A Plea Against Anxiety

Yesterday morning I sat in the waiting room of the clinic where I have my annual medical exams. Something had changed since my last visit: a huge black television monitor occupied one wall, with the channel tuned to CNN.

It was impossible to ignore; the small waiting room had been turned into a screening room, where even patients who didn't want to watch were forced to listen. In the space of just a few minutes, I heard commentators speculate that this might be the day that North Korea decided to launch a missle. I heard reports of a new, deadly strain of bird flu in China, and an outbreak of meningitis among gay men in Los Angeles.  There was discouraging discussion about the gun control bill, and a story that parents in Japan are starting to refuse to allow their children to come to the U.S. for university study, because of a perception that the country is becoming too dangerous.

A white-coated tecnician came into the room to get a cup of coffee just as the meningitis story was playing; the screen showed large electron-micrographs as the journalist's voice intoned the latest statistics. Oh dear, said the man, turning to me with a dismayed look on his face. He stood for a few minutes, riveted to the screen, and then walked out the door to begin his day.

My doctor came to the door and called my name; I was glad to escape. But during the morning I had to come back to the waiting room several times, between visits to the nurse for blood work, an EKG, and various other appointments. Each time, I watched the behavior of the other people in the room, all of whom would turn to face the TV, shaking their heads at each grim, frightening story. Last year, most of them were absorbed in their cell phones. I looked for a magazine or newspaper; unlike former visits, this time there was only one, an old issue of Vanity Fair; instead I pulled a book out of my pack, but it was very difficult to concentrate on the words.

Finally I turned to one of the other women and said, "I'm American, and really, this is part of what I came to Canada to escape."

As it turned out, she was originally American too, from North Carolina, but we had a pretty different take on things. She was conservative, I more liberal. While I objected to being force-fed anxiety by inflammatory stories in the media, she insisted it was "important to be informed." "I'm really worried when I go to the U.S. now," she said. "If I go to a shopping center across the border I really look around me at the people; it seems like anything could happen. Everyone has guns." Well, yes, I agreed, many people do, and I think that's a big problem. But you have to look at the statistics as well; your chance of being killed in a Wal-Mart in Burlington, Vermont, is not extremely high.

We both finished our appointments and went home, where in the afternoon we learned what had happened in Boston, and the cycle of horror, speculation, analysis, and fear began spinning all over again.

I don't want to add yet another voice to that sad and mostly-well-meant cacophony. I've spent many days of my life in Boston, and my heart goes out to the people of that city. If there is something concrete I can do to help, I will do it.

What I've been thinking about is the television in the waiting room, a Canadian waiting room, that once was a quiet place where people read, or talked to a companion, or even simply sat and looked out the window. Its presence seems to me an ominous symbol of something that has gone very wrong in most western societies: our inability to be with ourselves, to cope with the essential human condition of solitude, especially in situations that cause our anxiety to rise. It concerns me that, in our secular, post-liberal-arts, technological, perpetually-connected society, so little effort goes into teaching children how to be alone, showing them the richness and solace of time spent with nature, with the arts and handcrafts, with books and music, with oneself walking in a city or sitting on a bench: eyes open, ears open, mind and heart awake to the dance of life flowing around us.

When I return to the United States, as I did just last week, I'm always struck by the palpable level of general anxiety, so much greater than it is here in Quebec. But is that anxiety, and the corresponding reactiveness -- even in the wake of tragedies such as have been experienced in the past decade -- justified? In today's New York Times, University of Maryland criminologist Gary LaFree states, “I think people are actually surprised when they learn that there’s been a steady decline in terrorist attacks in the U.S. since 1970.” Speaking of both domestic and foreign plots, he noted that there were approximately 40 percent fewer attacks in America during the ten years after 9/11 than there had been in the previous decade. (LaFree is director of the highly-regarded National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism, which studies terrorism and keep a Global Terrorism Database. He adds a note that nearly half the worldwide attacks, and 1/3 of those in the U.S., have never been solved.)

However, I think the media bears a large responsibility for fanning the flames of American anxiety.  Supposed neutral channels like CNN feed viewers an endless diet of anxiety-producing stories, while the left and right square off in loud, combative talk shows and news hours, each side trying to out-shout the other. Television is a very powerful medium. Is it any wonder that so many people feel under attack, vulnerable, and constantly anxious, worrying about what is going to happen to them or to their loved ones? It it any wonder that they feel like the entire world is taking sides, at war, that it's us-against-them, myself against the potential unknown assalilant, intruder, terrorist, crazy person lurking in every community? Furthermore, we know that violence begets violence, that copycat crimes proliferate, and that what a lot of perpetrators want the most is publicity.

