There's a narrative that everyone now is stressed/busy/anxious – do you find this relatable?
2026-06-09 11:42 UTC
Replies (11)
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@ALoafOfBread@lemmy.ml 2026-06-09 12:44
I’m pretty anxious. Fascism is advancing very rapidly in my country and is dismantling everything from science funding to the basic rule of law to basic public health and disease prevention while being openly corrupt and literally just stealing tax money. My country is helping to perpetrate a genocide. I work minimum 45 hours/week, usually closer to 55 hours/week. This is nice because I was working 70-80 hour weeks last year, but things have slowed down for me a bit. Idk who in the US is working 35 hours, but it’s not me… Trying to plan for the future is very difficult because my government is running pump and dump schemes on the market literally constantly while also effectively destroying the bond market, threatening the dollar’s status as workd reserve currency, etc. There’s no safe place to put money away for retirement and it is very unlikely the Social Security program will exist by the time I retire. I am lucky to have began saving for retirement early and live well below my means in a low cost of living area, but even though I have saved like half my income for my entire working life that may not be enough. Speaking of the future, it is very dangerous for women to get pregnant in my state because if they have an ectopic pregnancy or the fetus dies, the doctors will basically make the woman get sepsis before treating her because of the anti-abortion laws here. Many women have died. So even though we’re lucky enough to be in a position to afford to have kids, we’ve had to put our lives on hold & consider fleeing our home state where our families live. My relationship with my family is strained - my parents, older relatives, and one of my sisters are all completely brainwashed by fascist propaganda. It is getting better, but during Trump 1 and Biden, they became more hateful and crazy than they ever had been prior. My sister is trans but hasn’t come out to them yet. I expect that to be very difficult because they’re bigots and have been spewing hate about trans people for years at this point. My sister is doing a very good job of prepping them, and I’m helping how I can, but I’m worried for her. I have a good standard of living because my wife and I are highly educated professionals. We are lucky to have had a lot of advantages. So really, we don’t have a lot of financial stress many others do. But even still, prices have risen on most goods like 30-50% or more over the past 6 years or so. If this continues, it may or may not threaten us right now, but it does call into question if we can afford kids, retirement, etc. The environment & ecology is rapidly getting worse and the government is doing worse than nothing to help. We have flesh eating parasites coming back after having been eradicated since the 60s. Our government is attempting to destroy the national parks and wildlife system and allow.strip mining and drilling. Temperatures are rising and rainfall is decreasing, fires are becoming much more widespread, tornadoes have been hitting our area much more than in the past, etc. New Orleans, a city my wife, I, and our families have a connection to is projected to literally sink into the sea within our lifetimes.
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@gary_host_laptop@lemmy.ml 2026-06-09 12:26
you probably have a more stable life, dont have to worry that much about dying in the streets etc
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@monovergent@lemmy.ml 2026-06-09 13:28
I’m happy that you are at a point where you find life to be stable and well-paced. For a lot of people, whatever comforts they might be enjoying are riding on a razor-thin margin. Holding together well at first glance, but only one financial, health, or other incident away from a world of hurt.
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@eldavi@lemmy.ml 2026-06-09 15:03
analyses like these make it clear to me that class consciousness is gonna appear in the anglosphere long after it appears everywhere else, because it gets so close to the mark but never quite reaches it. you’re 100% right that there’s a disconnect between how people feel about their current situation and how much they’re struggling with stress or feeling overwhelmed. the popular narratives in the west – especially the us – leave people unable to see the links between global economic and geopolitical movements and the impacts they have on their own lives. instead, these manufactured narratives lead them to believe their failed coping efforts are just an unavoidable feature of modern life, as you described it. for the moment, i’m like you – my life isn’t that stressful, but that’s because i’ve intentionally made it as non-stressful as possible, and i know things will change again for me, like they have before. my life as an autistic & queer poc who descends from the kind of immigrants ice is currently rounding up has forced me to experience, witness, and acknowledge the casual fascism that’s intrinsic to western cultures in ways that non-stressed, non-overwhelmed americans never will – that is, until capitalism gets late stage enough to force it on them.
