77. Why do we worry about the future?

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Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome back to the Psychology of Your Twenties, the podcast where we talk through some of the big life changes and transitions of our twenties and what they mean for our psychology. Hello everybody, or welcome back to the show, or welcome back to the podcast. New listeners, old listeners, wherever you are in the world right now, it is so great to have you here back for another episode. Before we begin, I'm just gonna say I'm a little bit under the weather. I unfortunately have COVID. I know so sad. So if my voice is a little bit quirky and gross, please do not DM me saying that I sound weird. That is why it gets us all at some stage. So that's where we are at the moment. But it's not going to stop us from talking about today's topic, because today we're going to talk about how we can stop overthinking and worrying about the future. I think it is such a common experience in our twenties to be filled with a lot of doubt, a lot of insecurity, a lot of uncertainty about what's going to happen. You know, the world is so large, we have so many choices, and there are so many unknowns that we can almost feel paralyzed with anxiety. And I have been there. I'm sure you have to. Maybe you're worried about your career choices, whether you'll find a love, whether you'll be happy in ten years, making enough money, or even bigger existential questions around climate change and the economy. It can be really, really crippling. But I also really do believe that understanding our reaction and our fear of the future from a psychological perspective can be really liberating. So we're going to break down some really incredible concepts today that relate to overthinking the future, from our natural stress response, to the paradox of choice, the illusion of control, self preservation since you know so much more so that we can find freedom from anticipatory anxiety about the future. The way I see it is that when you worry about something, you take away from them now. And a really beautiful quote I heard the other day said that when you worry about something, you experience it twice. Obviously we can understand that and know that our fears about the future are irrational, but applying this wisdom is a lot more difficult. Trust me, I repeat those words to myself so many times, and I still find myself awake late into the afternoons, late into the evenings, paralyzed about what my future has in store. So alongside a discussion of the origins of future spiraling, as I call it, we're also going to walk through some of the psychological tips from Buddhism to dancing and mind body work to stay present and to stop worrying so much about what the future has in store for us. It's a big one. It's a deep and existential episode for sure, So without further ado, let's jump into it. This episode is dedicated to the people like myself who find themselves spiraling and overthinking the future. It's dedicated to the people who are already worrying for themselves in five years, who are constantly questioning their decisions, double guessing themselves, and stressed about life's many unknowns. I've been there, I am still there. So let's break it down together and dive into exactly how we can stop overthinking and worrying about our futures. I think it needs to be said, anxiety about the future is an entirely natural response, as much as it is frustrating and overwhelming, Like I said before, life is full of a lot of unknowns and novel experiences and situations that we need to find ways to navigate, especially in our twenties. Much of what we're going through we are experiencing for the first time as adults, and there is no guidebook. There is no amount of advice that is ever going to make us feel assured and that we're making the right decisions, and that is really, really scary. I think our generation has also been forced to carry the burden of some really intense existential problems, you know, worrying about the state of the climate, the state of our environment, about nuclear weapons, how the bees are doing, the economy, and even a potential recession. It's a lot to take on. It's a lot to carry, especially when we feel so hopeless and unable to change some of those situations. You know. I'm always so surprised when I come across news articles being like, why are millennials or twenty year old so anxious? Why are they turning away from traditional jobs? Why are they not happy with the way things are? And it's like, well, when you're not sure you'll even have a future, how are we expected to not feel anxious? I think that's an incredibly common experience that unites a lot of us in this decade. And here's the thing. It's really normal to feel almost paralyzed or overwhelmed by the few. But what I really want to do is explain some of the scientific and psychological reasons why that occurs, particularly how it relates to concepts like stress and anxiety, how it relates to self preservation and social comparison. Firstly, let's break down exactly why some of us have what is essentially an elongated and chronic sense of anxiety when it comes to that big question, what does the future hold? What am I going to do? Stress is a natural response to uncertainty. When we are exposed to an unknown situation, such as the prospect of our future, our brain is naturally fearful because these situations, these unknown situations, could contain danger, and it wants us to be prepared, So it releases hormones like norah, pnephren and cortisol to prepare our bodies entirely, unconsciously to deal with