Modern Life is Making You Anxious: How It's Too Much For Your Survival System

Do you ever feel like you just can’t keep up with life? Like there’s too much information, too much stimulation, and too many demands coming at you all the time?

Episode Summary

In this episode, Jessica breaks down the second major contributor to anxiety: modern living. She explains why our brains and bodies are simply not designed for the pace, volume, and constant input of modern life...and how this mismatch keeps your survival system activated almost nonstop.

Using clear explanations, current real-world examples, and everyday scenarios, this episode helps you understand why anxiety feels constant and overwhelming, and why that doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with you.

In This Episode You’ll Learn

• Why modern life itself is anxiety-inducing
• How little of human history our current way of living actually represents
• Why your survival system isn’t built to handle constant stimulation and information
• How anxiety turns everyday situations into perceived survival threats
• Why news, social media, work, and daily interactions feel overwhelming
• The difference between immediate survival threats and long-term survival
• Why anxiety reactions often make modern problems harder to solve

Key Moments from the Episode 

“Modern living makes us anxious.”

“Our brains and bodies are not meant for the way we’re living.”

“The survival system doesn’t sort through information — it just reacts.”

“Modern life makes everything feel immediate and threatening.”

“Anxiety and the survival system actually make it harder to do what we really need to do.”

Main Takeaway

Your anxiety isn’t a personal failing — it’s the result of a survival system doing its job in an environment it was never designed for.

Modern life floods your brain with information, stimulation, and perceived threats, keeping anxiety constantly activated. Real relief begins with understanding this mismatch, so you can stop blaming yourself and start shifting toward solutions.

Who This Episode Is For

This episode is for you if you:

• Feel overwhelmed by the pace and demands of modern life
• Feel anxious even when nothing specific is “wrong”
• Get overstimulated, mentally exhausted, or constantly on edge
• Feel activated by news, emails, social media, or daily interactions
• Want an explanation that actually makes sense

Get My Free Guide: 3 Keys for Quieting Anxiety Now

Get My Book: "Hi, It's Anxiety! I'm Your Problem, It's Me!" 

Barnes and Noble

Amazon

Enjoyed This Episode?

If this episode helped you feel understood or less alone, please follow the show and leave a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. It helps more people find support that actually fits the world we’re living in.

*Disclaimer* This show is for information and inspiration. It is not professional mental health counseling or medical advice. If you're struggling, please reach out to a mental health or medical professional.

Topics Covered in This Episode

• Modern life and anxiety
• Overstimulation and anxiety
• Survival system explained
• Fight, flight, freeze in modern life
• Anxiety and the nervous system
• Information overload and mental health
• News, social media, and anxiety
• Why modern living is overwhelming
• Long-term vs immediate survival
• Understanding anxiety without shame

