Future Anxiety

Anxiety is one of most common psychological disorders in recent times due to the complexity of the roles of the individual and his/her basic and diverse responsibilities, which is reflected in increasing his/her fears and anxiety of  future  life  (Schmid,  Phelps  &  Lerner,  2011).  Muschalla,  Linden  &  Olbrich  (2010)  points  that  anxiety  is  an emotional state whose intensity  is associated with thinking in the future  and it is  categorized into state  anxiety and chronic anxiety. It is associated with the future, the job and also work-related fears.

Being the most common feature in our times qualified our times to be probably called an era of anxietyowing  to  its  contradictions  and  challenges,  the  lack  of  opportunities  for  self-fulfillment,  over  stress  and  poor social  relationships  and  values,  which  leads  to  a  sense  of  tension  and  anxiety  associated  with  our  inability  to predict what will happen in the future.

Future anxiety is one of the anxieties that simultaneously emerged with Toffler’s launching of the term Future  Shock  (1970);  Zaleski  (1996)  indicated  this concept  which  refers  to  a  state  of  apprehension,  fear, uncertainty  and  anxiety  of  undesired  changes  expected  to  occur  in  the  future.  This  fear  of  the  future could include a variety of anticipated threats including physical threats, such as illness or accident, or emotional threats, for example the loss of one of the family members. These threats vary in terms of severity, and future anxiety may include the individual’s fear of failure in achieving his/her goals and aspirations.

Full story at Institute of Education Sciences

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