If you are struggling with any mental health problem, whether that’s anxiety, chronic stress, addiction, depression or a history of trauma, it’s important to think about two levels: your internal and external systems. I wrote about this in my last post, on relationships, but I want to take a deeper dive into the way that those external systems can affect – and even traumatise you.

Just to clarify, your internal systems would be your mind, brain, nervous, hormonal and musculoskeletal systems; they would also include the system of parts that we work with in trauma therapy (child parts, protectors, critical parts, and so on). We could also think about your habitual cognitive (frequent worry, rumination or obsessional thinking) and emotional (often feeling sad, lonely or anxious) patterns as part of this internal world.

Your external systems would include your family (both biological and chosen), friends, colleagues, working environment, community, society and the global, economic, social and environmental systems we are all an interconnected part of. If you want to get really deep you could even say that all of the trillions of stars in the known universe are part of your system, because every atom in your body was forged in those stars billions of years ago. You are, quite literally, made of stardust.

The stress of 21st-century life

But in this post I want to focus on the way that these systems make up modern, 21st-century life – and its impact on us all. Think about it like this: for the vast majority of human evolution (that’s 3.5 billion years since life evolved on Earth; six million years of some form of human running around; and 300,000 years of our kind of human, homo sapiens) we lived in Nature. For all but the last 10,000 of those those six million years, we lived in small, hunter-gatherer bands in the jungle, on the savannah or the forest.

Ten thousand years ago, the Agricultural Revolution transitioned most humans from hunter-gathering to farming, so we stayed in one place, built permanent settlements and civilisation as we now know it began to take shape. Still, we lived a life revolving around the natural cycles of night and day, the changing seasons, sowing and harvesting crops. And we spent much of our time working outdoors, living intimately with plants and animals.

Unnatural living begins

Then things changed radically during the Industrial Revolution, which only began around 250 years ago – 250! So this life most of now lead, in huge cities, crammed in like sardines, with constant noise, light and general hubbub, is less than 300 years old. That really blows my mind. And, I’m afraid, yours too – because your brain and body is just not adapted to live in the 21st century.

Evolution doesn’t work like that. It is a glacially slow process (with occasional bursts of faster change), so your brain and body are supremely adapted to that hunter-gatherer lifestyle, because urban life is just too new for evolution to adapt to. It seems like every week I see a new study about how stressed out we all are, rising levels of depression, anxiety, obesity and addiction. It has to be said, humans are not doing well right now (and this is all pre-pandemic, which is causing whole new levels of stress to the global human population).

If you are struggling with stress, say, it’s helpful to ponder how much of that stress is caused – or at least exacerbated – by your 21st-century lifestyle. And some psychologists theorise that modern life could actually be traumatic for us as a species, because it is so alien and jarring to our sensitive brains and bodies. This is not to ignore the impact of childhood trauma, which is a huge and under-reported problem. But we could also say that much of that is caused by parents who are exhausted, stressed out, disconnected from their emotions and bodies – all of which is, in part, due to modern life.

What you can do

As ever, we start by understanding the cause of your problems and then think about what you can do to change them. So here are a few ideas of small, achievable changes you can make to reduce the traumatic impact of modern life:

Reduce screen time. I am writing this on my computer, while glancing occasionally at my iPhone to check for messages, so please don’t think I have cracked this one! But I know that the more time I spend not looking at some kind of screen, the better. One tip is to buy an old-fashioned alarm clock, so you can switch your phone off an hour before bed, then not look at it until you have got up and (ideally) meditated. This links to my second suggestion…
Spend time in Nature. The more the better. If you’re lucky enough to have a garden, spend as much time as you with your beautiful plants, watching bees feed on your lavender, or birds swooping about. It’s easy to dig a little wildlife pond, so your kids can get involved too, watching water boatmen, insect larvae, aquatic snails and (if you’re lucky) tadpoles do their thing. Go to the park, walk in the woods, climb mountains, wild swim, hike along cliff paths… spending time in Nature is so important for your mental health that GPs now prescribe it, like they would medication.
Move your body. Again, I am writing this sitting on my butt, which is where I spend far too much of my working life! But I did just go for my daily walk. And I did also exercise in my living room before work. And I also went to the gym yesterday. None of this is to boast or make myself out to be some kind of perfect human specimen. I am definitely not that. But I do know that when it moves, my body is happy. And it took years of chronic back problems to get me exercising every day – as I often tell people, pain is a great motivator! So walk, run, cycle, swim, dance, garden, lift weights, do yoga, Zumba… it’s all good. And it’s what your body is, quite literally, made for.

I know this is all common-sense stuff. But it’s also realistic, achievable and the kind of thing we all know we should do, but forget to actually do. So give it a try and find small, incremental ways to live a life your beautiful, exquisitely complex body was made for – rather than the somewhat unnatural one that humans have created.

Warm wishes,

Dan