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Do you ever feel like you just can't keep up with life? That there's so much to do and so much to pay attention to and somewhere to be, and there's just all this stuff coming at you. If you do, it's not just you, and there's nothing wrong with you. It is too much to keep up with. And our brains and bodies are not meant for it. The fact is, the way we live as humans has changed drastically compared to what our biology is meant for, and our biology has not kept up. Modern life and modern living is one of the reasons that you are so anxious. This is Jessica Richards, and it's not you, it's anxiety. Human beings are not meant to be living the way that we are living in modern life. Our biology has not kept up. It hasn't changed. And it's really interesting. I've broken down the numbers, and if we're being really generous with estimates, the way that we humans live now has accounted for 0.01% of the time humans have existed. Less than 1%, a tenth of 1%. We've only lived, humans have only lived in civilization for 1% of our time on the planet. So for most of human existence, we've lived in small hunter-gatherer bands of up to a hundred people, and life was very different. That is what our biology, our brains, and our bodies developed for and was meant for. Modern living makes us anxious. It is one of the my three contributors to anxiety. Biology, last episode, was number one. Modern living is number two. Modern living is literally too much for us to take. Even if you set aside what our biology is meant for, which is those small hunter-gatherer groups with less stimulation where you knew this small group of people that you were with, even if you set that aside and pretend that's not a thing, I think we all know, we all experience that modern life is full of so much input, stimulation, and exposure. It's fast-paced. There's so much going on. There's so much stimulus, so much information to sort through and pay attention to, and for you and your survival system to decide what's important to focus on. It's overwhelming, really, which is anxiety-inducing, and it makes it really hard to tell what's actually important and what's actually a threat to you, what could actually harm you, what's actually worth protecting yourself from, and what's not. Interestingly, that biology that we talked about last episode, your survival system, which is looking for threats all the time, looking for what could go wrong, it does not sort through the information that it receives or the things that it perceives very well or accurately. It is getting sensory input all the time from outside of you, from this modern life, from this modern environment, and it's too much for it to sort through. And it doesn't sort through it, it just reacts and it errs on the side of caution. So it just reacts and it's always erring on the side of caution. So it's going to react to something because what if that thing actually is harmful? It's always going to err on the side of reacting over not reacting. And then in modern life, there's so much to activate it or trigger it that it can't tell what's truly a threat for it to respond to and pay attention to and what's not. It doesn't prioritize, and it it just jumps in and reacts, and it jumps in and reacts to all kinds of things that it's not meant to react to. And then when it thinks it sees a threat, whether it's actually a threat or not, it reacts, and that creates this whole flood of things that we talked about last episode that we kind of associate with anxiety, all the physical things, all the mental and emotional things that create anxiety. So in modern life, this survival system is not meant to be sorting through all the stimulus of modern life, and there's so much for it to sort through that it can't sort through it, and there's so much for it to pay attention to that it doesn't know what's actually important, and it's being stimulated and overwhelmed and triggered all the time, and it's it's reacting to everything, and there's so much for it to be paying attention to. So that's what's going on. Because remember, survival biology is meant for immediate in the moment threats, and we actually don't have a lot of immediate in-the-moment threats in our everyday modern life. Since this is a podcast about managing anxiety in wild times, let's take what's going on right now in the country as an example. Let's talk about the immigration stuff that's going on and how modern life and the survival system applies to this. So we're getting all this news, depending on where you live in the country. You're getting some really big, scary, terrifying, horrifying, bad news. It's halfway across the country. It's a huge issue, it's terrible, and we as the country need to do something. Maybe you as an individual person need to do something. You need to kind of find out what your role is going to be, how you're going to contribute, how you're going to address this in your community. But the reaction that you have when you get this bad news is one of panic. It feels like an immediate threat to you. And there's nothing wrong with this. But the thing is, with a lot of news, even if we're not talking specifically about like immigration, you know, ICE activity right now, bad news is happening all day, every day. And what we need you to be able to do is to decide what action you're going to take. You need to be able to formulate a plan. You need to decide on, you know, reasonable courses of action for yourself that are going to get the outcome you're looking for. But the panic you experience from this feeling like an immediate threat, an immediate in-the-moment threat to you is not helpful. And you're not in the middle of a lot of the immediate in-the-moment threats that happening that are happening. You're not in the middle of the conflict with law enforcement. You're not in the middle of the conflict with the Border Patrol. You're not in the middle of it. So the action that you're going to take is very different from the action of someone in the middle of a protest with pepper spray. But the survival system, anxiety, when you get that piece of news, can make it feel like you're in the middle of a protest with pepper spray when you aren't. And the problem is that this just makes you anxious and it doesn't help you necessarily take the appropriate action