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@TiredTiger@lemmy.ml 2026-06-09 15:49
Averages are not very useful for making sweeping generalizations. An average of hours worked is going to include people working 80 hours per week to make ends meet as well as people working under 40 who are unable to get healthcare benefits. In the US, the number going down would reflect increasing underemployment, not prosperity, as we have no safety nets and virtually no one is working sub-40 hours and getting full-time pay. As for time spent watching television, it’s a passive form of escapism that it more accessible to people under stress. The worst times in my life have been when I would do nothing but watch television to distract myself after work - because I had no social connections and no money to spend on hobbies or going out. Those here not currently feeling financial pressure are not paying attention to the rise of fascism if they’re reporting being completely unstressed. I am lucky enough to be well-situated financially, but I can feel the walls closing in and I don’t really know what I’m supposed to do to prepare for what’s coming. (It’s easy to say “organize,” but I am not as able-bodied as I used to be and I don’t have the time or energy to commit to an org.) I try to agitate with the people around me, but it more often than not feels like I’m tilting at windmills. Tl;dr - yeah, I’m pretty stressed.
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@ScriptSage@lemmy.zip 2026-06-10 01:42
I take like 12 pills every morning and half of them are just for my mental health. I know personally it’s always been there but has gotten tougher to manage recently primarily due to external factors. I think it’s important to remember that other people are going through wildly different things than you. Other people have a harder time dealing with stress and depression than you do. Plus it’s become much more common to actually get help when you’re struggling which would explain the higher numbers being reported. Also a high tv viewership if anything counters your argument. A lot of people use television as an escape so higher viewership would mean more people trying to ignore their stress/issues.
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@underThunder@thelemmy.club 2026-06-09 16:54
There’s been this narrative for a while and there’s some good reasons for it. It’s different for different people, of course, and a lot has to do with how each of us deal with these emotions and situations. But something is happening in the US that makes these things feel 10 times worse for many people. Our psyches are being assaulted seemingly 24/7 by one man and the cult that surrounds him and we’re normalizing it. When I was younger I would never have imagined the American people would vote for a man like Donald Trump. I’ve heard the response of “just stop watching the news” or “don’t pay attention”, but that’s basically impossible. Yesterday I saw a man who is president of the United States on a national TV show yelling and screaming at his interviewer who rightly pointed out there is absolutely no evidence for his assertions where his only reply was vitriol. And examples like this can occur daily. I’d say for most people they feel the heavy weight of the pall cast over the US from this administration.
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@404found@lemmy.zip 2026-06-10 17:32
I’m summary almost a quarter of American are recording mental help of some kind. This doesn’t include people who need it but aren’t getting any treatment. 17% of Americans are taking medication for their mental health. 23% of Americans are taking prescriptions and or doing therapy for mental health. I don’t know what know what is par for healthy treatment but depression, anger anxiety are usually intertwined symptoms that stem from the same problems.
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@agamemnonymous@sh.itjust.works 2026-06-10 18:16
I’m busy, but that’s because I cram a lot of extra things in my life for fulfillment. I’m also fairly lucky in that in make over the median income working 30-35 hours a week. I assume you are also financially comfortable, but our experience is very different from someone who has to work 2 jobs to make ends meet. I half-joke that my childhood was so stressful that the stress/anxiety circuit in my brain burned out years ago. It’s probably more accurate to say that I have a solution-oriented mindset: when there’s someone wrong in the world, instead of getting anxious I start brainstorming solutions and how to implement them; if I have no solution, stressing still isn’t going to fix anything so I just focus on problems I can find solutions for. I’d wager most people feel more helpless than that, they see big problems in their life as immutable facts instead of temporary conditions. That certainly plays a role in how stressed/anxious they feel.
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@JoMiran@lemmy.ml 2026-06-09 12:05
Short answer: Yes Long answer: Definitely
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@imsufferableninja@sh.itjust.works 2026-06-09 12:46
Nope, I'm pretty chill. Things tend to work out, and I'm doing what I can where I can.