what it perceives as a threat, even if that threat is years away. This feeling has another name. It's called anticipatory anxiety. And this is the fear or dread you experience before an event even occurs. So if you find yourself agonizing about the horrible unknown things that might happen, this is an indicator that you're experiencing anticipatory anxiety. And it happens because our thoughts are focused on a possible future or a negative outcome that we don't feel prepared for. So if you notice yourself intensely focused on fearful, unwanted outcomes, if you find yourself becoming really hopeless or frustrated that you don't know what you're doing, if you're always expecting about outcome or having irrational thoughts about your future, like you know, if I don't make the right decision now, I'm going to be miserable by thirty, or I'll be destitute or have nothing, or I'm never going to find love. Feeling that a rational sense of really intense fear and feeling highly apprehensive is a sign that you might have anticipatory anxiety towards your future. You may have guessed this already, but this has been linked across multiple studies to other conditions such as generalized anxiety disorders and depression. That's because overthinking, and a reaction of this nature is seen as a byproduct of both of these conditions. The same neurons fire, the body experiences the same thing. It's just in response to a different trigger, and in this case a highly abstract one. It's in response to the trigger that is our future. It's also no surprise that people who have already received a diagnosis for these conditions tend to report higher rates of anticipatory anxiety compared to the general population. So that is one reason why some of us have this irrational or consuming fear and worry about the future. So why do our brains do this? Why do we find ourselves spiraling and worrying often when we don't even want to, when we know it's illogical and it won't help this situation anyway. We can't predict the future, but our anxiety likes to convince us that we can. And this relates to the idea called the illusion of control. So as a species, we're not incredibly great with dealing with the unknown, primarily because it makes us feel helpless and therefore in danger. And this has a lot to do with self preservation, which is essentially our innate instinct towards survival. We want to ensure our survival no matter what. We want to be protected against potential danger or uncertainty. So worrying about something like the future, mulling it over, trying to prepare that feels strangely satisfying to us because it allows us to feel like we are in some way in control and can be prepared for what is coming. So when we ruminate, it eases our anxiety because it provides this sense that we are able to anticipate what will happen and know what to do regardless of the outcome. So this explains why I don't know if you've ever had this really intense sense of like, oh my goodness, I'm super lost, I don't what I want to do, and you've sat down and you've almost journaled or written out all the exact steps to get you when you want to go. You know you've made a five year plan, and afterwards you feel a lot better. You've put it on the page, you've ruminated over it, you've given yourself some idea of a way forward. You've probably feel a lot better because it brings you a sense of control and you feel that you've been able to anticipate what the future holds, even for a second, so you're at peace. Well, we know this isn't true. We don't have that control. Hence why it's called an illusion of control. Because as much as we try to turn a situation over and over in our brain, as much as we try to plan, and we sit worrying and contemplating, so much of our future is decided by you know, well, by fate, by luck, by circumstances. We can never asipate. And that is not a bad thing, you know. As we always say on this show, the best outcomes always occur when you let life surprise you. Time and time again. Life has given me its greatest gifts not when I least expected them, but when I didn't expect them at all. And we're going to touch on this later, particularly how we can become comfortable with uncertainty. But that's another component of this, right, this illusion of control. The reason that we worry is because it gives us this sense that we know what we're doing. There is this other unique aspect of our twenties that I think also really contributes to this experience, to this natural worry about the future. Choice opportunities, open doors, our twenties are really sold to us as this decade when the world is our oyster, it's at our fingertips. We can do absolutely anything that we want when life really begins. This initially sounds amazing. You know what's better then choice, What's better than endless freedom to determine our own life path as independent, curious people. But choice in this instance can actually be a double edged sword. And I want to explain why. Back in the nineteen seventies, a number of psychologists they wanted to understand how we make life decisions. So what they did they went out into the world and they gave people a bunch of decisions to make, and with that options to choose from. But they found something really surprising. When people were given too many options, they became almost paralyzed, and they found it much harder to make a decision than when they had fewer choices. And this is what we call in psychology choice overload, or the paradox of choice. We often think that having more options or doors open to us is incredibly liberating and it gives us agency, but it actually has the opposite