If the U.S. wants to worry about drugs and terrorism slipping across its porous northern border, then I am concerned about the insidious infiltration of this kind of secular preaching, these incessant sermons of anxiety and fear originating from the south. And much more than that, I wonder if those of us who have chosen to live our lives differently can perhaps be more vocal and intentional about why, and how. The world has always been dangerous for a vast majority of its citizens, but we in the west have been able to ignore that too long. Living positively, with awareness and joy in each day -- in spite of the possibility of death, which can and does happen anywhere, anytime -- is actually possible, as our brothers and sisters in war-torn, poverty-ravaged societies can teach us. And to look closer to home on this sad day: who knows better the fullness of solitude, or the potential triumph of the human spirit, than the long-distance runner?

Comments

[Loren]

I agree 100%, especially with the role of the media in promoting this kind of story.

Wonder if our drone strikes get the same kind of media coverage in Arab countries?

[Robbi Nester]

As a person who must be medicated for inherited anxiety, I don't watch tv news anymore. Even though there are scary stories on NPR radio news as well, at least I'm not forced to confront photographs of bombings, etc. It helps quite a bit. My suggestion? Bring a book to the doctor's office. Or get the office to switch the channel to Food Channel or a film channel.

[Mary]

This is a subject that really hits home for me. In the last few years, when I've had to be at the hospital for tests for my husband or myself, it seemed that we were always bombarded by these TV's. It takes all my courage, but frequently I ask those who are waiting with me if they mind if I turn the TV off. I only do this when it seems like no one is really listening. Many times, people seem amazed that I had the audacity to ask, but many times, they agree, which is a huge relief. There was one incident, however, when I asked the other person in the waiting room if they minded if I turned the TV off and they said, "No." But then, when I turned the knob, I found I couldn't turn it off. I went to the receptionist's desk to ask what the problem was. She said the TV could only be turned off from the administrative desk and she's told not to touch it. I'd really like to know who instituted this kind of invasion of our privacy, especially when people are in a place where they're bound to feel more vulnerable.

[flask]

yep.

let's start here: the two small bombs in boston weren't the only bombs that went off around the world yesterday.

the two people who were killed (horrific enough) were barely a blip on the tally of those who died yesterday.

yes, it was sad and frightening.

yes, it was a bad thing.

it does not begin to warrant 24 hour media coverage. come to think of it, very little warrants 24 hour media coverage. we are not emotionally or neurologically equipped to process the bad news of the whole world every day.

this morning i heard a newscaster (i was, like you, trapped in a waiting room) urge people to get on with their normal lives.

why don't we start with resuming regular television programming?

i heard someone declare resolutely that boston will survive this.

yeah, probably. if a city the size of boston can't survive the equivalent of a couple of bad bus crashes, they have bigger problems than are visible on the surface.

it is a very, very sad thing. for some small group of people life is changed forever and for two of them it is over.

it is not a grand scale disaster nor is it a national tragedy. news presenters who have nothing to say should stop speaking.

"that's all we know, folks. here's some music."

[Peter]

Well said, Beth.

Hard to pump gas down here anymore without being talked at by a TV.

[Dick]

Beth, you construct brilliantly a graphic and unsettling picture of a society more besieged by a self-generated culture of paranoia than by the actuality of real and manifest threats to its security and general welfare. But hasn't this been a feature of life and times in the United States since at least 1941 when the USA was finally and irrevocably dragged fully onto the world stage? I can remember from childhood in the late '50s/early '60s a sense of bemusement here in the UK at the level of anti-communist hysteria in day-to-day life.

In fact, it's within that time that the predominant British perception of the US as a nation at once dazzlingly sophisticated and startlingly naive has its roots. And if there is a concomitant general assumption here it would be that 1,000 years of collective marination have provided the jumbled and constantly mutating countries of Europe and Western Asia with a shared understanding of the cycles of history. Nothing surprises us, nothing truly catches us unawares because ever since the rise and fall of the Graeco-Roman Empires and their subsequent imperial offsprings, the same tides seem constantly to rise and fall. The United States became a nation in 1776 - and even that relative stability was seriously compromised between 1861 and 1865 with deep discomfiture as to binding centralised nationality lasting into contemporary times.

Maybe the US needs to experience several centuries more of the grindingly slow social/cultural/political progression towards the jaded but still engaged and purposeful world view that characterises the European overview of global events. Until such times, maybe paranoia and its reaction mechanisms of shock and awe must be the American lot.

(All of which reads, I realise, as suffocatingly patronising! But you know, Beth, of my acute interest in so many things intrinsically American and my understanding of their inestimable value to the world).

[G]

TV watching competes with smoking and obesity as a threat to health:

http://bjsm.bmj.com/content/early/2011/08/01/bjsm.2011.085662.short?rss=1

More than one reason to turn it off.

[Sharat Buddhavarapu]

The larger phenomenon is, I think, a by-product of the fact that media moguls didn't know how to deal with 24 hour broadcast power and the acceleration of information proliferation since the TV. I think your example of keeping TVs out of waiting rooms at the doctor's office is a perfect analogy for the strategy we can take towards reducing the anxiety-producing behaviors of modern US society. We, in private communities (within our circle of friends and family), need to commit to conscious consumption of media (because its so hard for one person to change their consumption habits alone). There need to be spaces where those media, including Internet accessing devices, are absent.

