Is anxiety an electrical illness?
The myth of Freud | Is it "all in our head?"
Anxiety is all in your head.
Women are hysterical.
Women have weak nerves.
At least that’s what the Titans of the Electrical Age, including Sigmund Freud made many believe.
People actually had and still have neurasthenia, meaning “weak nerves.” You’ve probably never heard of this mystery illness. Before you chalk it up to the land of witchcraft, let’s take you on a stroll down electric memory lane, where all the streets never stop glowing, even if the mind wants to sleep.
How women become hysterical
In the early 1800s, hysteria described a neurological condition of the body, not the mind. The “hystera” is Greek for uterus, and hysteria was a neurological disease that originated in the internal organs. For centuries the term nervous meant “neurological”, pertaining more to the body than mind. Nervous disorders included epilepsy, contractions, paralysis, tremors, cramps, alcoholism, loss of sensations, tetanus, and gout.
In the early 1800s, many illnesses were still being called hysterical, even when there was nothing wrong with the uterus. When women had tremors, palpitations, or seizures, but the internal organs were not affected, they were called “nervous.”
A colleague of Thomas Edison, and budding New York City neurologist George Miller Beard, noticed this trend of increasing nervous disorders. In 1869 Beard published a paper in the New England Journal of Medicine, where he came up with the term “neurasthenia”, which means “weak nerves.” If there was nothing wrong with the organs, what was precipitating this “nervousness”?
In 1885, German physician Rudolf Arndt made a connection between neurasthenia and electricity. He did this at the height of industrialization, for which he was vehemently admonished by his fellows. Arndt proposed that “electro-sensitivity is characteristic of high-grade neurasthenia.”
He also acknowledged that a large obstacle to acknowledging electromagnetic poisoning was that the people who were less sensitive to electricity chalked up this study to the likes of superstition. Let us paint a picture of what was happening at that time, which was a systematic electrification of the planet.
The timeline leading up to the Dawn of Elecricity:
1839- Europe had magnetic telegraphs installed.
1844- US had first telegraph installed
1850- telegraph lines were under construction on every continent. Twenty-two thousand miles of wire had been energized in the US, four thousand through India, where “monkeys and swarms of large birds” were alighting on them.1
1875- thirty thousand miles of submarine cable had destroyed the depths of the ocean, and seven hundred thousand miles of copper web over the surface of the earth, enough to encircle the globe thirty times. [3]
1885- telegraph wires link almost thirty thousand homes and businesses over New York
1889- Edison General Electric Co. is incorporated: every US city gets electric lighting, powered by AC (alternating current) motors. The Age of Electricity begins.
1897- Marconi begins sending radio (wireless telegraphy) transmissions at one million cycles per second (our home wiring runs on 60 cycles per second)
All of the great physicians of that time, and centuries before, ascribed to the fact that our bodies had their own DC electric current. Once disturbed, all our other biological functions would go astray. Industry had their way however, and did a better job of marketing their solutions that were seen as progress, over the “backward” philosophies of vitalists such as Newton and Galvani, who maintained there was an etheric vital force in each organism. In 1985, Robert Becker would go on to prove that this vital “life force” does in fact exist, in his book The Body Electric.
The most important observations made by the 19th century medical community regarding neurasthenia were that it:
Spread along routes of the railroads and telegraph lines
Affected both men and women, rich and poor
Sufferers were often weather-sensitive
Sometimes resembled the common cold or flu
Ran in families
Increased likeliness of allergies and diabetes
Lowered tolerance for alcohol and drugs
Seized most commonly people in the prime of their life- 15 to 50yrs.
Then came the magical umbrella word to cover up industry’s pollution.
Over a century ago, at the dawn of an era that gave electricity its blessing to go full throttle not just for communication, but for light and power, Freud invented the term anxiety nervosa for these symptoms:
Irratibility
Heart Palpitations, chest pain
Perspiration
Shortness of breath, asthma
Diarrhea
Vertigo
Nausea and vomiting
Arthritis
Numbness and tingling
Tremor
Frequent urination
Insomnia
Ravenous hunger
Weakness
Exhaustion
All of the cases of neurasthenia, which were concerned with the nerves of the body, were now classified as a mental disease. Environmental illness caused by a toxic environment isn’t given as much credence to this day due to Freud, who blamed its symptoms on out-of-control emotions and disordered thoughts.
