Anxiety Isn’t Always a Bad Thing, You Know
May 17th, 2012How would you feel if I said to you that anxiety isn’t always a bad thing?
“Yeah, right, Eloise, of course . . . ” I bet you’d say!
But it’s true. In fact, as a normal part of our lives, anxiety can help you to stay alert and focused. It can motivate you and push you into taking action.
If you’re under pressure or facing a stressful situation it’s normal to feel scared or nervous. That’s what anxiety is for. It’s your body’s way of responding to danger, and alerting you that it feels threatened.
It’s only when anxiety becomes overwhelming or constant that it stops being “normal” and instead becomes totally non productive and destructive.
So, as you can see, anxiety affects us all, but to lesser or greater degrees. It can also affect us in different ways. You might suffer from uncontrollable worrying thoughts that come out of the blue, or maybe you suffer from crippling anxiety attacks. Then again, you may live every waking hour in a state of fear and tension.
That’s how anxiety is – affecting us all in different ways.
However, complex as that sounds, there is one common theme running through this. All anxiety disorders have an element of severe fear or worry to them in situations that most people wouldn’t normally feel threatened by.
And that is quite possibly why anxiety is a very misunderstood and under rated condition. It’s simply that most people can’t see what the fuss is all about. They’re not bothered by what you deem to be threatening so their first thought is “What are you worrying about?”
If that thought is then conveyed to you, it can be quite difficult to explain the depth and severity of your anxiety without feeling embarrassed or ashamed by it. You don’t necessarily want to explain your anxiety to others, and you most certainly don’t want to relive it in the process.
On the other hand, particularly if you’re having a day where you’re maybe feeling a little bit mischievous, you may feel that you’re tempted to launch into a full blown explanation!
This week I came across a blogspot that goes into quite a bit of detail as to why your body behaves the way that it does when you’re feeling anxious. Even if you don’t feel ready to “bamboozle people with science” I think that you might find the explanations very helpful.
You can read the article here:
http://hardanxiety.blogspot.co.uk/fight_or_flight.html
I hope that it helps to take away some of the mystery that surrounds anxiety, and provides you with some hard facts for you to produce if you ever find yourself in that tight spot where someone says to you, “I don’t see what you’re worrying about.”