The True Message of Anxiety

Anxiety is a feeling that something bad might happen and that you will not be able or willing to cope. Misinterpreting the true message of your anxiety keeps you walking on eggshells. First of all, anxiety is an important, useful emotion. Without it, you would be killed crossing the street. It’s a response to a real, imagined, or anticipated change in the environment. It tells you to focus, to figure out how to deal with the change. Mental focus means shutting out all information-processing except that which is immediately useful to solving the problem. A fire in the room stirs anxiety to get you to stop thinking about what you’ll wear to the party tonight, so you can focus on how to put out the fire. Anxiety becomes a problem if it stimulates an underlying feeli View the rest of this article