we never feel fully prepared. Another interesting finding from this same study.

• 13:58Jemma Sbeg?

  In that round where there was a fifty fifty chance, you know, are you gonna see the positive or neutral image? Or are you gonna see the negative image? The participants always expected the negative. Every single round, their body was showing signs that they were anticipating the worst case scenario. Even though the outcome could just has have easily have been neutral. We see this outside an experimental setting all the time. We never overthink that things could go well. Like, when was the last time you expected not just a good outcome, but like a neutral outcome? Our mind never goes down that path. It always chooses the worst case scenario.

• 14:42Jemma Sbeg?

  So of course it's gonna be all consuming. It's skewed towards everything terrible. Like again, your brain doesn't have to prepare for the best case scenario because it's the best. And so anytime you're thinking about the future. Of course, I would say the majority of the time you're gonna be thinking about the ways that it's not going to go well. And all the terrible hypotheticals. It's just skewing your perception. And it's why when we actually arrive at the situations that we fear. It's often not all that bad, like you kind of just breathe a sigh of relief at times. Maybe that's one of the, I don't wanna say the benefits, I don't wanna go that far, but.

• 15:23Jemma Sbeg?

  One of the weird side effects is that when we get to situations that we feared so often. Often there is a a level of relief there that like it's not as bad as we thought it was gonna be like, does that make sense? There's been so many other studies that have, you know. Repeated this finding again and again and again, we anticipate the worst case scenario. But what they also show is that when we anticipate the worst case scenario, being in a state of uncertainty. Makes our executive functioning worse. And this is one of those weird human evolutionary biology ironies. The evolutionary explanation would say worrying about the future allows us to.

• 16:06Jemma Sbeg?

  Anticipate things that we need to survive, allows us to practice or rehearse how we're gonna cope. But equally, the science tells us that being in that state of uncertainty. And always imagining the worst case scenario actually harms our body's biological ability to cope. So some evidence of this, there are studies that suggest that. Being in a state of uncertainty. Makes our executive functioning worse, makes our level of coping worse, makes our frontal lobe's ability to. Execute rational thought worse, makes our, even our body less physically prepared. There was a study from twenty twenty that showed this.

• 16:48Jemma Sbeg?

  They uh got a bunch of participants and they said to them. You're gonna do a speech. We're either gonna tell you what you have to do the speech on or we're not. Actually, I think it was like, they might have to do a speech, they might not. They did know the topic, but those who were uncertain about whether they were gonna have to do that. They were then presented with this other task at the same time where they had to compete. Like, I think they had to do some computer task or whatever. And that group did so poorly on that task. They made incorrect judgment errors, they couldn't operate properly, they made poor decisions.

• 17:32Jemma Sbeg?

  All because the uncertainty of this other situation they were in was taking away their cognitive resources without them knowing it.

• 17:41Jemma Sbeg?

  So this is so important to understand. If you are really like staring down the barrel of some like crazy anxiety about your future right now. You're at like a precipice of like some major life changes.

• 17:55Jemma Sbeg?

  If you are feeling like you are not doing well in other areas of your life because of that. The science is telling me and is telling you that that is a very likely explanation. Essentially, don't be so hard on yourself. Being in the state of uncertainty about where your career is gonna go, where you're gonna live, how your relationships are gonna turn out. That is like having twenty tabs open in the background, churning through all your cognitive resources. Churning through like your battery power whilst you're just trying to live your life. So that is the general human explanation, right? Our brain doesn't like uncertainty. Our brain tries to cope with uncertainty by overthinking, that overthinking actually makes it harder.

• 18:37Jemma Sbeg?

  But for some people, catastrophizing has much deeper roots. Like, it's not just an instinctual thing. It's more entrenched. It's learned from an unpredictable childhood environment, an unpredictable relationship. Others might catastrophize because of trauma. Like, I think it's important to, again, have grace that there are situations that you may have been through that are gonna put you in this state of like catastrophizing more than other people. Often because it's not just about regaining control in a practicing manner, but not wanting to be blindsided. If in the past, like, somebody has come out and hurt you and you did not anticipate it.