@Loren: I agree that the 24-hour anxiety-generating machine is terrible, but it tends to point its nose in the right direction every once in a while. Drone warfare is one of those times. As a US citizen, its distressing to hear President Obama talk out of one side of his mouth about ending the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, while at the same time pushing legislation that technically allows him to direct drone strikes at any person under suspicion of terrorist activities, including US citizens.Here is one great piece on drones.

[Marja-Leena]

Excellent post, Beth! And great comments. It seems to me that we get up here in Canada a lot of American stations (such as CNN) which seem over eager to feed us this kind of excessive and over-excited news reporting which promotes so much anxiety and fear in viewers. Then politicians (even some in Canada) use all this to promote more policing, more anti-terrorism, more jails and border-tightening measures, on and on. We rarely watch TV as we no longer have cable, only a small antenna for a few free channels such as CBC. Internet news is bad enough but is easy to control. I dislike any public, restaurant or office spaces with a loud TV always on. Fortunately not at my doctors and the dentist offers it but always asks if we want it on and I refuse.

[Peter]

N.B.: http://www.theonion.com/articles/this-what-world-like-now,32068/

[Jan]

Right on, Beth. America keeps ratcheting up its daily servings of sugar, salt, and fear. God forbid people acclimate or they might get bored and look for other options. It's like a conspiracy theory: an industry that makes money by keeping the people riveted to fast food, news, and political authorities, because "you'll never survive on your own."
As for the peace and quiet that should be in a doctor's office (to keep that blood pressure down), news broadcasts seem like the equivalent of a dentist handing out candy. Counter-productive. Is this preferred to the option of letting people entertain themselves or communicate with fellow patients?

I often think that most people would go stark-raving mad to find themselves in heaven with only a harp and eternal happiness. They wouldn't know how to deal with the lack of constant trials and upsets (which so effective draw attention away from one's own inner life). It would be interesting to have a grassroots push toward soothing environments becoming an integral part of the health system.

[ET]

Well said. We really have no need to be force fed anxiety producing "news". Turn it off.

[maria]

Thank you for speaking out and for speaking up against anxiety, and for saying it so well. I've been tongue tied, unable to express many of the same feelings, thinking that it's just me.

[Roderick Robinson]

In 1973 I had just emerged from lunch with colleagues at a pub near Smithfield meat market in London and there was an explosion close by. I can hear it now. A shockingly loud, plangent sound as if the surrounding tall buildings had been transformed from bricks and concrete into sheet steel which was resonating sympathetically at the shock wave.

One street away from where we stood was the Old Bailey, London's central criminal court. We looked at each other; none of us said anything but the abbreviation IRA hung in the air. I turned with one of my friends towards the office; the other friend said he intended to have a look. He didn't have far to walk and quickly caught us up. "It was a bomb. Pretty bad."

At the time I regretted not seeing what there was to see. Later I was glad I didn't. To gawk is to concede something small but undeserved to terrorism.

Round about this time I started changing my mind about the transmission of news. Other than the pictures which, with few exceptions, rarely convey anything useful TV is a dubious news medium. Immediacy is all and immediacy may not tell us very much. Rather the reverse. Finding hysteria many reporters feel it necessary to become hysterical. Time after time I tell myself this: OK, such-and-such event has happened, now I'll go to bed and discover what matters in tomorrow's newspapers. I should add I'm lucky in that I take a newspaper I can trust.

But it seems I'm in a diminishing minority. Many people not only feed on immediacy (with the same sub-facts repeated over and over) but feel it necessary to participate, adding their half-baked comments to that which was quarter-baked in the first place. And then come the professional commenters. You are right to distrust the transmission of anxiety masquerading as a public service. At times like these we need catharsis; the act of writing can sometimes provide it.

[Beth]

Thanks for all these thoughtful comments. One note: my dentist/dental surgeon used to be addicted to the news, which was always running on the TV in the waiting room (though softly.) However, he's a very smart guy, and he finally decided it was detrimental to his emotional well-being. He turned off his own TV, and those in the office. Instead he bought a fancy massage chair, and a monitor/DVD system. Patients can go in early or stay after their appointment, have a 20-minute massage, and watch calm videos like Planet Earth if they want to watch something; otherwise they can shut their eyes and listen to music or simply silence. I think it's innovative, and terrific, and a treat rather than a waiting-room experience to be endured. Obviously that's not a solution for a larger patient-base, but if there really must be a TV in the room, why not have it play something calm, relaxing, and beautiful?

[Natalie]

My earlier comment seems to have vanished....oh well, now I can't quite remember it!

[Judy]

Wow, this really hit home. I can't stand being force-fed any of it – news, cooking info at the checkout line at the grocery store, music in the drugstore, even ads playing while you're pumping gas at the gas station. Waiting room screens are the worst, especially if they're playing a news channel. In those situations I frequently ask other patients if they mind if I turn the television off. Almost every time the response is "No", so off it goes. I suppose most people wouldn't be comfortable doing that, but if more did, maybe waiting rooms would be quiet once again.