Are you suffering from ‘STREXIT’?
With more of us feeling stressed, depressed and anxious, could our departure from the EU be to blame?
It can be hard to capture the public mood when it comes to Brexit but, last week,
Theresa May had a stab.
tiredbrexit “You, the public, have had enough,” she said, in a Downing Street speech. “You are tired of the infighting, of the political games and the arcane procedural rows, tired of MPS talking about nothing else but Brexit when you have real concerns about our children’s schools, our National Health Service, knife crime.
“You want this stage of the Brexit process to be over and done with. I agree. I am on your side.”
Whether her words had you nodding in agreement or not, it’s hard to deny that huge numbers of people are feeling fatigued at the mere mention of the B-word. This, after all, was supposed to be the week of Brexit, with Britain scheduled to leave the EU on Friday March 29.
Sir Cary Cooper, a professor of organisational psychology and health at the University of Manchester, has an analogy of the way our politicians are dealing with the fiasco: “They’re divorcing parents screaming and shouting at each other, changing their minds about who is going to live where, all the while unaware that their poor children are absorbing the stress and uncertainty,” he says. “The British public is the equivalent of those children.”
Little wonder, then, that so many of us are suffering from what has been called “Strexit” – a low level hum of anxiety about what may or may not happen, uncertainty over everything from the economy to whether we should be stockpiling food, and alarm at the aggression that seems to have grown on both sides of the argument. All this is having an impact on our happiness, no matter which way you might have voted.
Since the referendum, there has been a 13.7 per cent increase in prescriptions for antidepressants. “Recent figures from the Health and Safety Executive also show that 57 per cent of absence from work is now due to stress, anxiety or depression,” adds Sir Cary.
“This is the highest it’s ever been. A few years ago it was musculoskeletal issues – bad backs – but now it’s stress. My own view is that Brexit stress is causing people to get ill.
“It’s been weighing on the UK’S mind for almost three years, and never more so than in the past six months. That’s three years of thinking, ‘Will the economy dive bomb? Will the NHS be OK? My house won’t sell – is Brexit to blame? Is my job safe?’ Over time, prolonged political chaos and drip-fed uncertainty trigger the stress hormones cortisol and adrenalin to be released, which reduces immunity.”
Louise Chunn, who founded the therapy directory site Welldoing.org in 2014, has noticed a spike in demand whenever there is a major Brexit spat. “It’s making us feel unsure about the future, which can trigger anxiety and depression,” she says. “One of my therapists recently told me she hadn’t seen a single client in the past year who hadn’t talked about Brexit anxiety. I thought that was extraordinary.”
Although there is no evidence linking Brexit directly to the onset of illness, if left unchecked stress can cause serious, long-term mental and physical conditions such as anxiety and depression. And the immune system plays an important role in cardiovascular disorders such as heart disease, as well as cancer, dementia and autoimmune diseases.
Stress also means we are more likely to make poor lifestyle choices – such as bingeing on alcohol and unhealthy food, and not exercising – which can take a physical toll.
Personal trainer Matt Roberts says uncertainty over Brexit could mean more people are engaging in such stress behaviours and putting further strain on their bodies: “We know that when cortisol levels are permanently raised, it encourages visceral fat storage,” he explains. “This raises your risk of heart disease and type 2 diabetes.”
Jillian Lavender, co-founder of the London Meditation Centre, says even if we aren’t consciously engaging with the latest Brexit news, we could be feeling Strexit without realising it.
“I’m seeing a lot of Brexit-related stress because it’s so pervasive and dominating,” she says. “Most people associate stress with overreacting and becoming aggressive, angry and feeling unable to cope. But there’s another reaction to stress that’s less talked about and that’s underreacting. “When you underreact, you freeze and become passive. You don’t know what to do so you don’t do anything. So you eat that second biscuit, pour yourself that second glass of wine, and you stay on your sofa, despairing. This is just as unhealthy as losing your temper or feeling overwhelmed.”
It has less obvious consequences, too – so even if you’re not following every political squabble, you may be struggling to sell your house because the housing market has slowed. Or you could be concerned about the need to stockpile. And while much of this might be inflated anxiety, based on speculation, it can easily lead to catastrophising or what Chunn says is the biggest causes of stress: “snowball thinking”. This is where worries start to build and take your mind to worst-case scenarios. “I’ve heard of a diabetic client who was worried about insulin supplies,” she adds. “We’re also seeing people living in the UK but from another country, or who have loved ones from other countries, and Brexit has made them feel unsure about their place here. Plus there’s a sense among proud British people of feeling rather foolish in the eyes of Europe and the world, as Brexit unravels.”
Our rolling 24-hour news culture doesn’t help: “The UK has lived through much worse than Brexit,” says Chunn, “but during the Blitz and the IRA bombings, we didn’t have 24-hour news, nor debate on social media. We read the papers in the morning and watched the Six O’clock News, or listened to the wireless”
Lavender adds that dealing with Strexit can be as simple as accepting that you can’t affect the outcome: “Things change in life all the time and it’s exhausting trying to stop them. It’s like trying to stop the river from flowing. To be adaptable to change, whether that change is good or