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What are your favorite millennial traits?
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Rising Star
Anxiety didn’t exist before 1998
Doechii in da house! 🐣
Rising Star
GenXer here: there’s so much about mental health we never talked about in previous decades. It was always there.
Feels like no one was talking about it before.
Chief
Mental health was a hush hush topic with boomers and they raised us to adhere to that mentality. My mom is still dismissive towards vulnerability.
Pro
We use to be allowed to smoke during presentations.
When I was growing up people called it being stressed out.
Anxiety always existed, people talking about it openly is new. The rolling stones wrote Mother’s little helper in 1966 which is literally a song about women using prescription sedatives to deal with the anxiety of “modern life”. If anxiety didnt exist in the past, Freud wouldnt have had a career.
It’s a way different world than it was 20-30 years ago. We’re not meant to be this connected. We’re not meant to work the hours we do for a fraction of the $$ than generations before us. Most of us will never afford a house which corresponds to having a family. We have screens 12” away from our faces from the moment we wake up to the moment we go to sleep. We don’t have the communities we used to. The world is more dangerous than ever. The political landscape is in shambles.
It’s pretty obvious why anxiety is a “thing” now.
You were a kid, it’s doubtful any of the adults in your life would have shared their mental health issues with you. Even more so because of the huge stigma that came with being “crazy.”
Finally, a lot of people self-medicated: cigarettes, booze, and all matter of other drugs. You may not have known anyone with anxiety, but you were likely aware of “high-strung” individuals or people that needed a drink to “settle their nerves.”
We are way more anxious now though I think. Mostly due to the internet giving us way too much information, and social media making us constantly compare our lives to others. The search for endless perfection.
Before, when we knew less, things were much simpler.
oh there was anxiety. Have you ever heard of the song “mothers little helper” by the Rolling Stones? It’s from 1966. It’s basically all about anxiety and depression and everything related. check it out.
Chief
When you were growing up, people smoked like chimneys, drink like fish, beat their kids, beat their wives, etc…
Rising Star
Make America Great Again
I did not know what anxiety felt like until I had an attack in college (~20 yrs old) from high stress/ lack of sleep/ caffeinated. Sent me straight to the ER with chest pains. Since then I’ve had waves of it and feel like it can be triggered again. Working in ad worsened it
Rising Star
Yeah, I remember my first panic attack. ER. Thought my heart was going. It’s no joke.
Talking about it more. But also, there was greater stability.
They had it you just didn’t know.
Smart phones happened. Being connected 24/7 happened.
Anxiety was always there. Just think how anxious you were just a 110 years ago. Your life expectancy was 35, on average like 2 of your kids would die in their childhood, and then later in life here comes WWI and the Great Depression.
Probably because like many other health conditions in the US anxiety has become massively over-diagnosed and the treatments massively over-prescribed because doctors and big pharma are incentivized to drive revenue 👍🏼
Always a thing for sure but I think technology amplified it
I had anxiety as a kid in the 80s… 🤷♀️