• 19:21Jemma Sbeg?

  Life has changed underneath like and in front of you rapidly. You are more likely to have anxiety about the future because you have past experiences that are showing you and have taught you.

• 19:34Jemma Sbeg?

  More than other people, how quickly things can change. There's also this fascinating psychology and this fascinating research that says your level of anxiety about the future may also be a personality trait. There's this personality trait called tolerance for uncertainty. And essentially, what this research found was that there are some people who, for whom, ambiguity, not knowing what's going on in life, not knowing what the future's gonna be. It is so much more painful than the average person. And it's not just because they're more sensitive, it's not just because they, I don't know, more politically engaged or they're more anxious. Again, it's because of how their personality has been set up, how, what their temperament is.

• 20:19Jemma Sbeg?

  They have this compulsive drive to want predictability, to want closure. It's part of how they are, it's part of who they are. This trait was first identified in the nineteen nineties by researchers at this Canadian university. And they found that people with this trait often needed more reassurance about things being okay. They had a tendency towards excessive information seeking, so spending a lot of time researching, looking at the news, seeing what other people were doing. And again, it all came back to this fundamental need within these people for control and for answers. The problem for us, though, and the problem especially for people who are high in this personality trait, is that no one can give you those answers.

• 21:01Jemma Sbeg?

  Not about how the world is gonna turn out, not about how your life is gonna turn out. The issue is, is that people with this trait can't stop trying, though. And I think that's its own level of curse, that goes beyond just the natural human desire for certainty. So, we've talked about why this is, we've talked about the psychological impact of this on your rationality, on your executive functioning, on your mood, on your physical preparedness as well. I think it's now time that we move on and talk about what we can actually do about this anxiety, because as much as it does seem very doom and gloom, that this is just how your brain is set up, that is not accurate. There is a lot that.

• 21:46Jemma Sbeg?

  You can contribute and you can add and you can deliberately control that is going to allow you to lean into this anxiety as much as humanly possible in this moment. So stay with us. We're going to talk about that and so much more after this short break.

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• 26:02Jemma Sbeg?

  As like a touchstone in situations like this is that when we catastrophize, we suffer twice. We suffer once in response to an imagined reality. And then again, maybe if that reality does come true. But we always suffer, even if it doesn't come true. Like, we suffer as a form of insurance, almost. And again, it is about reiterating to yourself, like, how often do the worst-case scenarios actually happen? It's a good reminder not to borrow grief and sadness and stress from the future because chances are, it won't happen exactly the way you imagined anyways.

• 26:42Jemma Sbeg?

  Secondly, your level of coping is often something that you underestimate, just as much as you overestimate how terrible the situation is gonna be. And like, this excessive worry doesn't actually leave you more prepared. So you can't keep listening to your brain as it tries to convince you that it will. So we need an alternative. And what I think the alternative is, is this. If you can overthink the negatives of a situation, you are just as capable, if not more capable than most, of overthinking the positives as well. This is essentially a form of emotional replacement therapy, right? It it's like replacing, like, I don't know, alcohol for a non-alcoholic beverage, or like,

• 27:26Jemma Sbeg?

  a cigarette for for a nicotine gum. Replace your negative overthinking vice with positive overthinking. Take any terrible worst-case scenario that your brain is currently cooking up for you about, your future or the global future, and instead consciously, deliberately imagine all the ways that it could go right. Even if it feels ridiculously optimistic and stupid, even if it feels delusional. Set yourself a challenge. Anytime you have a negative assessment of the future, anytime you find yourself catastrophizing, write down five alternatives that end with a positive what-if. You know, your brain is, again,

• 28:08Jemma Sbeg?

  having this negativity bias whereby it's going to amplify the what-if, insert worst-case scenario here.

• 28:17Jemma Sbeg?

