We learn to speak without realizing it. We don’t even remember the first word we pronounced. Even if someone did remember it, no matter how much they tell us, the memory is almost impossible to recover.
When we least expect it, we pronounce words that pose phrases with which we make known to others what we want or don’t want, to manifest ourselves, with the purpose of clinging to the outside world.
However, the words with which we communicate exist solely in our imagination. It’s in that place in our minds where we combine the multiple options that we give to our vocabulary to try to give meaning to our reality.
How to nurture our vocabulary, the origin of our world
We have a vocabulary that we nurture based off of what we hear in conversations that we have with others, or thanks to the careful work of literature, which makes the learning curve of new words increase.
In other words, those who don’t read must conform to the set of words that they acquire from the relationships that they have with others. This allows said person to see a world that has a reduced number of words, since the one who speaks is making their thoughts known. Likewise, they’re revealing “the world in which they live,” because everyone speaks their mind, keeping in mind that one can only think about what gives meaning to their lives.
Even if we don’t speak or prefer to hush, the words are present in our thoughts and thanks to that, we can communicate with the world (the place where the others and objects are, elements that provide us with the support that gives stability and meaning to our lives).
Anguish is the materialization of our anxiety
COVID and its variants, although it has affected our social relations from the demand of social distancing to avoid and prevent its spread—in terms of our mental health and the vocabulary with which every one of us counts—has produced a rupture in the continuity of the meaning of our lives.
Although our thoughts allow us to articulate words to communicate with the world to try and give meaning to how we live and what we do, the number of words falls short when making sense of what we do not know.
This creates a surge of fear in response to what we can’t control or what we can’t signify. In other words, when unable to make sense of something we don’t know, anguish flourishes, the real fear of what we can’t name.
Anguish, the fear of something that “we know,” but that we can’t put into words, is commonly recognized as anxiety, the mental pathology produced by the inability to limit the thoughts that, like a storm, come to disturb the reality of those who suffer from it.
When not able to say what an individual feels, the body assumes this tension, producing illnesses that somatize the organism despite, paradoxically, that the body does not suffer from them.
This somatic manifestation distracts the sufferer, causing their fear to lie in conditions manifested in their body. This diverts their attention from the true origin of the problem, which is their mind, a place where you cannot hear or see a disease. Where words, unable to give meaning to what happens, let the imagination overflow, causing illnesses in those who suffer fear of the impossibility of controlling their reality.
Covid-19 has produced havoc on our mental health. It has made anxiety a silent pathology that is affecting people post-confinement.
Tips on how not to suffer
- Being aware of our thoughts allows us to understand how we think. This implies evaluating our vocabulary in order to recognize, on the one hand, if we have the words that allow us to face fears, or on the other, understand if we are thinking in a positive or destructive way.
- Anxiety is an imaginary pathology that, despite manifesting itself through somatizations, its origins are in the mind. Appreciating our vocabulary allows us to understand how we think and this provides tools that fill the voids that we have and to face the fears caused by the impossibility of naming the unknown with concrete words.