Today, PĒLL takes a dive into two of our most dreaded emotions (pun intended), anxiety and fear, as well as exploring some options to keep these unwelcome visitors at bay!
Anxiety and fear are as ingrained into the human experience as any other emotion. They’re perfectly natural; an evolutionary adaptation that protects us from dangers both imminent and further ahead. We should all feel anxiety and fear from time-to-time – there would be something wrong with us if we didn’t. Yet, for many people (this writer included!), anxieties and fears can become so prevalent and overwhelming that they stop someone from achieving their goals, fulfilling their potential, and – most importantly – from fully enjoying their life.
In a very real sense, we possess prehistoric bodies that are forced to grapple with a digital world. The average person reads more in a single day than most medieval people would in their entire lifetime, and is bombarded with news stories and other pieces of information from around the globe on a constant basis. Simply put, a mental system designed to deal with a relatively small amount of stimuli is being tasked with navigating a web consisting of billions of connections. And that’s a problem.
The growing issue of anxiety
Levels of anxiety in the general population have never been higher. According to a survey in the United Kingdom in 2022/2023, 29.9% of British men and 37.1% of British women reported feeling high levels of anxiety (up from 18.3% and 21.8% in 2012-2015). Of course, the COVID-19 pandemic explains part of this drastic rise, but numbers have been steadily increasing for most of the 21st century.
A ten-year study published in 2021 looked at increasing anxiety rates and posited that this was in-part due to many new realities of the modern world that we are simply not biologically equipped to process, with financial crashes, climate change, and social media all seen as major contributing factors. Clearly, with the world getting ever more complex and our brains near-indistinguishable from those of our ancestors, increased anxiety and fear is here to stay. These feelings can be painful enough to experience on their own, but their impact isn’t just limited to their immediate effects.
Self-sabotage: the illusion of control
One of the most common ways that anxiety and fears can negatively impact our lives is through self-sabotage. Self-sabotage, as the name implies, is behaviour that impedes our ability to function to the fullest of our abilities and achieve our goals. This can take many forms, including procrastination, resistance to change, and self-criticism.
Research suggests that these behaviours are most often a direct reaction to anxiety and fears. By engaging in these unhelpful behaviours, we may subconsciously feel that we are gaining a level of control over proceedings. Of course, this is an illusion. If you don’t apply for a new job because you are afraid of not getting it, you are not really seizing any control of the situation; you are simply relegating yourself to the worst possible outcome.
As Wayne Gretzky famously said (and Michael Scott of The Office famously stole): “you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.” Prohibiting our own growth may feel like the safe option in the short-term, but really, the long-term impact can be much more damaging on our happiness.
Unlocking your best self
So, we’ve looked at anxiety and fear and the effects they can have on our lives. But what can we do about it? The good news is that there is an abundance of effective treatments available. Pharmacological treatments are an option, but not one to be taken lightly, as psychotropic drugs can come with a host of impactful side effects. For severe sufferers, however, the benefits may outweigh these considerations. Non-physical treatments such as psychotherapy have also been shown to be effective, with combined approaches even more so.
Research suggests that cannabidiol (CBD) oil, such as those offered by PĒLL, have been proven to significantly reduce anxiety symptoms with minimal adverse effects. CBD has also been shown to be effective in tackling learned fears, minimising their expression, disrupting their resurgence, and facilitating the extinction of some learned fears altogether (alongside therapy). As stigma of cannabinoids fades away and more research is conducted, we see new studies with each passing week that suggest this previously little-understood class of compounds could be a game-changer for those suffering from mental and physical ailments.
Ready to take the first steps to a happier and more fulfilling future? Take a look at PĒLL’s full range of CBD products right HERE.
We recommend:
10% CBD isolate or 10% Medium extract for light social anxiety and sports performance anxiety.
30% CBD isolate or 30% Medium extract for strong daily anxiety, public appearances or even the first date scaries.
References
- Choosing Therapy (2023). Self-Sabotaging: Why We Do It & 8 Ways to Stop. https://www.choosingtherapy.com/self-sabotaging
- Crocq M. A. (2015). A history of anxiety: from Hippocrates to DSM. Dialogues in clinical neuroscience, 17(3), 319–325. https://doi.org/10.31887/DCNS.2015.17.3/macrocq
- Cuijpers, P., Sijbrandij, M., Koole, S. L., Andersson, G., Beekman, A. T., & Reynolds, C. F., 3rd (2014). Adding psychotherapy to antidepressant medication in depression and anxiety disorders: a meta-analysis. World psychiatry: official journal of the World Psychiatric Association (WPA), 13(1), 56–67. https://doi.org/10.1002/wps.20089
- Jurkus, R., Day, H. L., Guimarães, F. S., Lee, J. L., Bertoglio, L. J., & Stevenson, C. W. (2016). Cannabidiol Regulation of Learned Fear: Implications for Treating Anxiety-Related Disorders. Frontiers in pharmacology, 7, 454. https://doi.org/10.3389/fphar.2016.00454
- Mental Health Foundation (2023). Anxiety: statistics. https://www.mentalhealth.org.uk/explore-mental-health/mental-health-statistics/anxiety-statistics
- Psychology Today (2011) Self-sabotage. https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/basics/self-sabotage
- Skelley, J. W., Deas, C. M., Curren, Z., & Ennis, J. (2020). Use of cannabidiol in anxiety and anxiety-related disorders. Journal of the American Pharmacists Association, 60(1), 253–261. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.japh.2019.11.008
- Slee, A., Nazareth, I., Freemantle, N., & Horsfall, L. (2021). Trends in generalised anxiety disorders and symptoms in primary care: UK population-based cohort study. The British journal of psychiatry : the journal of mental science, 218(3), 158–164. https://doi.org/10.1192/bjp.2020.159
