Why Anxiety Is Good For You Even Though It Feels Bad

Anxiety is a feeling that many people experience at various points in their lives. It can manifest as a generalized sense of unease or as intense fear and panic. While anxiety is often seen as a negative emotion, it actually serves an important purpose in our lives. In this article, we will explore the reasons why anxiety is good for you, even though it may feel bad at times.

The Survival Instinct

Anxiety is rooted in our survival instinct. When we feel anxious, our bodies are preparing themselves for potential threats. This response is commonly known as the fight-or-flight response. It increases our alertness and allows us to react swiftly in dangerous situations.

Imagine you are walking in a dark alley at night. Suddenly, you hear footsteps approaching from behind. Your heart starts racing, your palms sweat, and you become hyper-aware of your surroundings. These physical and emotional responses are your body's way of preparing you to either fight off an attacker or run away to safety.

Future Tense: Why Anxiety Is Good for You (Even Though It Feels Bad)

by Tracy Dennis-Tiwary(Kindle Edition)

4.4 out of 5

Language	:	English
File size	:	1967 KB
Text-to-Speech	:	Enabled
Screen Reader	:	Supported
Enhanced typesetting	:	Enabled
Word Wise	:	Enabled
Print length	:	246 pages

FREE

Without anxiety, our ancestors wouldn't have been able to survive in dangerous environments. It helped them stay alive by keeping them on high alert and ready to respond to potential threats. Even in our modern world, anxiety plays a similar role in keeping us safe.

Motivation and Performance

While anxiety can be overwhelming, it can also fuel our motivation and enhance our performance. When we feel anxious about a presentation, a job interview, or a difficult task, it shows that we care about the outcome and want to do well.

Anxiety can push us to prepare thoroughly, leading to better performance. It prompts us to pay attention to details, double-check our work, and practice until we feel confident. These anxious feelings can be harnessed to drive us to achieve our goals and reach our full potential.

For example, imagine a student who feels anxious about an upcoming exam. This anxiety can motivate them to study harder and be more focused on their preparation. In turn, their performance in the exam can improve, and they may even perform better than they would have without that anxiety-driven motivation.

Growth and Learning

Anxiety is often accompanied by a fear of the unknown and a fear of failure. However, these fears can also be opportunities for growth and learning. When we step out of our comfort zones and face our anxieties, we give ourselves the chance to overcome obstacles and develop resilience.

Think back to a time when you were anxious about trying something new. Maybe it was a new sport, a challenging course, or a social situation that made you uncomfortable. By pushing through that anxiety, you likely discovered new abilities, gained confidence, and expanded your comfort zone.

By embracing anxiety and seeing it as a natural part of life, we can develop the mindset to approach challenges with curiosity and resilience. Instead of avoiding situations that make us anxious, we can acknowledge the discomfort and use it as an opportunity for personal growth.

Building Emotional Intelligence

Anxiety often brings out intense emotions, such as fear, worry, and uncertainty. While these emotions can be distressing, they also give us the chance to develop emotional intelligence and self-awareness.

When we experience anxiety, we learn to recognize and understand our emotions on a deeper level. We become more attuned to our own thoughts and feelings, which allows us to navigate them more effectively. This heightened emotional intelligence can enhance our relationships, decision-making, and overall well-being.

Furthermore, anxiety can make us more empathetic towards others who may be experiencing similar emotions. It can help us relate to and support people who are going through challenging times, creating deeper connections and fostering a sense of community.

Seeking Help and Support

Anxiety is a common mental health condition that affects millions of people worldwide. Acknowledging and accepting our anxiety can lead us to seek help and support when needed. Seeking professional therapy or engaging in self-care practices can provide tools and strategies to manage anxiety effectively.

Additionally, opening up about our anxieties can foster understanding and compassion from others. By sharing our experiences, we break down the stigma surrounding anxiety and create a supportive environment where people can feel comfortable seeking help.

Anxiety may feel uncomfortable, distressing, and overwhelming, but it serves a purpose in our lives. It is a natural response that has helped humans survive and adapt throughout history. By reframing our perspective and understanding the positive aspects of anxiety, we can use it as a catalyst for growth, self-improvement, and connection with others.

Future Tense: Why Anxiety Is Good for You (Even Though It Feels Bad)

by Tracy Dennis-Tiwary(Kindle Edition)

4.4 out of 5

Language	:	English
File size	:	1967 KB
Text-to-Speech	:	Enabled
Screen Reader	:	Supported
Enhanced typesetting	:	Enabled
Word Wise	:	Enabled
Print length	:	246 pages

FREE

A psychologist confronts our pervasive misunderstanding of anxiety and presents a powerful new framework for reimagining and reclaiming the confounding emotion as the advantage it evolved to be.

We taught people that anxiety is dangerous and damaging, and that the solution to its pain is to eradicate it like we do any disease—prevent it, avoid it, and stamp it out at all costs. Yet cutting-edge therapies, hundreds of self-help books, and a panoply of medications have failed to keep debilitating anxiety at bay. A third of us will struggle with anxiety disorders in our lifetime and rates in children and adults continue to skyrocket.

That’s because the anxiety-as-disease story is false—and it’s harming us.

In this radical reinterpretation, Dr. Tracy Dennis-Tiwary argues that anxiety is an evolved advantage that protects us and strengthens our creative and productive powers. Although it’s related to stress and fear, it’s uniquely valuable—allowing us to imagine the uncertain future and compelling us to make that future better. That’s why anxiety is inextricably linked to hope.

By distilling the latest research in psychology and neuroscience, including her own, combining it with real-world stories and personal narrative, Dennis-Tiwary shows how we can acknowledge the discomfort of anxiety and see it as a tool, rather than something to be feared and reviled. Detailing the terrible cost of our misunderstanding of anxiety, while celebrating the lives of people who harness it to their advantage, she argues that we can—and must—learn to be anxious in the right way.

Future Tense blazes the way for a paradigm shift in how we relate to and understand anxiety in our day-to-day lives—a fresh set of beliefs and insights that allow us to explore and leverage even very distressing anxiety rather than to be overwhelmed by it. Through this new prism of thinking, even anxiety disorders can be alleviated. Achieving a new mindset will not fix anxiety itself—because the emotion of anxiety is not broken; the way we cope with it is. By challenging our long-held assumptions about anxiety, this book provides a concrete framework for how to reclaim it for what it has always been—a gift rather than a curse, and a source of inner strength, joy, and ingenuity.