The Paradox of Choice & Status Anxiety

If you’ve managed to avoid affluenza and stuffocation, your mental distress might simply be caused by having too much choice in your life. Where to go on holiday? Which restaurant to eat at? What colour should the curtains be?  Decisions can be stressful, especially when they are made with your nearest and dearest.  Disagreements (as I well know!)  can easily follow … Barry Schwartz in his ‘The Paradox of Choice – Why More is Less’ identified the stress caused by having too much choice. All that anxiety as we lie awake wondering whether we’ve made the right decision!

Just as I was beginning to see that the evidence against excessive material consumption as a passport to happiness and well-being was stacking up, I came across Alaine de Botton’s suggestion that many of us may be suffering from ‘status anxiety’ - ‘A worry so pernicious as to be capable of ruining extended stretches of our lives, that we are in danger of failing to conform to the ideals of success laid down by our society and that we may as a result be stripped of dignity and respect’

So, there I have it:  If we are feeling depressed and anxious - and figures show an increasing number of us are - it's hardly surprising.  We live in a world where the 'economy' is top of the government's agenda and keeping the economy afloat depends on us all carrying on buying.  We are constantly bombarded with messages about how we should look, how our houses should look and the rest ...   No wonder we suffer when we struggle to keep up or when we perhaps come to see that having yet more material goodies isn't all it's cracked up to be,