Friday, March 16, 2012

What is anxiety?

When you think about anxious feelings for a minute, what use do you think they have? I mean, our mind-body is an incredible work of art, and every positive and negative emotion has a positive purpose. Of course, too much of anything is not necessarily good. If a person was in a constant state of bliss, it would be wonderful, but would anything be done? In a constant, steady state of bliss, would a person eat, work and play, or would motivation be gone? Is it possible to experience bliss and motivational feelings at the same time? Perhaps different types of bliss would allow this, the bliss of enjoying food and drink with all of the five senses, the bliss of doing the work you love, the bliss of constantly enjoying the presence of loved ones, and the bliss of enjoying the memory of loved ones when they are not present. Would it be then possible to experience a blissful anxiousness, or an anxious blissfulness? What use does anxiousness have? Like every other emotion, it is hardwired in. Tad James describes anxiousness as imagining a future event ending badly. Afterwards, every time a person thinks of this event, anxious feelings arise. How could that possibly be useful? People who describe functions of the mind-body, are fond of going back to prehistoric times. A hunter gatherer who has a nomadic existence, spots a lovely comfortable looking cave in the distance. It would be nice to be able to spend the night in a warm dry place, they think. However, they spot unmistakable signs of a cave lion around the cave, and the signals from the body are anxious feelings. The hunter gather imagines what happens when they meet the cave lion in the cave, and feels anxious. They decide to find a different place which is less comfortable, but safer to stay the night. This allows the anxious feelings to dissipate. However, our mind body does not differentiate between a future event that causes our death if it ends badly, or a future event that ends in embarrassment if it ends badly. The feelings associated with an imagined bad ending for a future event lead to anxious feelings. So if you feel anxious about a future event (which is not life threatening in any way!), imagine floating forward in time to fifteen minutes after the successful completion of that event, and from there looking back to now, and notice how all the events between now and then align themselves in a way that supports the successful completion of that event. The check what happened the anxious feeling. Of course, it's possible that the future event won't actually complete successfully - but that can be chalked up to experience and learning! I am just writing about standard everyday anxious feelings, and not anxious mood disorders, in which people experience truly terrible and debilitating anxiousness, which seriously detract from the quality of life, and which can require psychiatric assistance.
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