impact. Making a decision becomes overwhelming, becomes fearful because we have so many potential outcomes and risks that may result from making the wrong choice. Having too many approximately equally good options is mentally draining because each option must be weighted against alternatives to select the best one, and we become stuck. I just I have to mention one of my favorite studies ever done here. It was a study about jam, not really about jam, but involving jam. So in two in the early two thousands, these psychologists from Stanford University. They decided to set up a store at a local fi this market, and on the first day they displayed twenty four different types of jams. And then on the next day, at the same food market, they gave people the choice of only six jams. And well, what would you know, but when people were only given six options, six choices of jams, they were much more likely to purchase a jar. They were a lot less indecisive because they had less options. Now, this experiment, as strange as it sounds, it can be applied to the paralysis we experience when we're worrying about our future in our twenties, and why we find ourselves almost unable to make a decision society, our family, our social environment, they tell us that we can be anything. We can be a doctor or a lawyer, or in marketing, or a stay at home parent or a podcaster. And you know what, that's too many options. We only want six jams. We only want six options. And when we begin questioning whether we're making the right choice, whether we're closing any doors too prematurely, that's when we start to feel incredibly worried. That's when that paralysis we were talking about, that indecision, that fear begins to take hold. And the other element of this that occurs at this age, whether you're twenty or even twenty nine, is that we haven't had enough life experiences to even know or begin to grapple with the idea of what we want to do, what we even like, what is going to make us happy. We might have some idea, but the truth is that we haven't seen enough of the world to even know what's out there. So our basis for this choice when it comes to our future, our evidence is limited. We really don't know. And I know this can feel so scary, but something that always reassures me is all those stories of the many wonderful people in the world who at thirty five, at fifty, at seventy, they change careers, they try something completely new, they go back to university, they start again. That is so incredible to me and an amazing reminder that you are not locked into any future for yourself. You have agency, you can change. There is nothing stopping you from deciding ten years from now that you might want something different and just going for it. I think it can be really easy to fall into this trap that society is set for us, that tells us that we need to have it all figured out. That is a lie that is just not true. Life is so weird and full of change and possibility, and it's yours to go after. But before we move on, I do just want to talk about that misconception for one second, because where does that even come from? I really don't know, and it is such a source of panic and uncertainty for so many people. So where did this myth that you need to know what you're doing begin? And I have a few theories, and of course there have been other people who've had their own theories and conducted studies to figure it out. I don't think this will surprise anyone, but it has a lot to do with social comparison. We are very naturally inclined to compare our progress and our decisions to those of others. Comparing ourselves to others, it's a social instinct that orients us to what is perceived as normal by the group, and we use that information to create dgments about where we should be and where we're going. But our minds are not that great at choosing realistic points of comparison, and our society is also not great at showing us an accurate depiction of what life is really like for others at our age. So often the people we end up comparing ourselves to are those very few lucky ones who have somehow managed to figure it out or who have already achieved so much at this age. This past week, actually, the Forbes thirty under thirty came out, and I was seeing announcements and images about it all over my social media, and my immediate reaction was to compare myself to these people and to spiral and question, you know, what am I doing wrong? Why am I not at this point? Am I falling behind? That pattern of thought was highly around national, but it was inherently derived from my instinct to measure my own personal development against someone else's. Our brain likes to choose unattainable examples to compare against, which is entirely unhelpful but also out of our control. This is why when we often feel so worried about our progress, it's because we're looking at the zero point zero zero one percent of people who do have it figured out and thinking that that is the norm. But I'm going to tell you a secret. Right now, no one knows what they're doing. No one knows, and even for that small minority who do, they certainly don't know what they'll be doing in five or ten years from now. They're just like us in that sense. And I did an entire episode on social comparison if you are particularly interested in this, so listen to that if you want to understand more. But I think it is this complex interaction. When we think about our fears for the future, it all kind of boils down to these four essential concepts. Right. It's anticipatory anxiety that provides us with this illusion of control. It's self preservation and wanting to feel like we're