Anxiety

Helplessness In A World Perceived As Hostile

By  | 

You have probably seen the horrifying amateur video footage of the terrorist attacks on Charlie Hebdo where an injured, unarmed police officer named Ahmed Merabet puts his hands up in the air in a desperate plea for mercy before being mercilessly murdered in cold blood. What makes this video so unsettling to watch is not just the loss of an innocent human life, which is heartbreaking, but the anxiety produced by feelings of helplessness in a world perceived as hostile.

Most of us perceive the world as hostile at various times in our lives, but the big difference is that we don’t feel helpless, we feel a sense of efficacy, that we have the ability to square up to and hopefully overcome whatever threatens us. We feel we have some power to direct the course of our lives.

A video like the one from Paris is tangible proof that sometimes people really are completely helpless in a hostile world, not just in theory or in the movies but in concrete reality. We realize it could happen to us or the people we love too. That unsettling, hard to pin down feeling produced by this recognition is anxiety. It forces us to consider the precariousness of life. And although none of us like to think about it, we remember on some level that at some point down the line, regardless of the safeguards we take, we will have to confront our own deaths. Our deaths are a foregone conclusion, it’s not a question of if but only when. In this sense all of us are ultimately helpless in a hostile world, which is why when we see or hear about the helplessness of others in hostile situations it isn’t just about our hearts going out to them but also about the looming, somewhat ephemeral but very real threat of nothingness that we face too.

The reason to discuss such a grim topic is the same reason that Buddhist monks recite the five remembrances. The threat of helplessness implies that at this moment we are not helpless, right now we still have the power to direct our lives. We know that one day in the future this power will be taken away though and this knowledge, although painful, motivates us to choose now as the time to self-actualize and start living life to the fullest. There are no guarantees about the future except that at some point our lives will come to an end, the only question being what we chose to do with the time allotted to us. As Erich Fromm once put it, “To die is poignantly bitter, but the idea of having to die without having lived is unbearable.”

Related posts:

