How might my current stress be related to losing status?

We live in a world that favors, rewards, enables and encourages external validation.

Seduced by the lure of status, our prehistoric brains have been conditioned to make choices based on how much cultural cache we receive as a result. Otherwise we risk being shamed as different and an outsider, excommunicated from the tribe and banished to the wilderness to die alone.

It may sound a bit extreme, but the effects of status anxiety are very real.

Keshabyan’s psychological research on the topic found that we aspire to advance our position in society. Higher status means greater influence and perceived competence, as well as higher quality of life and wellbeing.

But social ambition can have downsides. The desire for higher status may be accompanied by the experience of anxiety. If we believe we don’t fulfill society’s definition of success, it can be a contributing factor in chronic stress, which negatively impacts physical and mental health.

Because of this very human tendency, it behooves us to ask the following question:

How might my current stress be related to losing status?

There won’t always be an answer, but by taking a moment to check in with our prehistoric brains, we just might find that our stomach cramps or migraines or insomnia are related to some kind of fear around external expectation.

As someone who spent years requiring that balloon of external validation to be constantly inflated, I can tell you that the effort is not worth the reward.

Because just when we get there, there disappears. There is almost always a higher status to be attained, and the vast majority of us never reach the top anyway.

Meanwhile, our physical, mental and relationship health deteriorates. Our bodies, minds and bonds pay the price of something we can never get enough of.

Just ask my gastroenterologist. He once told me, just because you’re not depressed doesn’t mean you won’t benefit from antidepressants.

That medication saved my ass during my stressful first career. Without it, who knows what kinds of devastating effects status anxiety would have had on my life?

Thankfully, life has a way of humbling you at just the right time.

When my wife and I relocated to a huge city, we were immediately humbled by tens of millions of people around us who didn’t give two shits about our talents. Every day was teeming with pinpricks of neglect. Not because the people around us were uncaring, per se, but because they were simply too goal oriented to even notice.

What felt like an accomplishment to us was an indiscernible hiccup to them. Suddenly, our actions were simply not the object of public care. They couldn’t be. Too many people.

And that was a good thing. Because it forced us to inflate the balloon of validation from within. We learned how to affirm our status in our own eyes.

Doesn’t mean stress was a thing of the past, but the fear of losing status wasn’t our constant companion like it used to be.

Ultimately, the prime influencer of our own satisfaction is us. It’s our responsibility to build an inner architecture that is fundamentally validating and rewarding.

Status anxiety can’t always be suppressed, but it can be controlled.

What external forces are foolishly leading you astray from your internal compass?