  You are still allowed to have the what if. Your brain is still allowed to have that preference for imagination or that preference for hypotheticals. But make them positive hypotheticals. Turn the what if into something that's a bit more positively imaginative and vibrant. It might not change your reality, right? But that is not the objective. The objective is again, not to suffer twice. The objective is to keep yourself more mentally prepared. And physically prepared and emotionally prepared. For if the worst case scenario does happen. Because you haven't already exhausted yourself and exhausted all your mental resources. As you were imagining it.

• 29:02Jemma Sbeg?

  Like, the only objective of this is not to change the reality. Again, it's just so that you don't suffer twice. This strategy was taken a step further by this researcher, this behavioral research scientist called Alison Wood. Who suggested that a way of coping with our fears about the future is to. Relabel our anxiety as excitement. And we've spoken about this before, but. In her work, Alison, she investigated people's responses to tasks that. Made them really fearful, made them really scared, nervous, things like public speaking, meeting with a boss, a first date. And what she found was that in most cases. As people were entering this situation, the most effective thing they thought they could do beforehand.

• 29:47Jemma Sbeg?

  Was to calm down and was to intensely try and ignore. The uncomfortable feelings that they were feeling. When they faced this situation, when they faced this anxiety about the future, they really did believe the best thing I can do is ignore it. And what her research found was that actually, that actually made us think about the anxious feeling more. It's like, I think, what is it called? Like the white bear, the white elephant effect? When I tell you not to think about a white elephant, the first thing you're gonna think about is a white elephant. When you tell yourself, I shouldn't be anxious, I shouldn't be anxious, you're just gonna be more anxious. So instead. Take the feeling, acknowledge it, feel it more deeply, but instead say, this is excitement. I'm excited about the possibility. I'm excited about the future. This anxiety is activating.

• 30:32Jemma Sbeg?

  It it always will and it always does, like, activate and uses the same neural and biological patterns as. Any type of arousal, including positive arousal and excitement. So it is up for interpretation. You are able to take this anxious feeling and if possible, and if you do it right, switch it into a feeling that indicates opportunity and a feeling that indicates that the best or that good things are coming, things that you cannot anticipate. Does that kind of make sense? Like essentially, it's just a form of cognitive reappraisal, like just to use the psychology term for it.

• 31:13Jemma Sbeg?

  This is, I think, particularly powerful for anxiety about our personal futures. Um, like, am I gonna make friends? Am I gonna find a job? Am I gonna survive the next chapter? I just think that viewing ambiguity as an opportunity for greatness and viewing the blank slate as an opportunity for possibility. It doesn't, again, it doesn't change the reality, but it changes how you cope. It changes how you act and it changes how you feel. And that is really what we're trying to target. I think it's equally valuable, if you are having a lot of fear about your future, to shrink down your timeline a little bit.

• 31:54Jemma Sbeg?

  Instead of asking, you know, what is my life gonna look like in five years and being obsessively worried about controlling everything up until that five year mark, instead of constantly asking, what's my life gonna look like in ten years? Am I ever gonna be happy? Just zoom in a little bit. Zoom into what you could do in the next week, what you could do this weekend that would be meaningful or productive. What can you achieve in two months, rather than projecting yourself further and further into the future? Then your current abilities would actually allow you to control. And this isn't about lowering your ambition. It's about redirecting your attention to a timeframe where your actions actually have power.

• 32:40Jemma Sbeg?

  This is the big thing about our anxiety about the future. Again, it actually makes us less capable of managing the future because it keeps us focused on things that are further and further out of our reach. Like, there is very little that you can do right now. That would all out guarantee how your life would look like in five or ten years. And getting to that point requires you to take action now. The thing is, is that obsessively worrying about whether the action you're taking now is going to have the positive effect on your future that you want it to. Often counter intuitively means that we don't actually take that necessary action that we know is right.

• 33:23Jemma Sbeg?

  Because we are so cognitively overwhelmed and mentally overwhelmed with the possibilities of it going wrong. So condense your timeframe, try any possible strategy you have to just refocus on the present, refocus on the next couple of weeks. And I would also say if you're really dealing with some like incredible personal anxiety about the future. Use history as your compass. Really dig into your memory to provide relief. Essentially, remember the times in the past. Where you thought the worst case scenario was all but certain. And actually, it didn't happen.