  1. Anxiety is the Feeling of Helplessness in a Hostile World A Working Definition for Anxiety As funny as it sounds, most people don’t have a working definition for their own anxiety or for anxiety in general. They don’t have a problem pinpointing when they’re feeling anxious obviously, and they’re also usually able to list most of the various triggers that set their anxiety off. But they remain […]...
  2. Anxiety And Control When people come to feel helpless in the face of life conditions they perceive as hostile the psychic result is painful anxiety. Anxiety is by its very nature ephemeral, hard to define, hard to pin down, which is probably why many aren’t fully aware of the pressing need, from the events that cue off those […]...
  3. Fear of Flying A fear of flying is at once rational and irrational. Rational because it’s just not natural to willingly put yourself in a metal box so that you can be taken 35,000 feet above the surface of the earth for hours at a time, irrational because if you look at the data you’ll see that many […]...
  4. Understanding the Masochistic Life Solution Repeated Exposure to Trauma Repeated exposure to abuse, abandonment, or other trauma produces seemingly unbearable amounts of anxiety. The masochistic life solution is one route for dealing with this anxiety. Where some choose to try to dominate their surroundings and the people in them to find relief, and others choose to turn away from their […]...
  5. Coping Mechanisms In Relationships What happens to a lot of couples is that partners keep using the coping mechanisms that they used in their families of origin to lower the anxiety caused by feeling helpless in a world perceived as hostile. This is a huge problem both because these coping mechanisms no longer make sense, assuming the relationship is […]...
  6. Knowledgeable Guide Imagine two scenarios. In the first you’re dropped into the middle of a vast wilderness with no supplies and no idea of where you are. In the second you’re dropped into the middle of that same vast wilderness but you’re accompanied by a knowledgeable guide who might never have been in that particular forest but […]...
  7. Rally For What You Believe In The fundamental psychoanalytic principle to understand about many of those who wield structural power is that they didn’t get there by accident. They have thirsted for power over, for the ability to dominate the people and the environment around them, since they were very young in order to combat their secret feelings of helplessness in […]...
  8. Emotional Detachment And Anxiety In emotional detachment there’s nothing wrong with the emotional apparatus per se. People with emotional detachment are capable of experiencing the full emotional spectrum just like anybody else. Actually it’s precisely because they’re emotionally sensitive that they felt compelled in childhood or adolescence to decide to stop being that way, to stop caring. They decided […]...
  9. Emotional Detachment Is Trying To Win By Not Playing The Game We all know how important human connection is for our health and happiness. In fact, social psychologists will tell you that all the evidence points to the presence of a solid social network being the number one indicator of well-being and a sense of fulfillment. Needing to feel intimately connected to others is such a […]...
  10. Frustration If you’re feeling frustrated then what you’re probably really feeling at a deeper level is helpless. Frustration stems from the inability to manipulate variables in your environment to your liking. This inability of course amounts to the same thing as helplessness. This is why frustration is likely to turn into anger. The psychology is pretty […]...
  11. Anxiety And Talking Too Much In Social Encounters When most of us think of social anxiety we think of shutting down, we think of talking very little, we think of becoming closed off, shy and unengaged. This is of course a common form anxiety takes but it also manifests on the other end of the spectrum as an almost compulsive need to fill […]...
  12. Letting Go Of Control The need to control is always and everywhere about the hidden need to reduce painful existential anxiety. Anxiety is cued off by an unknown future perceived as threatening. The unconscious solution to this threat is to try to control circumstances, which of course extends to controlling the people in them. When everything and everyone is […]...
  13. Helplessness And Anxiety Most of us operate under the assumption that we exercise control over our lives, over our destinies. We tend to ignore the systemic forces outside of our control that dictate to one degree or another how things play out out as long as these forces are perceived as basically benevolent, as long as they don’t […]...
  14. Just World Trauma We are going to discuss a hypothesis for trauma that specifically fits into the mentality of people from dominant culture and we will develop it using existential psychology. Then we will offer a silver lining of hope for those who feel they fit the criteria. The construct of ‘Just World’ was proposed by Lerner (1980) […]...
  15. Change The World Many of us want to help change the world for the better but we don’t know where to start. The task seems too big or maybe unrealistic. Am I supposed to go live in a hut and teach children how to read? Dig a well somewhere? Get more active in government? Work for a charity? […]...
  16. Wanting To Save The World The psychological reality is that a lot of people interested in saving the world are in truth interested in furthering their own sense of grandiosity, in confirming their idealized self-image as righteous, heroic, messianic figures whose actions would finally bring them the admiration of the masses and the glory they believe they deserve. In a […]...
  17. Helplessness It was Karen Horney who defined basic anxiety as helplessness in a world perceived as hostile. If you have been experiencing distress from feelings of helplessness in some aspect of your life, it’s worth looking at your early childhood to see whether you can make the connection between your anxiety now and having felt helpless […]...
  18. Trauma And Helplessness From our psychological point of view an experience becomes traumatic when helplessness reaches a certain threshold, that is when the threatening situation goes along with the dawning realization, at some level of awareness, that very little or nothing can be done to influence the outcome. This definition of trauma delineates sharply from the commonly held […]...
  19. Abuse And ‘Us Against The World’ A common predicament victims in abusive relationships face is increasing isolation from friends and family members. Abusers find it easier to accomplish their agendas when their victims’ trusted confidants are nowhere to be found and therefore unable to suggest alternate narratives that could cast doubt upon the manipulative narrative gaining traction, a manipulative narrative where […]...
  20. Bells Of Mindfulness In The Modern World The modern world, with all its demands, distractions, and annoyances, seems diametrically opposed to the practice of mindfulness. Most people hold on to the semi-conscious belief that if they’re not out in nature or within the walls of a religious institution then there’s no point in trying to do anything spiritual. Most of us have […]...
Related Items