How anxiety affects you

My column in Mindanao Daily, Businessweek Mindanao and Metro Cagayan de Oro Times

A drawn-out stressful situation can make simple tasks feel more difficult than they used to be. I experienced it myself since my German Consulate Office in Davao reopened. Both, my consulate clients and I got the same feelings.

Feel like you can’t concentrate on anything at the moment? You’re not alone. The extra anxiety caused by the Covid-19 pandemic has impaired our working memory, experts say. As writer and journalist, Kate Morgan stresses several days ago: we all know the feeling. You walk into a room with a mission and then stop, confused, and a little disjointed, realizing you have completely forgotten why you’re there.

Since the coronavirus’ spread began, almost all of us have been having that feeling of forgetting why I’m in another room dozens of times a day. We're finding it almost impossible to focus on anything at all. 

I can’t keep a phone number in my head long enough to dial it, and it takes forever to write a simple email. I start in on a task, and it’s only a few minutes before I’m distracted. My productivity has plummeted. Meanwhile, when at my home office alone, it's getting better step by step...

What was happening, is a malfunction of working memory: the ability to grasp incoming information, form it into a cohesive thought, and hold onto it long enough to do what you need to with it. “Think of it as the mental platform for our cognitive operations, for what we’re thinking now,” says Matti Laine, a professor of psychology at Åbo Akademi University in Finland. “Working memory is closely related to attention. You’re focusing on some task, some goal, some directive or behavior you want to get accomplished.”

In other words, working memory is the ability to reason in real-time, and it’s a big part of what makes the human brain so powerful. But research has shown that rapidly changing circumstances, worry, and anxiety can all have a significant impact on your ability to focus.

Rapidly-changing circumstances, worry, and anxiety can all have a significant impact on your ability to focus

“Long before the pandemic, we completed an online study with a large group of American adults who filled out self-assessment questionnaires,” says Laine. “We saw a trend of a negative relationship between anxiety and working memory. The higher the anxiety, the lower the working memory performance.” When you’re having an acute anxious experience – say, someone, threatening is walking behind you on your way home in the dark – it means you might have trouble recalling the details of their face. A drawn-out stressful situation can also ravage the working memory, making even the simplest tasks feel more difficult than they used to be.

“We’re talking about anxiety and stress that’s not acute,” says Laine. “It’s related to a deeply uncertain future. You don’t know – does it continue this summer, this autumn? Nobody knows. It’s leading us to a more chronic anxiety situation.”

New situations. New experiences. 

While collecting data for an as-yet-unpublished study on working memory training this spring, Laine says he and his team asked about 200 people from the UK and North America whether they had anxiety specifically linked to the pandemic.

Sustained anxiety can also cause insomnia, explains Oliver Robinson of the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience at University College London. “Lack of sleep is a really good way of impairing working memory,” he says. “If you’re not sleeping as well, that’s a great way to wreck it.”

Even if you’re not explicitly aware of being more on edge, “it’s something you’re processing,” adds Robinson. Working memory problems might also be due in part to a cognitive load that’s overwhelming your brain’s capacity.

Ducking out to the shops used to be a mundane activity. Now with Covid-19, there are many more steps in the process that increase anxiety and mental load, wrote Kate Morgan. 

The good news is you can exercise working memory. There are lots of ‘brain games’ out there, but playing most of them, experts agree, doesn’t do anything except make you better at that game. “Cognitive training games don’t make me better at remembering my shopping list,” says Robinson. “That’s like trying to train people to play tennis by having them run.”

In other words, rebooting your working memory may also mean cutting down on your news consumption and considering a break from social media. But the most effective thing to do might simply be to convince yourself it’s OK to be struggling. That helped me a lot for several days....

SPLENDID ISOLATION

My column in Mindanao Daily and BusinessWeek Mindanao
Social anxiety is the single most common psychological problem according to innumerable survey results worldwide. The magnificent, gorgeous and excellent isolation, resulting out of being nervous when meeting people is really the opposite. The state of being isolated, reminds me of being in a hospital with an infectious disease. Especially nowadays while experiencing the Coronavirus spreading all around the world.