prepared for whatever happens. It's the paradox of choice. It's being almost paralyzed by having so many opportunities that we can't even pick. And it's social comparison. It's thinking that you need to be further ahead, you need to be doing more than you're already doing, because you're looking at examples of success that are unrealistic. But I don't think that we need to feel paralyzed by this fear. I think that we can find freedom from worrying about the future. And this has been a huge personal journey of mine this last year, learning how to live in the moment and enjoy where I am right now. Trust me, it's a difficult process. You know. Even last week I was having so much intense, irrational anxiety about whether the decisions I was making right now we're going to mean that I was happy in ten years. So you're not alone in that. And what I really want to concentrate on next is how we can address our fears, How we can address our worry and move forward, How we can release ourselves from this anxiety about the future. Overthinking is both destructive and also incredibly mentally draining. It can make you feel like you are stuck in one place, and I think failure to act on this habit can also impact our day to day life and exacerbate things like our anxiety levels or decision palysis. But we're not here to ruminate on the bad, but look forward to the things that we can do to counter this negative cognitive pattern. The thing with fear and worry is that it's often trapped and contained to our brain, to our thoughts, So retraining our brain to quickly dispose of these thoughts is super crucial. This doesn't mean entirely eliminating the feeling of stress, but instead changing our perception or our reaction to this experience. When you begin to find yourself spiraling, approach your anxiety with excitement. Excitement and anxiety feel remarkably similar. They elicit the same racing thoughts, the same feeling in our stomach, the same physical reactions. So if you're sitting in bed really worried about what the future holds, worried about where you'll be, whether you're going to have you know what your parents had, whether you're in the right place right now, treat that feeling like excitement. Tell yourself, I am excited by this feeling. I am excited by this feeling. I am ready to be surprised by life. I am ready to see what happens. That way, you're no longer treating the semitic reaction as dangerous or something to be fearful of, but as a positive experience, one in which we have a positive perception of what we're going through. Right Like, everyone would much rather be excited than feel stressed or anxious, But they create the same physical reaction, So your perception of that, your thoughts towards that feeling, can actually change the nature of the reaction and how it's experienced by your body but also by your mind. Sometimes that's not always possible, you know, there are some big questions about the future that it's hard to feel excited by, like rising sea levels going to destroy our way of life, you know, not a fun one. But that doesn't need to stop us, or it doesn't need to hold us back from reducing our anxiety around that possibility. I had a therapist once offered me this tip, and I found it really useful, and maybe you will as a well. Schedule time to worry the same way you schedule time to exercise or to do life admin each day, give yourself just a twenty minute window to indulge in some light overthinking. I often find it more effective to actually write out exactly what I'm worried about in that time, to just journal my heart out and when that twenty minutes is up and leave it all on the page and I walk away. It obviously takes a lot of self discipline, but if you're up for it, it can be incredibly effective in separating your fear from your everyday life and experiences. There's also times when we just need a distraction. Like I mentioned before, worrying about the future can actually put a lot of pressure on our bodies. It can spike out quartosol levels, it can create insomnia, heighten pre existing mental health conditions. So we need to get out of our minds and into our bodies. We can do this in a few ways, but my favorite way to practice this is what my friend and I call crazy dance. I know it sounds really funny and kind of simple in the name, right, but essentially, I put on a song that I absolutely love, and I play it super loudly and I just spend five minutes moving and dance in the most insane way possible, moving my body however it wants to feeling the rhythm and how my body is responding and it brings me out of that physical anxiety and that physical reaction into a more present space. You'll find that it is a lot harder to contemplate the future and to experience existential dread and anxiety when you are grounded in the moment, when you are grounded in what your body is doing, where your limbs are going, the beat of the music, and it is incredibly euphoric. I always come out of it with such a sense of calm. It also has the added benefit of just being a great reliever of nervous energy in the body. I think exercise of any form is actually great for this, but so are things like body scans and meditation, or getting out into nature, talking to a friend, going to a movie, anything to just give your brain a break for a second. You know, you really deserve that piece, and connecting with your body removes kind of the energy that your brain is devoting to your irrational fears and to your irrational anxiety. The final strategy that I want to briefly discuss is a bit more abstract, I would say, and I think a bit more difficult to apply, but definitely still