Chapter Five: Anxiety and the Collective
Anxiety as a Cultural Messenger
original photo by B. Littleton
by Bren Littleton
Anxiety does not live only in our private bodies. It also lives in the air we breathe together. You can feel it in the way a workplace hums with constant urgency, as if no one is allowed to pause. You can sense it in communities fractured by polarization, where everyone waits for the next argument to erupt. You can even feel it in traffic, in airports, in grocery stores where no one looks up from their phones. It is the nervous system of a culture vibrating with stress, a collective anxiety that seeps into each of us whether we want it or not.
Author Paul Levy calls this force wetiko, a Native American word he uses to describe a kind of cultural possession. In his book Dispelling Wetiko, Levy explains that this “mind virus” spreads through greed, fear, competition, and disconnection. It convinces us that we are separate from one another, that resources are scarce, and that survival requires constant striving. Under its influence, people and entire societies begin to act as though the only way to exist is to dominate or consume. Anxiety, in this view, is not just an individual symptom but part of a collective disorder.
Carl Jung would have agreed. He warned repeatedly about the dangers of what he called “mass-mindedness.” When individuals surrender to collective opinion without reflection, they are easily swept up in movements of fear, hatred, and conformity. Jung described this as a kind of psychic possession, where the shadow of a culture takes over and individuals lose themselves in the herd. The effect is both external and internal. We feel anxiety not just because of our personal lives but because the collective field we live in is saturated with vigilance, scarcity, and disconnection.
Dr. Gabor Maté adds another dimension to this conversation. He points out that our culture normalizes stress to the point that we hardly recognize it anymore. Capitalism prizes productivity over presence, efficiency over empathy, and profit over people. Children learn early that rest is laziness and vulnerability is weakness. Parents, exhausted by survival pressures, pass on their nervous systems of strain to their children. Schools reward performance but often ignore emotional attunement. Workplaces demand loyalty while offering little security. In such an atmosphere, anxiety is not an anomaly. It is the logical outcome of a system that glorifies exhaustion and punishes authenticity.
Maté is blunt about this. He says that in a society where it is normal to suppress emotion and overwork the body, those who become anxious are not sick—they are sane. Their bodies are telling the truth about conditions that should never have been considered normal in the first place. Anxiety becomes the protest not just of the individual but of the culture itself.
His collaborations with Indigenous communities in Canada illuminate another path. Working with First Nations groups, he has explored the use of ayahuasca in ceremony to address trauma and addiction. What struck him was not only the power of the plant but the power of connection. Participants often reported that anxiety lifted, not because a chemical silenced it, but because bonds were restored—connection to body, to community, to ancestors, to the land, to spirit. In Indigenous traditions, anxiety is often seen as a signal of imbalance, a symptom that something vital in the web of relationships has been broken. Healing requires restoring the balance, not just medicating the symptom.
Here we can see how Levy, Jung, and Maté converge. Levy names the psychic infection of disconnection. Jung warns of the dangers of mass-mindedness and cultural shadow. Maté shows how capitalism intensifies these dynamics by pulling us further from presence, authenticity, and belonging. And Indigenous traditions remind us that healing comes from remembering that we are never separate—we belong to one another, to the earth, to something larger than ourselves.
If we take these perspectives together, a picture of collective anxiety begins to form. It is not simply that individuals are anxious in isolation. It is that we are living in an anxious culture, one that trains us to be vigilant, competitive, and disconnected. Our nervous systems are carrying not only personal memories but the weight of cultural patterns that deny rest and belonging.
The question, then, is how do we respond? How do we begin to resist wetiko, mass-mindedness, and the productivity trap?
The answer begins small. Maté suggests noticing where anxiety rises in response not to personal danger but to cultural demand. For example, when you feel tension in your chest as you scroll through news headlines, pause and ask, “Whose fear am I carrying right now?” When you feel shame for resting, ask, “Who taught me that my worth is measured only by productivity?” When you feel panicked at the thought of not keeping up, ask, “What part of me has been trained to believe I must always perform?”
Jung might have said that this practice is how we resist possession. Levy would say it is how we break the spell of wetiko. Maté would call it listening to the body’s wisdom in the face of cultural lies. All three agree: awareness is the first step toward freedom.
From there, the work expands outward. We need communities where authenticity is welcomed, workplaces that honor humanity over output, cultures that value connection as much as achievement. This may sound lofty, but it begins with small acts: choosing to rest without apology, creating friendships that honor vulnerability, practicing rituals of connection with nature or community. Each small act interrupts the collective anxiety that tells us we are alone and not enough.
A simple practice might be this: once a day, step outside and let your feet touch the ground. Breathe slowly and notice the sky, the air, the trees or even just the patch of grass beneath you. Remind yourself, “I belong here.” This may seem ordinary, but it is revolutionary in a culture that trains us to live cut off from land and body. Anxiety thrives in separation. It softens in belonging.
The wisdom across these voices is clear. Anxiety is not just personal. It is cultural. It reflects the broken bonds of our time—between people, between generations, between human beings and the earth. Healing will not come from isolation or productivity. It will come from remembering who we are together.
Anxiety, in this sense, is not only a private message. It is a cultural messenger, calling us back to connection. If we listen, it can guide us not only to personal healing but to collective repair.
written by Brenda Littleton
original photo by B. Littleton
Tin Flea Press c 2025