The Upside of Anxiety
How a misunderstood emotion can benefit us
You don’t have to spend much time online before you find a headline about anxiety. It’s sky-high in adolescents. It’s associated with heart disease. It’s elevated in times of great economic challenge and uncertainty. It’s enough to make you anxious about your anxiety.
Anxiety is an emotion that’s got a lot of press in the past few years—and not the good kind. But don’t be fooled by anxiety’s reputation; it’s a deeply misunderstood emotion. All of the bad news about anxiety might keep you from appreciating its function and value in your own life.
Hold up—there’s value in feeling anxious? You heard me right. That’s not a story we hear often (or ever) about anxiety. To shift how you think about this misunderstood emotion, let’s look at some of the basics about anxiety.
Anxiety, like all our emotions, exists because it offers you information and motivates you to take action. It’s similar to how a hunger pang signals that you’re in need of food and nudges you to take that frozen pizza out of the freezer.
What information does anxiety provide, exactly? It is an emotion that surfaces when our brains are anticipating a negative event that may happen in the future. May is the operative word here. We can contrast it with an emotion such as fear, which signals that danger is happening right now. Said otherwise, anxiety emerges when we imagine encountering a bear on a hike and fear emerges when the grizzly is smack dab in front of you. So, if anxiety signals the anticipation of a worst-case scenario, how might that help?
Anxiety is our biological smoke alarm that activates our fight-flight-freeze response—the sprinkler system. This response causes stress hormones such as adrenaline and cortisol to increase which, in turn, can increase our heart rate, change our breathing, increase alertness, make us feel agitated, upset our stomachs, or make us dissociate. All of the physical sensations we experience when we feel anxious represent our body’s efforts to redirect physical resources where they’re needed so we can fight, run away, or play dead when faced with predation or danger.
The fight-flight-freeze response has been critical to ensuring our survival as a human species. Which is easy to forget when you’re feeling anxious about speaking up on a zoom call. Although we’re not running away from sabre-tooth tigers anymore, here’s some present-day examples of how your anxiety could be helping you for the better:
-Avoiding driving in a snowstorm
-Pausing a fight with your spouse when the conversation gets too heated
-Having insurance
-Being alert to signs of chicken pocks on your child after an outbreak at their school
-Saying “no” to an unreasonable request at work
-Being assertive with an authority figure (e.g., physician, employer)
-Having COVID-19 rapid tests at home
Anxiety can help us:
1. Mitigate the risk of something bad happening in the future (e.g., avoiding driving in a snowstorm)
2. Plan for how we’ll cope when something bad happens (e.g., having insurance)
3. Preserve our boundaries or personal resources (e.g., saying “no” to an unreasonable request at work)
All of these actions are instrumental in helping us live our best lives and cope with challenges that will inevitably appear. Anxiety really does have the best of intentions and, in some cases, can help us reduce future risks and bolster our abilities to cope.
Now for the flip side. Anxiety can be like the smoke alarm that goes off when you’ve burnt toast. The alarm is working but it’s detecting something that isn’t a threat. Anxiety can be maladaptive when you’re anticipating a low probability event (e.g., terrorist attack when you’re going on vacation), worrying more often than not, and taking other actions that aren’t in your best interest (e.g., avoiding a prostate cancer screening). If you feel your anxiety is becoming maladaptive, a mental health professional or family doctor can be helpful in discussing what your options are for treatment.
As much as anxiety can be derailing, impairing, exhausting, and take away from the quality of your life, it’s also important to understand the portion of it that it that is well intentioned and incredibly helpful. Having a more balanced view of this emotion can help us deal with it more effectively. As much as anxiety can be a pain in the you-know-where, its efforts to keep us safe, prepare for future challenges, and look after ourselves do deserve a shout-out.
This post is for informational purposes only and should not be considered therapeutic advice or a replacement for individual therapy. For more information on locating a psychologist near you, please contact your family doctor, the Ontario Psychological Association, the Canadian Association for Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, or Psychology Today
