Existential anxiety, a malaise that arises from feeling empty, without energy, motivation, or direction, due to situations that are beyond our control, such as the pandemic, environmental and economic deterioration, or war, can lead us to use food as a refuge and stimulus, promoting an increase in body weight.
Sometimes we “get a weight off our shoulders” by freeing ourselves from a problem or a worry, but at other times our spirits are so low that it seems as if our soul is weighing us down. Existential anxiety is a mental disorder whose weight is felt in the soul, but also in the body, according to experts.
“The average adult today is much more likely to develop obesity than five decades ago,” according to nutritionist Rubén Bravo, from the European Medical Institute of Obesity. Distress and a lack of meaning or motivation in life reinforce this tendency to become overweight.
Psychologist María González suggests reflecting on our goals in life, setting short-term goals that satisfy us, and designing a realistic action plan to progress and achieve them, focusing on what depends on us and not on social factors beyond our control.
The COVID-19 pandemic, climate change, the deteriorating economic situation, rising energy prices, and now a war with unforeseeable consequences. Just when we have not yet recovered from one psychological and emotional blow, another one hits us. We have many reasons to feel distressed…
…And there is a type of affliction, called existential anxiety, which can negatively affect our body weight, causing us to gain weight, when we try to mitigate it through food, warns the European Medical Institute of Obesity, IMEO .
Psychologists have recently detected a type of existential anxiety that is very common in patients and is related to the Covid-19 pandemic and the subsequent restrictions, confinements, and quarantines they have experienced, according to psychologist María González, from this Institute, who explained to EFE.
THE PANDEMIC AND THE EXTRA KILOS
People affected by this mood disorder “often feel helpless because they cannot fulfill their goals or dreams, such as becoming independent, establishing a relationship, achieving certain work goals or traveling,” she says.
He explains that it is generally a kind of vital demotivation, due to the frustration of not having achieved one’s main objectives and achieving the results that they were supposed to have brought, such as happiness and satisfaction, “which is why some people often turn their anguish into food.”
“In the most severe cases, this frustration can manifest itself physically, in the form of dark circles and dull skin, hair loss, fatigue, and listlessness, but also through an increase in body weight,” González warns.
This psychologist explains that this existential anguish can lead to overweight or obesity when the person uses food as a refuge and tries to regulate their anxiety by eating food to obtain short-term pleasure.
Furthermore, “being obese also makes us direct our attention towards our excess weight, distracting us from the need to make other important decisions in our lives that have to do with our true desires,” warns this psychologist.
This type of anxiety is due to the person making a mistake in perspective by confusing their desires with their needs. Therefore, by not achieving what they have set out to do at present, they stop enjoying life in general, according to this psychologist.
González recommends planning actions and making decisions that can help us make a wish come true, without confusing it with a need.
We need to clear our minds, assuming, for example, that we might want to have a partner, but we don’t need one to be happy right now, at this very moment, he points out.
To reduce the level of anxiety, González recommends setting realistic goals or life objectives and cultivating a sense of control over our own time, beyond factors such as age, economic situation, physical condition, or health, since “it will never benefit us to feel that we are limited or stopped by some circumstance.”
RECOVER MOTIVATION
When we are clear about this, we can evaluate the concrete actions that can bring us closer to our goals, he continues. “If we cannot take the trip of our dreams right now, we can draw up a ‘plan B’ consisting, for example, of a getaway to a place within our reach to be able to experience the satisfaction that comes from trying out a great trip and the excitement of planning it,” he suggests.
Existential anxiety can arise when, as a result of a critical situation, a person feels that their life has come to a standstill, because many of the stimuli that generated positive emotion, hope, or satisfaction are radically cut off, leaving them unable to plan only in the very short term, says González.
He explains that “social problems and circumstances such as the pandemic, war, and economic crises can generate a profound lack of hope in some people, destroying their optimistic vision of the future, which begins to be perceived as something dangerous from which anything can be expected.”
In such cases, “the simple fact of not knowing what awaits us ends up paralyzing and disabling our present,” she says. It is the existential anguish that philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre described as “a fear of the future, but not of things, but of the possibility and responsibility of deciding about them,” according to this psychologist.
He adds that existential anguish is closely related to uncertainty about the future and the lack of control (which will never be absolute) that a person has over his or her own life, which is inherent to the human condition and experience, he adds.
That is why “finding meaning in our existence and directing our attention and control to what does depend on us, our attitude and decisions, helps us deal with this anxiety,” he emphasizes.
“Reflecting on our purpose in life and analyzing whether we are acting by that purpose” can help us find our lost direction and motivation, according to this expert.