• 34:04Jemma Sbeg?

  Try and remember previous experiences where you entered a room and you thought it was gonna be terrible, when you got on a flight and you thought you were gonna be scared, when you moved to a new city and you thought you'd never make friends and how far removed you are from that negative situation now, how differently things turned out. The best antidote to my future anxieties is just calling out how they have never been accurate in the past. Never, like, my anxiety is such an unreliable narrator. It has never been right about a situation. So why do I keep believing it? Why do you keep believing it?

• 34:47Jemma Sbeg?

  And if you can remember a time, it has been right. And if you're, if you're wanting to use that as evidence that it might be right in the future. Think about the fact that you are still here and that you still found a way to cope. Because so often when we have these like negative assessments. Again, we don't think about the coping, we just think about how terrible the feeling is gonna be. We just remove and suddenly forget that we have agency and that we'll be able to ever do anything about it.

• 35:20Jemma Sbeg?

  This is where I really wanna talk about the philosophy of Marcus Aurelius, who used this strategy, I guess, used this idea called negative visualization. And essentially, what he said was that, or what he thought or believed was that to manage anxiety about the future and to manage this catastrophizing anxiety spiral that a lot of us face every single day. Much like that research from that doctor who talked about turning anxiety into excitement. Let yourself think about those worst case scenarios. Do the last thing that your brain expects you to do. Let yourself experience that anxiety more. Picture all the terrible things and then add in all the ways that you're gonna cope.

• 36:05Jemma Sbeg?

  With negative visualization, what he would do is that every single day, I think he would think of all the different things that could go wrong, all the different ways that his day could go terribly. And then he would visualize all the ways that he was gonna cope. He would visualize all the different ways that he was gonna survive that. And we can do that for the larger scale things as well. We can do that for the situation I always think is a big fear for us, which is like, what if I lose my job? What if like A I takes my industry? What if this, what if that, what if I'm no longer needed? What if all this study was to waste? What if all my skills were to waste? And we get into the spiral of like, I'm gonna end up destitute, I'm gonna end up homeless. What Marcus Aurelius would say would be, take that situation, imagine, yeah, it all going terribly wrong.

• 36:50Jemma Sbeg?

  Now imagine five different ways that you could cope. The skills that you could regain, the soft skills that you could, I don't know, fine tune. The new career path that you could pivot into. The skill that you have that this technology doesn't. The way that you could go back to school, the way that you could start your own business. Like, that is the part of this equation that we never spend time on and that our mind never spends time on. That's just one example, obviously, but again. Re-center your agency rather than letting the fear be the only dominant feeling. Let's finish up this episode by turning our attention back to our larger anxieties about the world.

• 37:35Jemma Sbeg?

  The high level fear that everything is going to shit, everything is terrible, everything is a disaster. Which honestly feels accurate sometimes, but how do we navigate those anxieties? Especially because, yes, we've talked about re-centering agency, but our agency is probably more limited in these cases. So some of those personal strategies are not going to be as effective. I have a couple of alternatives. I have three things for you to try in these situations where you're really spiraling about the future of the world. The first is again a reminder that if you care, others must care as well. When we feel anxious about large scale, I don't even wanna call them issues, disasters, emergencies, whatever it is.

• 38:18Jemma Sbeg?

  Part of what intensifies that anxiety is something called pluralistic ignorance. This is a cognitive bias where we assume that our private concerns aren't shared by anybody else. Even when they are, because really we can only ever know and fully feel our own thoughts. What this means is that we look around and we're like, how come nobody else is worried about this? How come nobody is caring about this? And suddenly, your level of concern feels very isolating. It feels much larger than you can cope with because you are just one tiny person. So it is important to keep focus, to keep in touch with, to keep your attention on the ways that other people do care.

• 39:01Jemma Sbeg?

