
Anxiety is usually perceived as a negative experience. No one wants to feel the pang of constant apprehension or that feeling that something bad is about to happen at any moment. However, as long as it doesn’t reach pathological levels, it is possible to use anxiety to your advantage.
3 unexpected advantages of anxiety
Modern life, with all its obligations and challenges, engulfs us in a stressful lifestyle. However, it is necessary to understand that anxiety is not simply an unwanted guest.
From an evolutionary perspective it has played a crucial role in our survival: the “fight or flight” reaction usually triggers an adaptive mechanism that prepares the body to face immediate threats.
Anxiety, like the rest of the emotions, especially those that we classify as “negative”, are tools for survival that we have been refining over hundreds of thousands of years of evolution to protect ourselves. Therefore, like everything in life, anxiety also has a positive side.
1. It helps us focus
In fact, it has been proven that, while anxiety restricts global attention, it also helps us focus more on possible threats. An anxious person, for example, sees the “small print” better. That ability to focus on details can be particularly beneficial in contexts where attention to detail is crucial. A study conducted at the University of Waterloo also revealed that a manageable level of anxiety improves our memory, especially for details.
2. It allows us to be more empathetic
Psychologists from the University of Haifa also found that anxiety can help us be more empathetic and understanding of the problems of others. It is likely that after having to struggle with anxiety, we become more sensitive and tolerant of the personal challenges of others.
3. It gives us extra motivation
When we are motivated, our performance increases. We not only do things better, but we also approach them with a more positive state of mind. According to the Yerkes-Dodson law, the right level of anxiety helps us reach the ideal point of motivation. Anxiety, as long as it is not very high, gives us the energy we need since it activates the sympathetic nervous system, which is like our “accelerator.”
How to use anxiety to your advantage instead of paralyzing you?
Anxiety disorders can be paralyzing. No doubt. However, the widespread use of the term anxiety to refer to a general malaise causes confusion because it leads us to accept two fallacies:
- Feeling anxiety is dangerous and harmful
- The solution is to combat or prevent anxiety
That way of thinking led us to perceive everyday anxieties as problems that we must avoid at all costs. However, the problem is not anxiety. Anxiety is just the messenger: it tells us that we are facing uncertainty and that we must rise to the challenge or it warns us that we must change something in our lives. The real problem is that our beliefs about anxiety and the desire to escape from it end up closing the anxiety cycle.
Applying cognitive restructuring for anxiety will help you change the way you see and react to that state. An experiment conducted at Harvard Business School found that when we perceive anxiety as a positive state of excitement, we improve our performance.
In fact, if you think about it, anxiety is nothing more than apprehension about an uncertain future: something bad could happen, but something good could also happen. So when you feel those butterflies in your stomach or your heart starts beating faster, don’t immediately assume that being anxious is bad.
Reframe those sensations as a sign of expectation and excitement. You have the ability to redirect that energy by telling yourself “I’m excited ” instead of “It’s going to be a disaster, I’m anxious.”
It will also be of great help if you pair each worry with an action, a simple trick to turn anxiety into something productive. Basically, it consists of making a list of the things that worry you and generate anxiety. Then think about practical actions that will help you resolve them or minimize their impact.
This way you can use anxiety to your advantage because you will take advantage of its alarm message to prepare yourself and face those situations that could create problems for you. The key is to redirect the energy you generate towards action, instead of getting lost in the maze of worries.
Soren Kierkegaard wrote: “He who learns to feel anxious in the right way, has learned the most important thing.” Learning to deal with stress, tension and apprehension is not easy, but when you manage to use anxiety to your advantage and stop seeing it as an enemy, you can even turn it into a tool to connect with yourself, listen to yourself and build the life you want.
References:
Lee, C. & Fernandes, M. (2017) Emotional Encoding Context Leads to Memory Bias in Individuals with High Anxiety. Brain Sciences; 8(2): 6.
Najmi, S. (2012) Attentional impairment in anxiety: inefficiency in expanding the scope of attention. Depress Anxiety; 29(3): 243–249.
Tibi-Elhanany, Y. & Shamay-Tsoory, S. (2011) Social cognition in social anxiety: first evidence for increased empathic abilities. Isr J Psychiatry Relat Sci; 48(2): 98-106.
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