It is all in our head, because we allowed the thought that “we’re bad” to be planted!
Food for thought: modern interpretations of Christianity tell us we’re all originally sinners. Are we? Or are we only souls seeking perfection? A sinner is a fixed label, whereas one who accepts their divine essence has room to grow.
How do you think the concept of a sinner may have an impact on our relationship with health and technology?
Because of Freud, envioronmental illness (illness caused by a toxic environment), is widely thought not to exist, its symptoms automatically blamed on disordered thoughts and out-of-control emotions.
“Because of Freud, we are today putting millions of poeple on Xanax, Prozac, and Zoloft instead of cleaning up their evnrionment.”
-Arthur Firstenberg, The Invisible Rainbow.
If all of this history seems out of the blue, I don’t blame you. It was the same for me, until I found I had been living under a rock called the U.S. In the International Classification of Diseases, code F 48.0 is for neurasthenia. This code was removed in the US version. Even in the Diagnositic and Statistical Manual (DSM-IV), the official system for assigning codes to mental diseases in American hospitals, there is no code for neurasthenia.
Most of the world still recognizes neurasthenia as one of the most frequently diagnosed diseases, usually indicating chronic toxicity. Physicians in these other countries take into consideration the effects of our environment and external stimuli, and have a holistic approach, vs our magic-pills.
We hear it all the time: “mind is body.” What bridges the mind and body?
If the bridge is out, how can we find a foothold in our daily lives of stress?
We can meditate, exercise, and eat well, however isn’t it easier to remove the toxin, rather than adding more to the equation?
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What is anxiety costing us today?
In 2019, almost half of all US adults experienced some form of anxiety.3 In 2022, those suffering from anxiety incurred average annual medical costs of $11,711 to $18,045.4 Their total healthcare costs tended to be almost twice as high as those suffering without anxiety. The health and economic burden, including interference with performing daily activities, and an inability to function in society also contributed an average annual indirect cost of $7,500.
A 2025 study published the journal PLOS Medicine found that young adults who experienced psychological stress as teens earned over $5,600 less in wages than those who didn’t.5 Finally, the researchers estimated that if a nationwide mental health expansion policy could reach just 10 percent of those stressed teens, the “labor supply impacts alone” would lead to an additional $52 billion in federal revenue over 10 years.
A 2024 analysis of commercial healthcare spending from Cedar Gate Technologies revealed the highest costs for behavioral and mental health are incurred by teens aged 15 to 19 years old with anxiety. This age group accounts for at least 31% more per-member per-month (PMPM) spending than any other. The study estimates that early intervention and effective treatment could save $3,321 per person in healthcare costs within two years.
Why don’t we remove the root of the anxiety, which is the nerve-wracking, neurologically-toxic wireless device, instead of expanding more government programs? This would be a win-win for states who want to save money, and teens and adults who want to make more. The loser: Silicon Valley.
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Highton 1851, pp. 151-152
https://romanshapoval.substack.com/i/140673931/why-is-the-only-skin-deep-penetration-of-g-a-myth
Anne Kavelaars, Haley Ward, deMauri S. Mackie, Kushal M. Modi, Anita Mohandas,The burden of anxiety among a nationally representative US adult population, Journal of Affective Disorders, Volume 336, 2023, Pages 81-91, ISSN 0165-0327, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jad.2023.04.069.
EE481 Direct and Indirect Costs Associated With Generalized Anxiety Disorder Among Adults in the United States Duong, P et al. Value in Health, Volume 27, Issue 12
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1004506
Industrial interests trumping everything else: the history of the last two centuries.
I've had ringing in my ears since about 1997. If science finally admitted that those curly Q light bulbs, which they pushed, were bad for our health, and so are the microwave ovens, why not all this 5G? We really don't need it. One has to battle these big corporate giants to prove them wrong (when they know damn well ahead of time) and practically go broke in the process. Well, thats what they really want. They have piles more money than many of us commoners. Perhaps we better learn about smoke signals and/or start to use Morse Code.