  To actively seek out communities, people, pages that show and give evidence for the fact that other people are concerned, other people are actively contributing, other people are helping. So that you don't only end up seeing the world as this negative place where you are the only good person. Remember, the world is good because you are in it and you are good people. Don't let yourself get buried under the sense that you are the only one who is living through these awful times and having the reactions you are. Most people are feeling this way. Most people are having the same worries as you are. Talk to them about it. Join them in like how they are striving to make things better. Basically, more generally, like be the change.

• 39:43Jemma Sbeg?

  You know, you probably can't influence world politics, but you can carry, you know, the groceries up for your elderly neighbor. You can donate your time. You can spread seeds around your local community. You can be kind to the people that you know. And I do genuinely believe that that those small tangible acts do have big, larger repercussions. And psychologically, it doesn't matter if it changes nothing. It matters in that it helps you. When we feel overwhelmed by global issues, by future uncertainty, we often fall into a state of learned helplessness. The belief that nothing we do will make a difference. And so we stop trying altogether, not just about global things, but about

• 40:29Jemma Sbeg?

  personal things and personal goals and personal decisions. But small, local action interrupts that pattern. It restores a sense of agency again. It it restores a sense that like your behavior has an impact. And that doesn't just help for, I don't know, our global fears, but it helps in that it lets us make long-term plans for the future because it makes us and it helps us believe that a future will be there. It stops us from doing things that are impulsive, like overspending, doing things that are dangerous. It lets us actually set goals. And again, this isn't about, this isn't only about you. Like, obviously, we're talking about a global

• 41:11Jemma Sbeg?

  or a community-wide sense of despair, like a global sense of like that things are going terribly and I know it sounds like I keep bringing it back to what you need and what you can do to make yourself feel better, but genuinely, you cannot do anything for anybody else if you do not take care of yourself. And part of taking care of yourself is taking care of others because again, there's this cycle of agency that makes you feel like you are not just one small person that all the world's events are happening to. You are part of a broader community. You are not alone in this and you are experiencing this with other people by your side.

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• 42:18Jemma Sbeg?

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• 42:55Jemma Sbeg?

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• 43:39Jemma Sbeg?

  intentional and meant that I make smarter decisions day to day about what I need, rather than just putting my foot on the gas and just going, going, going, going. New members can try Whoop with a 30-day free trial before committing to a membership. That's join.whoop.com/psychology for your free month of Whoop.

• 43:59Jemma Sbeg?

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• 44:44Jemma Sbeg?

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• 45:46Jemma Sbeg?

  I also think just having some good digital and online hygiene is incredibly important if you are having a lot of anxiety about the future. Not just limiting how much terrible negative news that you are consuming, but just limiting how much online content you are engaging with, full stop. I don't know about you, but I just feel like my algorithm is so angry and terrible at the moment. Even when it's not about the global news, like I just got into this stage with my algorithm. I don't know, like we have this relationship, but like my algorithm got to this point where everything it was showing me was like people fighting or people having arguments on the street.

• 46:30Jemma Sbeg?

  Or, you know, some kind of controversy or hot take video. And genuinely, I remember having this moment where I was scrolling and I was like, I have not seen a positive piece of content in ages. Because this is the kind of stuff that gets engagement. You know, if you are sitting on your phone constantly and that is what's being fed to you, you are not, of course, naturally going to feel good about the future because your entire mental environment is being consumed by negativity. So when we talk about digital resilience, when we talk about digital hygiene, it's not just about avoiding the news. It's about actually having guardrails against just letting

• 47:15Jemma Sbeg?

  whatever is being said online, whatever is going on on the internet, enter your life prominently and all the time. You know, at some point, your desire to be informed could actually turn into over monitoring, could actually turn into an anxiety soothing mechanism. Where again, we have this anxiety about our future and this anxiety about the world, such that we like dig further in and we look for more information and we look for more, I don't know, more knowledge about what's happening. And it becomes counteractive, it becomes more harmful than it is good. So it is okay to step back, it is okay to be like, I don't actually want to, you know, blare terrible world events into my eyes at all time.

• 48:00Jemma Sbeg?

