Why Modern Life Fuels Anxiety: Therapy for Stress and Burnout in Edinburgh

19th May 2025

“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.” attributed to Carl Jung.

“The pressure to be extraordinary is the modern disguise for the fear of being unloved.” Alain de Botton

What Causes Modern Anxiety?

Work related stress, burnout, overwhelm, social anxiety, generalised anxiety: the modern list is endless. Despite living in an age of abundance and possibility, one of the quiet paradoxes of modern life is that we’re increasingly beset by feelings of anxiety, exhaustion, and unease. We are surrounded by choices and opportunities. Lives can be endlessly optimised, curated, and reinvented. Yet behind the glassy calm of modernity lies a relentless, often invisible pressure: to perform, to succeed, to do more, to be effortlessly fine.

How Childhood Scripts Shape Adult Stress

But our minds are not machines. They carry with them the echoes of earlier emotional landscapes, childhoods where we may have learned, often unconsciously, that love is earned through achievement, that approval is conditional, that vulnerability is unsafe. These early templates don’t vanish as we grow older; they simply adapt to new surroundings, quietly shaping how we respond to adult life.

So when modern society tells us to hustle harder, to be better, to always strive, we may not just be reacting to the demands of work or social media. We may also be responding to a deeper, older script: the belief that we are only as good as our latest success, that failure is a kind of abandonment, and that rest is dangerous. This is the psychodynamic truth of modern anxiety: it is not only the world that exhausts us, but the unconscious parts of ourselves that never quite felt safe to begin with.

How Therapy Can Help with Stress and Burnout

In this sense therapy offers something radical: the chance to slow down and become curious about the internal world we inherited long before LinkedIn or deadlines. It gives us a space to ask not just what we’re feeling, but why. And to explore whose voice, exactly, is whispering in our head when we feel we’re not doing enough.

Modern life may not get any gentler. But with insight and compassion, we can begin to soften the demands we place on ourselves - honouring not just the adult we are, but the child we once were, still seeking safety in a fast-moving world.

Seeking Therapy in Edinburgh

Anxiety therapy or other psychological treatment may provide help in numerous surface level ways: stress management techniques; strategies to improve sleep; or grounding and relaxation exercises. Ultimately however, a deeper exploration, not just of the present moment, but of the past living quietly inside the present is likely to reveal and help transform deeper patterns fuelling and maintaining our stress.

If this resonates with you...
You’re not alone. Many people struggle with the emotional weight of unresolved patterns. Learn more about therapy for trauma, anxiety, and burnout, or meet Yanni Yannoulis, Clinical Psychologist in Edinburgh.

Ready to take the next step? Book a free 15-minute consultation today.