Reading Roundup | April 23, 2021
Posted April 23, 2021
Coming across some interesting media related to anxiety, we thought it would be a fun practice to do a weekly roundup of articles, videos, podcast episodes, and any other relevant items we come across that you might find of interest, too.
“There’s a Name for the Blah You’re Feeling: It’s Called Languishing” — Adam Grant, New York Times (4/19/2021) [article]
This article discusses that nebulous feeling between good and bad that isn’t quite neutral itself. While the immediate fear of the pandemic may have subsided, it has been replaced with a feeling that is harder to pin down: languishing. Grant notes that languishing is “the absence of well-being.” Perhaps you are not in a state of depression, but you also don’t feel terribly great and, what’s more, you find that this languishing state is having a negative impact on your daily life (that blah feeling you just can’t shake, no matter how much self-care you administer). Grant highlights the importance of naming our feelings as a means of understanding and, hopefully, overcoming the ones that do not serve us.
“Could COVID-19 infection be responsible for your depressed mood or anxiety?” — Stephanie Collier, MD, MPH, Harvard Medical School (4/19/2021) [article]
We are still learning so much about the long-term effects of COVID-19. This article highlights what researchers have learned so far and areas we still have a long way to go in terms of understanding. We highlight this article because we feel it is helpful to remember that our understanding of health and mental health is always on-going. We know so much more about COVID-19 today than we did a year ago, and a year from now we will have learned even more. It’s important to remember that it’s all a learning process, just as most other aspects of our lives.
“That Anxiety You're Feeling? It's a Habit You Can Unlearn” — Ezra Klein, New York Times (4/20/2021) [podcast episode]
At City Center, we always like a good discussion about how anxiety functions and how we can learn to address it. Klein speaks to Jud Brewer, MD, PhD, a psychiatrist, neuroscientist, and associate professor at Brown University, about the surprising way that some reactions to anxiety can feel like a reward to the brain. Dr. Brewer explains how learning to better see the negative consequences of these habits—of reacting to and reinforcing anxiety—can lead to changing them and how curiosity about and acceptance of our experiences of anxiety can help us overcome them.