Low-Level Chronic Fear

When my wife and I visited France over the summer (2024) to figure out if we wanted to live there, something very interesting happened about a week into our six-week trip: both of us, to the day, felt as if a sense of tension, of unease, had faded away. My wife explained that this sensation was low-level chronic fear.

Low-level chronic fear or anxiety, which in clinical terms may also be referred to as general anxiety disorder (GAD), can be described according to this definition:

Low-level anxiety is characterised by a constant sense of dread or unease. It’s an underlying, daily tension, which can make daily life feel really challenging. Common symptoms of low-level anxiety include: Excessive worrying and overthinking.

The funny thing is that we never knew we were suffering from it until we experienced its absence. And that’s exactly what happened to us about a week into our trip: that underlying tension, like a background hum or vibration, slipped away, and it felt wonderful. It was gone, like a weight from around our necks, until we returned to the U.S.

As I said, this sensation isn’t something you might even notice until you’ve experienced its absence. To do that, however, you have to find a place where you’re really at peace, where both your conscious and subconscious minds no longer feel constantly under siege.

It’s not hard to imagine why we’re subject to low-level chronic fear here in the States. Here are just a few things we came up with that are no doubt contributors to this anxiety, not in any particular order:

You or your children getting shotLosing your jobHealth insurance, from not having any to going insane trying to get coverage for needed careGetting sick or, far worse, becoming disabledThe flip side of the above: trying to stay healthy while everyone else is trying to get you sickNot having enough money to cover rent, food, and other billsBeing able to retire, or having to come out of retirement because you can’t live on your fixed incomeNo support to care for yourself, your children, parents, or other familyNot having any paid leavePolicePolitics (waves hands at everything)Global issues like climate change, pollution, the pandemic, etc.

In short, most Americans have a lengthy laundry list of unpleasant “what ifs” and a very small safety margin between staying afloat and drowning. Millions of us are little more than a few hundred dollars between surviving and joining the record number of our unhoused fellow citizens, and we have very few social safety nets.

When we were in France, even as visitors, that tension evaporated. I’ll say again, it’s impossible to know how good that feels until you’ve experienced it.

But why? Why did we feel that way in France (and I suspect we would’ve experienced the same in many other countries)?

Go back and look at that list, above. Granted, a lot of things on that list didn’t apply to us as visitors (e.g., things related to work, retirement, etc.). But we didn’t have to worry about getting shot. The price of most food there is half what it is here if you shopped at Walmart, and far better quality. We knew that if we required medical care, the first priority would be treating us, not making sure we could pay outrageous bills; and whatever we did have to pay (which would be reimbursed by our U.S. insurance in this case) would be a fraction of what it would be here. Yes, France has poor people – every country does – and I’m sure there are more than a few who are homeless. But we didn’t see any in our travels, whereas in the U.S. we’ve seen a LOT. The police aren’t an overwhelming presence; in fact, outside of the major cities they’re pretty scarce unless you call for them. And for those who do live there (versus visitors like ourselves), there are social safety nets to help people and families, and things like quality elder care – which is a nightmare here in the U.S. – are an integral party of their overall healthcare system.

The irony is that this is how it is in most other countries outside the developing world, and even many of those countries have universal health care, better food, lower cost of living, and don’t have a gun epidemic. But the wealthiest nation in history – the United States of America – doesn’t have those things, and I fear never will.

As my wife and I anticipated, that low-level chronic fear returned very quickly after we got back to the U.S. You can feel it like a low-voltage charge running through you, keeping your entire body tensed up just a bit, constantly. Once you learn to recognize it, it’s a very, very unpleasant sensation, and I can’t wait to be free of it again. Hopefully permanently.

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