Anxiety gets a bad reputation. Understandably so.
It can be unpleasant, disruptive, irrational. More often than not anxiety causes us a significant amount of emotional distress. Especially if it becomes excessive and interferes with our relationships, our work, the ability to enjoy our lives.
So naturally, we tend to approach anxiety as something we need to get rid of.
We want to reduce it. Control it. Fix it. Fight it.
But anxiety isn’t all bad.
Sometimes it provides perspective.
Anxiety and Awareness
I commonly define anxiety as the awareness of a perceived threat. Something might happen. Something might go wrong. Something may require our attention. It’s a warning
Sometimes that threat might be irrational. Sometimes it’s unnecessarily amplified. Our brains can certainly convince us that something is dangerous when it isn’t, or take a relatively small concern and turn it into something much bigger.
But anxiety also overlaps with awareness.
It can be a mental notification to pay attention.
Anxiety can encourage us to think ahead, consider potential consequences, prepare ourselves for what might happen or recognize that something just doesn’t feel right. Sometimes a little anxiety goes a long way in recognizing our mental health.
Some of the most anxious people can also be incredibly self-aware. People with social anxiety are often extremely considerate of others. Anxious folks are commonly aware of themselves, aware of other people and aware of how their actions affect those around them.
That doesn’t mean anxiety and awareness are the exact same thing, or that being more anxious automatically makes someone more self-aware. But they certainly share a lot of overlap.
Sometimes the same brain that worries too much is also a brain that notices a lot.
Anxiety Means We Care
Beyond being aware of potential stressors anxiety can also highlight that we care about those stressors. We are aware of consequences or concerns and prefer to reduce them swiftly. Certainly this can be hyper-awareness with potential averse affects. But there’s a balance.
We worry about our kids because we care what happens to them. We worry about our relationships because those relationships are the most meaningful to us. We worry about our work because we want to be successful at it. We worry about how we came across because we care about how our behavior affects other people.
Sometimes we’re anxious because we give a shit. Again not a bad thing.
Of course, that doesn’t mean the anxiety is always warranted. Caring about someone can lead us to worry about things that are incredibly unlikely to happen. Caring about our work can lead us to catastrophize relatively insignificant mistakes. Caring about how other people feel can turn into excessive people pleasing or questioning everything we say.
But underneath some of that anxiety is something valuable.
We care.
And having something to care about also means having something we could potentially worry about.
Uncomfortable Doesn’t Always Mean Useless
None of this means anxiety is always helpful. Or desirable. It’s often a nuisance.
But uncomfortable doesn’t always mean useless.
This distinction matters because our natural response to uncomfortable emotions is often to try to fight them or fix them. We feel anxious and immediately start trying to figure out how to stop feeling anxious.
And sometimes that fight can create even more distress.
Now we aren’t just anxious about whatever initially made us anxious. We’re frustrated that we’re anxious. Worried that our anxiety is getting worse. Disappointed that we’re feeling this way again.
We become anxious about being anxious.
Maybe we don’t always have to fight it. But instead accept and allow.
Acceptance doesn’t mean enjoying anxiety, surrendering to it or assuming everything it tells us is true. Sometimes acceptance simply means let the temporary feeling exist, no matter how undesirable or unpleasant. Maybe actually sitting with a feeling long enough allows us to discover something about it.
What am I worried about?
What am I noticing?
What do I care about here?
Why is this so important to me?
Is this anxiety unnecessarily amplified, or is there actually something worth paying attention to?
Sometimes the answer may be that our anxiety is completely irrational and there isn’t much useful information to take from it.
But sometimes there is.
Reconsidering Our Relationship With Anxiety
Recognizing that anxiety may have some value—whether through awareness, preparation, perspective or simply because we care—can change our relationship with it.
Instead of automatically treating anxiety as an inconvenient nuisance that needs to disappear, maybe we can become a little more curious about why it showed up in the first place.
We don’t have to like it.
We don’t have to believe everything it tells us.
And we certainly don’t have to let it make our decisions for us.
But we can accept and allow it as part of our human experience.
Because anxiety isn’t all bad. Let yourself have a moment.
Sometimes anxiety just means we are human.
