The society of fatigue: how not to collapse in the face of stress and anxiety – 18/04/2019

Body pain Pains ranging from headaches (headaches) to neck, shoulder and especially back pain (those that never fail), pain in the hands and legs. We hear from all participants in our mindfulness programs when they introduce themselves and mention what leads them to learn this age-old but modernized technique for Western man.

Also worry, it is inevitable. Anxiety of performance, worry for the future of things, anxiety caused by uncertainty. And tiredness, fatigue that comes from the hand of stress and in many cases depression (sometimes becoming, sometimes more established in the minds of some of them).

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If we think about all this, we can only conclude that these people have not learned the art of living. But it's simplistic, decisive and condemnable. Also unfair because these people are "fish in the water", that is to say beings adapted to an environment that invites them to live in this way.

Performance company: the entrepreneurs themselves

It is inevitable to think about the society in which we spend each day of our lives, where we breathe and learn to perceive reality.

This company is no longer the disciplinary society described by the famous philosopher Michel Foucault less than a century ago, a society of psychiatric hospitals, prisons, barracks and factories where it was intended "Modeling a disciplined man" this does not escape the general standard. A citizen who has had his freedom restricted for the common good.

At present, as described by Byulg-Chun Han, professor, author, philosopher and essayist, South Korean expert in cultural studies and professor at the Berlin University of the Arts ", there has long been a totally different society, to know: a society of gymnasiums, office towers, banks, aircraft, large shopping centers and genetic laboratories. 21st century society is no longer a discipline, but a performance society. Its inhabitants are also not called "subjects of obedience", but "subjects of execution". These subjects are entrepreneurs of their own. "And the worst part is that they end up with themselves.

Thus, and following this author, "it has become useless to do one thing to be able to do it: You live with the anxiety of not always doing everything you canand if you do not succeed, it is your fault. Now, you are bursting into thinking that you are doing; it is the logical loss that leads to burned worker syndrome ".

Just do it

In the leitmotif of the well-known sports brand seems to be the explanation of everything: how could I stop to look at nature, to contemplate something of the world or even to meditate if I can conquer everything? How could I badume a posture of waiting, of rest, of not doing, if acting and modifying the environment, there is the essence of the success, of the sense? And this in spite of the fact that we continually observe successful people, destroyed by their own power and their multitasking impulse.

Currently, "projects, initiatives and motivations replace the ban, the mandate and the law. Disciplinary society is always governed by no. Their negativity generates fools and criminals. For its part, the performance company produces depressed and unsuccessful results, "Han adds.

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And the self-exploitation that this brings is more effective because it accompanies a sense of freedom: the business man who arrives at his home destroys with hardly the breath to look at their children or hold a conversation with your partner can fall asleep imagining that your day was worth adding value to your business or being more productive than the days before. Without even realizing that he does not know what he is looking for anymore. His greed is no end, it's a bottomless deep hole. Yes, in the state, "the exploiter is at the same time the exploiter," Han says. Victim and executioner can no longer differentiate themselves. The psychic illnesses of the performance society are precisely the pathological manifestations of this paradoxical freedom. "

By the time I write these lines, in the Queen playlist I am listening to, we are the champions (we are the champions). We will continue to fight until the end (we fight until the end), screams Freddie Mercury, enraged. Until you are exhausted? Until you bleed to death?

Living in the performance society: is there a way out?

In mindfulness programs, instructors are familiar with the people described above. Not only because of the symptoms that they express, but because these same symptoms are what we need to be compared as guides to a new path. To no longer practice, we are exempt from this culture of fatigue. We do not have "the cow attached".

We know these hyperactive minds, eager for encouragement, more enthusiastic about theorizing about mindfulness than practicing it, prone to boredom and boredom: the boredom of not doing, boredom not to receive an excitatory neural plane of an occasional stimulus. "I came to flash," said a student at the beginning of a clbad. In other words, "exploit my brain of an intense and destabilizing stimulus, not of immobility and silence".

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The contemplative attitude that we teach, on the contrary, presupposes, as Nietzsche said, a "pedagogy of the gaze". For the philosopher, "you have to learn to look, to think, to speak and to write". The goal of this learning is, according to Nietzsche, the "higher culture". "Learning to watch means" getting the eye used to look calmly and patiently, to let things happen at the eye ", ie to educate the eye for deep attention and contemplative, for a long and slow look. " Does this sound like? Any resemblance to mindfulness is not a complete coincidence.

Mindfulness as a way of refounding ourselves

That's why it's so difficult to change. Because we are overwhelmed by this society driven by a brutal desire for productivity. That is why the intention to live more fully must be rooted with a particular strength to tolerate the ravages of the "cultural breath" that invites us to self-claim, and begin to raise the plant of change in the jungle noise and violence. alteration If we do not surround it with special, loving and continuous protection, it will perish.

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But once we begin to develop this attitude of self-care and responsibility towards our mind and body, when we return to our very essence, priorities begin to change, priorities stop being and successful aspirations lose their vigor. We start to find each other again.

The first step is to tolerate the mental plans of the performance society that we have introjected during the first clbades, which come in the form of images, thoughts and sensations such as pain, tingling or burning. It takes patience, confidence in our abilities and sustained efforts. From the weekly clbad to the private area of ​​my house to continue watering the small plant, from there to the office a first time, a second day a day. It's a long and creative way of changing patterns of thought and action that requires continued attention. Starting to change can be more difficult than staying in the same place without hesitation. Challenge our beliefs, beliefs and badumptions.

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But The wellbeing that we are beginning to experience is exquisite. The body relaxes its tensions, the mind becomes spacious, the senses are purified. We can begin to question those "social demands" that we have historically accepted as natural and that we allow ourselves.

It's a lifetime job. But each challenge is the occasion of a new learning, a new growth, where our identity is not subject to our action, but to the unique and profound experience of each moment.

* Martín Reynoso is a psychologist, Mindfulness coordinator at INECO and author of Mindfulness, scientific meditation.