Struggling With Anxiety? It’s All Part of Being Human

But first, Detroit Mayor Mary Sheffield this week announced plans to raise the minimum wage of city employees to $21.45. (The state minimum is $13.73, but this new rate matches the calculated living wage for Wayne County.) The change will take effect on July 1, and will affect roughly 900 current employees. Thalese Mcclendon, an animal care technician who earns about $15 per hour with the city’s Animal Control, cried during the press conference. She told the Detroit Free Press she’s been homeless since July 2025 and the increase “will help with me getting back stable and back on my feet.”

Anxiety Isn’t Always a Bug – It’s a Feature of Being Human

What if anxiety isn’t always a malady to rid yourself of, but rather a fundamental feature of human existence? It’s an emotion we can’t really avoid, philosopher Samir Chopra argues in this interview with Vox. We’re future-focused by nature and perpetually aware of our mortality, so, we’ll never be totally free of anxiety – an experience Chopra defines as fear without a concrete object. 

“Fear has a clear object. Anxiety doesn’t. And in existentialist treatments, the indeterminate thing is often the future. The future hasn’t arrived yet, so it’s a natural home for anxiety,” Chopra says. “I sometimes call it anticipatory fear. I’m scared of being scared,” he explains. “I can imagine drowning even if I haven’t drowned. I can feel it in my body, the lungs pulling in water. Imagination fills in the blank. And I can feel the fear I’d feel if the thing happened. That’s anxiety.”

Anxiety might be the defining feeling of our time. Besides the tumult in the tech and finance worlds that Chopra observes – worlds most of us don’t understand and almost none of us can control – there are wars being started or supported by our own government placing the global community in turmoil.

These systems’ uncertainty can sound distant and abstract, but their consequences are felt personally. 

One example: hundreds of thousands of citizens lost their jobs last year, with Black college-educated women absorbing the brunt of the rupture. We are acutely aware of these influential powers and forces, but also know we can’t control them – something Chopra says might make our era distinctively anxious. 

That anxiety isn’t just an individual struggle. We humans are social creatures, sharing our anxieties with one another – a surge in collective anxiety, unchecked, can drive us toward whatever promises stability and security, even if it means trading in personal freedoms.

In other words, anxiety might take some credit for our historical human tendency toward authoritarianism in stressful times. Dictators make false promises with a confidence that can be dangerously alluring.

But all hope isn’t lost, my fellow anxiety sufferers. Understanding anxiety and accepting that it will sometimes surface can go a long way to ensuring that it doesn’t take control of our lives, both personally and politically. Buddhist teachings can help us with that, says Chopra. 

The most basic tenet is that we suffer because we deny disturbing truths we know innately: Over time, everything we love will change and then die; change is constant, mortality is guaranteed.

Once we accept change and endings – death and constant flux – we can enjoy our time here a lot more. A crucial step is accepting that these truths apply to ourselves – recognizing that we too are ever-changing.

The other, perhaps less intuitive truth to accept and embrace is the interconnected nature of our lives and this world. Everything is everything. We are all connected to each other and every single thing in this place.

Embracing that bodes well not just for our own sense of peace, but for the collective, because we then behave as though our personal well-being depends on the well-being of others rather than just ourselves. 

All of this helps us to let go of fixations on owning more or being “better” or “more important” than the people we share this earth with. As Chopra explains: “It’s why volunteering or caregiving can reduce anxiety. It’s also why beauty helps. Art, nature, the sublime. When you’re absorbed, you’re not trapped in self-obsession.”

None of this is to say that clinical anxiety ought to be ignored. If anxiety is upending your life to the point where you’re struggling to function, it is important to seek professional help.

But if you’re anxious and coping (even a little more than anxious and not-quite-coping, in light of the current cruelty of exploding bombs and financial markets), it can help to come to terms with it as a reminder that you’re a human. 

There’s no need to make anxiety go away completely, Chopra says. But if you’d like it to quiet down, invest in relationships, go outside and touch grass, express gratitude for what you’ve got while you’ve got it, and engage yourself in some sort of service to this world so that you can connect with something bigger.

