Being constantly fed news related to the unrest and conflicts going on in Sweden and the rest of the world right now can cause a lot of stress. Humans are built to be able to handle stress in periods – but that it is important to recover in times like now when the stress response becomes high, this is what Fredrik Livheim, licensed psychologist and researcher at the Karolinska Institute, believes. – Here comes a clash with the modern society we live in, where we can constantly activate the stress response by thinking about all threats, how it can affect you or that you feel fear for your survival, he says. More uncertainty and potential threats Livheim also believes that we are now facing a new challenge: how to manage our thinking in a world that is becoming more complex with greater uncertainty and potential threats. – Evolutionarily, we need to switch up that ability – otherwise we will go back to acting under threat and stress, he says. Doing so instead blocks the bad thinking and contributes to a poorer perspective-taking ability and the handling of complexity. He believes that it can then become easy to start thinking “us against them” – which in turn leads to a more polarized local society. The influence of social media A protective factor for managing stress and anxiety is to seek social support from others. Social media in particular has become a common platform for doing just that – but it does not only provide a protective effect, the psychologist believes. – Social media fuels polarization. Either you are fed by others who think the same, or they feed you with what you should react to with anger, outrage or hatred, says Livheim. But feeling stress and worry about what is happening in the world right now is not abnormal or strange, he believes. – We humans must react strongly to what is uncertain, new and what we have little control over. It is completely natural to feel strong emotions right now.
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