Welcome to 2024! January is named after the Roman god Janus, the two-faced god of endings and beginnings. January is a hopeful month. But Janus is also the god of change.  Embarking on a new project, a new relationship or a new year can bring on the Jimmy Legs, a jumpy anxious feeling we’re anxious to avoid.

I say, hooray for anxiety! The feeling is usually given such a negative interpretation, but anxiety serves a valuable purpose. It keeps us alert to current dangers and aware of problems that may come down the pike. You’re here on this planet partly because your ancestors were worried and fearful about getting eaten by lions or getting stuck in a tar pit, and so survived and thrived. Today, worry encourages us to get our vaccines and wear a helmet when skydiving. Three cheers for anxiety!!! 

We didn’t evolve for this world

Today, we live in a world we didn’t evolve for. We are bombarded by experiences and responsibilities that make us anxious all the time. Modern developments like social media are designed to hold our attention, so we have a firehose of anxiety-inducing content spraying down our cerebral cortex. This is bad for your mental health, and your physical health too. Worry is like wearing a bathrobe made of mosquito bites and you can’t scratch because you’ve got ski mittens on. 

Anxiety is in our nature

Seneca advises us to live in harmony with nature. Anxiety is in our nature, and we must find a way to live with it, or else, as the great Dolly Parton sang, “It’s enough to drive you crazy if you let it.”

Everyday anxieties

Like every Stoic, I have real reasons to worry both big and small. My folks are old, and every time they call I get jumpy, imagining something has gone wrong. When I have to visit the dentist, I get the vapours at the thought of having my teeth scraped, prodded, and maybe even drilled.

I’ve had multiple surgeries on my eyes. These involve poking around in my eyeball, and you have to be wide awake for it. The first time the doctor went in with a needle I wriggled out of the chair, bellowed “not today!” and booked it out of the exam room. I eventually calmed myself enough to go through with the procedure, but I got so twitchy that an assistant had to hold my head still. I think it’s normal and human to get anxious about a stranger rooting around in the only part of your nervous system that’s exposed to the air.

Keeping ourselves from being overwhelmed

How can we keep from being overwhelmed by a flood of anxiety? How do we distinguish between anxiety rooted in something real and something imagined? How do we pay an appropriate amount of attention to these feelings that are doing their best to keep you safe? 

Let’s turn panic attacks into compassion attacks. When you are overwhelmed, remind yourself, “My compassionate brain, which wants only to keep me safe, is doing its job.” Remind yourself that this feeling is not necessarily the same as being in real danger. And if you are in danger, your first reaction doesn’t have to guide your actions. In the words of Marcus Aurelius, “Today I escaped anxiety. Or no, I discarded it because it was within my perception, not outside of it.” Meditations, IX.13. The problems you face are valid, but your response doesn’t have to be excessive or paralyze you. 

Climbing over self-doubt

Think. When have you ever accomplished anything challenging while enveloped in comfort? You had to climb over a wall of self doubt. You had to conquer your fear. You had anxiety setting off your interior alarms. You adapted to the discomfort and got through it.

Living in harmony with emotions

Make a plan to worry. Open a worry account and budget your worry as a limited resource. Give yourself a finite number of worries, and a specific amount of time you allot to ruminating over them. Make a list: Which are real and which are imagined? If they’re real, write down what can be done about them. If they’re not, cross them off. Journal it, as Marcus Aurelius did. In this way you’ll establish what is in your control and respond with a greater sense of harmony and bravery.

Instead of fighting, suppressing, or succumbing to anxiety, a modern Stoic can choose to observe and acknowledge it without being overcome. Live in harmony with all your emotions. They are part of you but don’t control you. After all, as Soren Kierkegaard observed, "Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.”

Karen Duffy is a producer, actress, and former MTV VJ. Her latest book on Stoicism. Wise Up (https://amzn.to/3PpLv5D) is published by Seal Press.

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