Anxiety
I recently watched Inside Out 2 and loved the way they portrayed Anxiety in the movie.
Anxiety. We talk about it all the time, but mostly from a negative perspective. However, the movie also highlights the positive aspects of anxiety, giving us a more comprehensive understanding of this emotion. Let’s talk about Anxiety today!
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The Goods of Anxiety
Anxiety helps us anticipate possible negative outcomes and motivates us to address them. It is related to worry, which involves thinking about potential negative consequences. This worry provides motivation to take action to prevent those negative outcomes. For example, if you worry about an upcoming presentation at school or work, your anxiety may motivate you to spend time preparing for it. This can help us think ahead and plan for the future. We may be able to delay immediate gratification in order to pursue something more significant in the long term. Additionally, we may be more cautious when we recognize that something will not benefit us in the long run. This is why Anxiety in Inside Out says, "I just want to protect her."
However……
The Bads of Anxiety
When anxiety becomes too intense or excessive, it no longer serves us well. Instead, it backfires and leads to negative consequences. Physically, our muscles tense up, heart rate increases, and breathing becomes faster as we enter a fight-or-flight mode, with our sympathetic nervous system being activated. If these bodily symptoms become too strong, they can lead to panic attacks. Anxiety can also affect sleep and appetite.
When anxiety is too high, we may want to avoid the triggers or stressors. Have you ever avoided someone, something, or some places because of anxiety? Have you ever procrastinated on tasks? Instead of motivating us to address something, intense anxiety makes us want to escape, avoid, and procrastinate. It totally backfires.
On the other hand, intense anxiety can lead to overdoing things. For example, I might spend hours and hours proofreading this writing because I'm worried I might make a mistake. People with high anxiety may over-check, excessively search for information, excessively seek reassurance to ensure they are right, or excessively make lists to ensure they don’t forget anything. There's nothing wrong with taking steps to prevent problems. However, people with high anxiety tend to do too much—way too much, unnecessarily too much.
So, how can we get along with anxiety?
It's all about balance. The right amount of anxiety helps us plan for the future and protects us from negative consequences. Therefore, we don't need to eliminate anxiety completely. However, we don't want our anxiety to become overwhelming. If it does, remind yourself that we can never control everything in our lives. Life is full of surprises, both good and bad. We need to learn to let go sometimes and have faith in ourselves that we can handle even the bad surprises. This is a very good way to build confidence and resilience. This is how we grow.