in the non-immediately threatening situation that you're in. So, you know, one piece of bad news by itself is not that big of a deal. But multiply this, multiply what I'm talking about by a new story, a new piece of content every few seconds. So you're constantly getting this bombardment, this stimulus that's making it feel like immediate in the moment threat to you, which is not the situation you're in. And you need to be taking a different kind of action than the people who are in the immediately threatening situation. But modern living makes it so all this news content is coming at you, and then there's all these other things you need to do for work, and then your kids are talking to you, and then you need to get to this place, and you need to, so it's just so much, and it makes you anxious. Because this bombardment of modern living and all the stimulus that we get makes everything feel immediate and threatening. That's how our survival biology is perceiving it. So it makes us anxious. So, on a less dramatic note, you know, if we're moving away from, you know, the big stuff that's happening, the bad news in the country right now, the big terrible things that are happening, I have an example in my book of how this works on sort of an individual level. In the way that modern living makes our survival system spin things out into immediate threats. So here's a great example. Um, let's say you make a weird comment in a meeting to your boss or with your boss there, and afterward you walk out of the meeting and you're immediately like in a tizzy. You're like, so you start spinning out about this thing you said, and you're wondering, like, oh my gosh, how did they how did they interpret that? How did they mean that? Or how did they think I meant that? And oh my gosh, I said something, and and you're and you start getting worked up, and your survival system starts to connect this weird thing you said to your boss in a meeting to your survival, and it goes like this. So it's like you, you're you're worried about what you said, and you start thinking, like, what if they're so mad that what if my boss is so mad that like or offended that they stop giving me projects? They stop giving me good projects, and my income starts to take a hit. And if my income starts to take a hit, then I can't pay my mortgage. And if I can't pay my mortgage, then I'm never gonna be able to find a cheaper place to live in this housing market, and I'll probably have to move in with my parents, and I know I can't stand that. Oh my gosh, I might end up homeless and living on the streets. Oh my god, I could die. So do you I know it sounds kind of funny, but like, do you see that leap there? How like going from making a weird comment or feeling like you've made a weird comment to your boss jumps to survival and homelessness and maybe dying? And so obviously it's not always that dramatic, but a lot of us do that, right? Something happens and we go to the worst case scenario. And a lot of times the worst case scenario is like survival, right? My client cancels, and I'm like, oh my God, what if all my clients start canceling? What if I can't do this anymore? What if I end up living in my car? Oh my gosh. So in modern life, these these things happen that aren't immediate threats, that aren't survival, directly survival related, but the survival system spins them out immediately into this and reacts to them and turns them into this big potential survival issue. So you can see that leap there from thinking you made a weird comment to your boss toward homelessness and maybe dying. And the survival system in modern living, because it's being bombarded with so much, it takes things and spins them out all the time. And multiply that interaction with your boss by you know, by a million interactions that can be interpreted that way and that can trigger that kind of response. It's happening constantly in modern life, right? The many, many things that happen during a day that can trigger that kind of response. So constantly encountering situations like that because of all the stimulus in modern life leads to anxiety. The email you get, the news story you see, the friend who tells you about so-and-so who has cancer, the barista that looks at you weird, the lady who's rude to you in the checkout line, like all those things can during a day can lead to anxiety because they get sput out. And really just think about modern life. All the stimulation, all the information, all the exposure to things, the pace of it, the expectations, the constant sensory input, the constant vying for your attention, it's just so overwhelming in and of itself. And that overwhelm leads to anxiety. It's really just too much. And what makes it again really, really hard, the weird thing about modern living and makes it not match well with the survival system, is that most of what we encounter in modern living is not and really the weird kind of hard thing about modern living, what makes it not match well with the survival system, is that most of what we encounter in modern life is not immediately in the moment dangerous to us. It is not an immediate survival issue, it doesn't require a survival system response, and it doesn't benefit from a survival system response. And actually, a survival system response makes it worse. Modern living is more about long-term survival, using our other systems, our other systems in our brain and body, our frontal lobes, our prefrontal cortex in our brain, which gives us the ability to regulate and plan and organize and consider outcomes and decide what to do and take steps to create those outcomes and weigh our options. Those are the systems, the biological systems that we actually need to survive in modern life and that are most useful for helping us to survive in modern life. The survival system is not it. But it's what's constantly scanning, perceiving, reacting. It's constantly activated and triggered in modern life because it's not meant. It hasn't changed, it hasn't adapted, our brains and bodies haven't adapted, and it's still there, you know, from when we were hunter-gatherers, and it's not meant to be in this environment where there's so much potential for it to be triggered and not like accurately and appropriately triggered all the time. So I want to say I am generalizing when I say that modern life is more about