worth noting. We have to learn to become comfortable with uncertainty, with our fear of the unknown. This philosophy has a lot of roots in Buddhism and the belief that we can't change what happens to us, so we just have to ride the wave and let life's experience almost wash over us. Therefore, by adopting this almost stoic philosophy, the stoic ideology, we assist our brain in eliminating the instinctual need to overthink or worry about what's going to come. Because we know that whatever it is we will find a way through. We almost just become passive to it, like if this is going to happen, it's going to happen. I can't change anything. To get to this point, it's important to reflect on the times in your life when something unexpected happened, something beyond your control, and you've survived, you made it through. Bring that acknowledgement into the present day, add it to your problem solving toolkit as a reminder that you can and you have endured before. There has been so many things in your life that were scary that you did not expect, that you never could have predicted. But you're listening to this right now, you're still here. You made it through. I think it's also important to experience the joy and the excitement in change by you know, trying new things, pushing yourself beyond your comfort zone into new situations so that you can become comfortable with the feeling of discomfort, but also the reward that comes from that, and just watch as you, truly do become liberated from some of that fear. I'm not saying it will be instantaneous, but it will help, and we can slowly get better at dealing with that worry about the future. I think we've also spoken a bit today about anticipatory anxiety, and I kind of highlighted some of the links between that and generalized anxiety disorder and depression. Sometimes it is worth just getting help, going to a professional person, someone who's practicing, to kind of assist you through the transition from fear to peace. And I did a whole episode on this called I Think It's like your Guide to Therapy in your twenties. But I really do believe that if this is a problem that you're personally going through, receiving some professional help will be life changing. You know, there's only so much I can do and only so much I can say on one podcast that is going to help you. So I do really think it's an amazing opportunity to really connect with the basis of these fears, to connect with the root of your fear of the unknown and kind of move past it. And on that, I do just want to take a moment to remind you, whatever you're worried about, that is okay. It's okay to not have the answers. The future is super weird. We know it's coming, but we can never fully be sure of what it contains. So it's entirely natural to be experiencing fear. And trust me when I say that you are not alone. Sometimes that's just one of the best acknowledgements to just know that whatever life kind of throws out of you, what even the nature of that experience is, You're never going to be alone in that. That feels so comforting to me to know that it will be shared, It will be a mutual experience. There will be other people going through it at the same time. And I think, as much as we are such adaptable creatures, I really do promise that it's going to work out. And if you let life surprise you maybe you'll find yourself in an even better place than you could have imagined. Life is really funny that way. I think sometimes you expect all these things, you spend so much time worrying about them, and suddenly your life is in a completely different spot than you ever could have imagined it, and you're just like, Wow, I'm so glad I didn't anticipate this, because I'm so surprised and it's worked out even better than I could have imagined. I hope that if you've made it this far, you've learned something or at least feel a little bit less alone in your fear of the future. I know that it's really normal to spiral, it's really normal to overthink, and as a fellow twenty year old, I have been going through this so much recently, and I'm just kind of trying to get comfortable with not knowing and seeing what comes my way. So I really hope that you enjoyed this little slice of the Internet today. This episode. It was an absolute pleasure to be able to explore this topic a bit more, and there was so much psychology and science that I didn't really get to cover. So if you want to Part two, if you want a more scientific part two, more research based. I would totally be willing to do it because I think that this is one of those topics in psychology within the discipline, that there has been so much research into, and it's just so incredibly valuable. So please let me know. And as always, if you enjoyed this episode, please feel free to pass it on, share it with someone who you think might like it as well, or leave a five star review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, wherever you are listening right now. It really does help the show to grow. I read all of your reviews and they make me so happy and so emotional, So thank you to all of you who have left such kind words. If you want to be involved with the community, follow us at that Psychology Podcast on Instagram. It is a really great way to participate in polls, give episode suggestions, see what's coming up soon, like match like guest episodes, all of those things. So if you feel cool to do so, please feel free to give us a follow, and as always, thank you so much for listening. I hope you learned something, I hope you enjoyed this episode, and I hope you have a lovely week. We will see you again next week for another episode