A day after petrol prices rose again, I parked my car at work and noticed the parking lot guard looking unusually distressed.

I asked him what was wrong. He said he was worried about all the cars in the parking lot and how their owners would now afford fuel. He was a man who rode a bicycle to work. That moment stayed with me, not because of the price hike—we have all developed a quiet resilience to those—but because of the kind of worry it revealed. A worry not always about one’s own life, but about everything around it, quietly becoming part of how one exists.

Over the years, working with patients, I have noticed a pattern. People are not just anxious. They are stuck in anxiety. It is there in conversations, in silences, in the way people describe their days. Financial strain is the most obvious reason. Incomes struggle to keep pace with rising costs and planning ahead often feels unrealistic. But the anxiety does not end there. Our social structures add their own weight. In joint family systems, where multiple people share limited space and resources, even........

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