Does the project of giving a speech or going to a social gathering give you the willies? Relax, there are always ways and solutions to help you by teaching you "never to be nervous again".

I have been always the most silent pupil in elementary and high school. I was ashamed even to talk to or with my teachers. Several terrible school records have been the result. But, I wanted to become a journalist. I am still one. And, I was  teaching 12 years at an university. I will be teaching again German language soon at Ateneo de Davao.

During college times and while writing my first articles, I learned from my first boss, a daily news publisher, to avoid being nervous while meeting people. I was always prepared. Preparation for any communicating situation is a must. I have been invited to many parties and gatherings. I always asked for the guest list. I scanned all newspapers and browsed in the net.

"In your opinion, who..." or "What do you think of....?" kept the momentum going. That was sometime during the 1960's. Since that time I was just very lucky to meet always the right people at the right time and place, which kept on teaching me how to avoid splendid isolation. Whether you're delivering a speech, approaching your boss, or joining an important social occasion, do at first your homework.

The most polished, smoothly delivered and spontaneous soundings talks are the result of many hours of work and years long experiences. The memorable one-liners and moving phrases that went down in history didn't come from the last minute bursts of inspiration.

I also learned from Harvard University historian Richard Marius, "that good writing is a kind of wresting with thought". Or, as New York Times columnist William Safire expressed before: "To communicate, put your thoughts in order, give them a purpose, use them to persuade, to instruct, to discover, to seduce!"

Let's don't forget, that everyone of us has something to be proud of, and that everyone enjoys talking about it. But, you have to make it happen!

Undue care and anxiety

Undue care and anxiety

TUE, MAY 23, 2017 BY THE MINDANAO DAILY MIRROR LEAVE A COMMENT

IN MY OPINIONKlaus Doring

Life is better than ever, so, why so many people seem to be un-happy? Whenever I hear people saying that everything is bad, I think of my late grandmother, born in 1899 (!) into a really awful world in Germany and its surroundings. The so-called “Golden Twenties” between the two World Wars have been every-thing but golden for her, my relatives and millions of people. “Lola” never complained, even during the sorrowful time in the former East Germany, the “German Democratic Republic.” Lola reached the ripe old age of almost 86.

We hardly count our blessings. We enjoy counting our crosses. Instead of gains, we count our losses. We don’t have to do all that counting – computers do it for us. Information is easily had.

Just remember this: Opportunity doesn’t just knock – it jiggles the doorknob, and “your friend” – the worrier, is with you day and night, at every corner, following your every step. Complaining and grumbling are good excuses, aren’t they? We have time and opportunities to do almost anything. So why haven’t we done it? We have the freedom of bondage or restraint, every one of us in his or her very special way – but, we’re still our old inferior selves.

The job is boring! I don’t find a good job! The house is an unpleasing mixture of tidy and dirty things. It’s a mess! I am not in the mood to arrange my garden. I can’t afford a gardener. That’s life. How sad! No, it’s not MY fault. Of course not!

The whole world is an awful place filled with dreadful and horrible negativism. Especially nowadays. Yes, I confess, I am also surrounded by many worriers who put their fears into me! Politicians, i.e., many times love to search for some grave alarm that will cause individuals to abandon their separate concerns and act in concert, so that politi-cians can wield the baton. Calls to fatal struggles and fights are forever be-ing surroun-ded.

The over-bearing person, who tyrannizes the weak, the person, who wants to domineer and to bluster, is simply nothing else than a worrier, who might claim to be a friend. But he isn’t! Really not! The bullying of fellow citizens by means of dread and fright has been going on since Paleolithic times. The night wolf is eating the moon. Give me silver, and I’ll make him spit out.

Well, when will we start counting our courage and not our fears, or enjoy instead our woes? Wor-rying itself is pointless. Of course,  no society has achieved perfectly rules of law, never-ending educa-tion or unique responsible governments. Let’s seek out the worries but avoid the worriers, because they try to avoid liberty.