Some Relationships Feel Draining, But “Hasslers” Might Actually Be Aging You

A new study from the National Institute on Aging has found that “hasslers” (people who regularly make your life a bit difficult) may do more than simply stress you for a few hours here and there. Rather, their shenanigans might be biologically aging you, shortening your lifespan. 

The study also notably found that some people are more likely to report having hasslers in their lives, including women and those in poorer health. But this wasn’t too surprising, researchers told the Washington Post.

“Women tend to be disproportionately affected both positively and negatively by things that are happening in relationships and by their relationship with other people,” said study co-author Brea Perry. “So it wasn’t that surprising to us that women might have more people who cause problems in their lives, in part because they are probably more likely to perceive the problems that others are having and to feel them and to sort of take those on as stress.” 

People in worse health were more likely to have hasslers, researchers said, because much-needed caregivers can hold power that’s “difficult to negotiate.” So were people who had experienced more adverse childhood experiences, perhaps as part of heightened overall vulnerability to chronic stressors and negative life events. 

For the study, researchers surveyed more than 2,000 adults in Indiana and analyzed their saliva samples, looking at their reported social life and DNA changes indicative of biological aging. Data showed that each additional hassler in someone’s regular social circle saw their biological aging rate increase by 1.5%.

So, instead of aging one chronological year with each birthday, a person with one hassler would age slightly faster biologically, about 1.015 years. Perry said this might contribute to an earlier onset of chronic disease, because “even small effects in terms of biological aging can accumulate.”

The researchers were careful to note that this is an association, not proof of cause and effect. Still, the findings reinforce existing practical guidance: limit time with people who chronically stress you where possible, set firm boundaries and invest heavily in relationships that genuinely support you. Those folks might actually help offset the impact hasslers have on your aging.

In other news…

The trippy origins of San Francisco’s colorful Victorian homes: As iconic as they are now, San Francisco’s famously colorful Victorians were once considered an architectural plague, deemed a “pestilence.” After many were damaged in the 1906 earthquake, they were bulldozed by the hundreds.

They’d been largely bathed in basic beige, white, or gray since their construction in the late 1800s, but by the 1960s bold, multi-colored paint began appearing on their ornate facades, thanks to “the acid heads of that time,” Victorian house painter Bob Buckter told the San Francisco Chronicle. 

“These wild-ass color schemes, discordant, clashing, brightened, without any rhyme or reason,” as Buckter put it, are now quintessentially San Francisco, and have helped make the buildings genuine icons – a reminder of the small shades of joy creativity can bring, long before psychedelics were being considered as medical therapeutics.

“It’s sort of universally adopted in every neighborhood in one sense or another,” architecture professor Clark Thenhaus said. He added that color “presents an identity of the place or the region even more strongly…than a single landmark or structure like the Golden Gate Bridge.”

EmblemHealth fined $2.5 million for mental health “ghost network.” The firm, one of New York’s largest health insurers, agreed to the settlement with the state attorney general’s office after years of failing to address its “ghost network” – the extensive list of mental health providers purportedly in the health insurer’s roster of providers but in fact largely unavailable to patients.

The problem was stark: a 2023 report from the NY AG found that 82% of providers listed weren’t available for an appointment!

As part of the settlement, the insurer will: 1) compensate patients who paid out of pocket for mental health care they couldn’t secure with an in-network provider, 2) correct listings within 2 business days of being made aware of an error, 3) check every 90 days to ensure their directory is accurate, and 4) submit to an independent monitor to ensure they comply with the settlement.

This isn’t the first time EmblemHealth has settled a lawsuit for errors in its directory, ProPublica reports. Back in 2011, the insurer had promised to address the issue, but failed to. 

In a statement, a spokesperson said EmblemHealth did not “admit” to the findings, but said the company settled to avoid lengthy litigation. (The company is also facing a separate class action lawsuit, plaintiffs of which include New York City government workers.) The $2.5 million fine is the largest secured by the New York attorney general’s office in its ongoing crackdown on ghost networks – a systemic problem that continues to limit mental health access for millions of Americans.