long-term survival and that we're not in immediately dangerous survival circumstances. I'm generalizing for the average person in the United States who is looking for help for anxiety. Of course, there are people who live in more direct or closer to more direct survival circumstances where they are encountering immediate threats to their survival. But that's not most of us in the United States, and it's kind of maybe hard to hear and a little confusing right now as we are watching people um, you know, actually be in situations that are closer to survival situations, but that's not most of us, and that's really important to know because we have a different role. So for most of us in the United States right now, if there there are threats, they're not so immediate. They're illness, climate change, job loss, you know, figuring out how to contribute to the bigger stuff that's going on. So, you know, I think a really good example to look at right now is people who are trying to protect themselves and others from immigration activity. So what ultimately protects someone from immigration activity, what ultimately protects them is not this knee-jerk survival system reaction, it's being able to plan and organize and strategize and cooperate and work together and work as a community and target, you know, the right people in the right places and the right things. So even though there's this terrible threat, this terrible potential for harm that could happen to many people in the United States right now, survival and protection really comes from not being consumed and immobilized by anxiety and by a survival system response. So even though there is this idea of the immediate in the moment threat, there's still this subtle difference, right? And what I want to point out is that even preparing to protect people from this threat is still not the immediate threat happening in the moment. And the survival system, the fight, flight, freeze, heart pounding, can't think clearly, emo you know, emotions are off the charts. Like that is not the thing that we need to be able to help protect people. We need to be in a different system. And our system that can plan, like I said, plan and organize and mobilize and strategize and work together. Now that survival system response is totally understandable, of course, but it makes it harder to do what we really need to do to protect ourselves and others. And this is true right now, just using, you know, immigration as an example, but it's true all the time. It's true all the time. The survival system response when there's not an immediate threat actually makes it harder to do what you need to do to protect yourself and others. But again, modern life, modern living is triggering this survival system response all the time. So what we're doing here is understanding this, becoming aware of this, naming it, and knowing what's going on. Because you probably haven't known this, right? Like, you know, you know life is overwhelming, you have this vague sense that maybe it's just not quite right, but you haven't known this is what's happening. And as I keep saying, until you understand what's really going on, how do you find the real solution? And I've got the solutions, I promise I've got the solutions because there's solutions for all of this. But we really have to understand what's going on first and name that this is what's happening. So modern life triggers anxiety, modern life creates anxiety. Because the sheer amount of stuff in the survival system misinterpreting and reacting and scanning and being bombarded and triggered by the sheer amount of stuff in modern life. And modern life is not about immediate in-the-moment survival. I can think of like maybe three or four examples in my life where I have been in an immediate survival situation. And I think that's true for a lot of people. Of course, like I said, there are exceptions, or there are people who are living in more immediate survival circumstances. But most of us are not constantly being threatened in the moment with a survival issue. Life or modern life is about long-term survival. It's being able to make plans and strategize and take steps to achieve an outcome, to plan, to coordinate, to cooperate, all those things. And anxiety and the survival system haven't allowed us to do that because we've been stuck in them and we haven't known that's what's going on. But now that you know that, I want you to know there is a solution and we're gonna get to the solutions. I promise, but I want you to know these three things first that create anxiety, which is your biology, modern living, and what we're gonna talk about next, which is the messages that you learned from your family, from society, all the messages that either directly, explicitly told you what to be anxious about, or that basically said how you should be, what you should do, what you shouldn't do, and uh basically set up like expectations for how you should be, which also makes you anxious. So here we are, we're building awareness. I think, you know, I took this as an opportunity today to even talk about some of the things that are going on in the country right now, and as scary and terrifying as they are, what we need is to step out of anxiety in the survival system and to plan, organize, cooperate, and that's what's really gonna protect ourselves and others. But if you're ready to start getting some of these solutions now, if you just don't want to wait, you want some of those solutions for biology, modern living, and the messages you've learned, I've got a couple of options for you. I've got a free guide, there's a link below, three keys for quieting anxiety now, and I will give you three ways to start to work with each of those biology, modern living, and messages. It's just a nice little quick guide to kind of get you going on stuff. Super gentle, super easy, just a nice little, nice little way to get into that. And then I have my bigger guide, which is my book, Hi, it's anxiety, I'm your problem, it's me, where we go over each of those three things and the solutions for them with lots of compassion, lots of kindness, lots of understanding. So if you're ready to get started, those are both available and there's links below. I'll look forward to meeting you next episode to learn about the messages that you learned that make you anxious. Talk to you then.