  And to just choose to put boundaries around it, choose to only look at the news for twenty minutes on your lunch break. Choose again to not have your phone in bed with you, to not be engaging with content online that is making you feel negative about the world. Not listening to true crime, not always like engaging with the violent content. And I do actually think that that's going to make you feel better about not just the global future, but your future as well. Just like balancing your need to be informed and your need for closure or predictability with also your human need to just like have some peace and just to exist and just to not feel guilty about experiencing some level of joy.

• 48:43Jemma Sbeg?

  I think as I wrap up this episode, let me just say, if you're in your twenties, I think it would be abnormal to not have anxiety about the future. Right? It is like the most normal feeling to have this feeling right now, that you don't know and that you are unsure and that you really could do with somebody in your life who had the crystal ball, who could just like tell you how it's gonna work out. So have some kindness for yourself, have some grace, like just give yourself a little bit of credit. You are building a life, you are building something that has never been built before, right? Your life, the blueprint for your life is completely individual, completely up to you.

• 49:26Jemma Sbeg?

  There is no guidebook, there is nobody who can tell you that it's gonna be okay. And so facing up against all of those possibilities and the unpredictability of this moment is really emotionally taxing and it is okay to sometimes feel like it is not going to work out as you would like it to. The thing is, is that it so often does. And the thing to remind yourself is that those worst case scenarios that your brain is cooking up, that is, they're trying to protect you aren't always gonna come true. And in fact, most of the time it is better than you expected. Or it is in fact just neutral and you end up coping anyways. So it's totally normal.

• 50:05Jemma Sbeg?

  You will make it through this. Do not let your anxiety dominate all the other good things that are happening in your life. And when it comes to your anxieties about the future, about political uncertainty, about global uncertainty. Again, I keep saying give yourself some grace, but just please do remind yourself and please do remember that there is good in the world, that people are actively taking care of problems, looking out for problems, helping people in their community. You can be one of those people. And that additionally, you know, sometimes it is okay to take a break from that and it is okay to. Not always be plugged in to all the terrors of the world.

• 50:48Jemma Sbeg?

  If it means that you can be a better community member. If it means that you can do more for the people around you. So that is me getting off my soapbox. We are done for the day. I hope that this has made you feel a little bit better about whatever is going on in your life and how you're feeling about the world around you. If you have made it this far, leave, leave a little emoji down below. That symbolizes hope to you, especially if you are listening on Spotify. Maybe share this episode with a friend who is also feeling a lot of anxiety about the future of their lives and the future of the world. Um, who you think could really benefit from this episode. Make sure that you are following us on Instagram at that psychology podcast. You can also follow us on Substack. You can watch us on Netflix. There is so much that you can do.

• 51:32Jemma Sbeg?

  All of it will be in the description down below. But especially when it comes to this topic in this episode, be safe, be kind and most certainly be gentle with yourself. We will talk very, very soon.

• 51:50Jemma Sbeg?

  This episode is sponsored by Gymshark. Gymshark has spent over fourteen years obsessing over gym clothing and the people who wear it. And let me just say, I think we all know they are very, very good at what they do. No, seriously, their stuff is so good. Their everyday seamless collection is light, it's soft, it's stretchy. All of their stuff just looks good on and it's made for people who love to exercise, whatever exercise that is. Lifting cardio, Pilates, running around campus, maybe just doing errands. Discover Gymshark and find your new favorite gym clothing at gymshark.com.

• 52:27Jemma Sbeg?

  I've been really trying to prioritize my health in a realistic way this year. And something that has kept me really motivated is my Whoop. I am such a data person, which is why I love Whoop, because I can genuinely see why my body feels differently depending on the day, why I'm running differently, why I'm maybe less focused. Whoop effortlessly tracks my sleep, it tracks my strain, my recovery, my stress. And most importantly, my overall health. And it just gives me all. All that data and all those patterns so I can make better decisions, which includes knowing when to go easy and knowing when to go hard. New members can try Whoop with a 30 day free trial before committing to a membership. That's join dot whoop dot com slash psychology for your free month of Whoop.

• 53:12Jemma Sbeg?

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