In today's episode of The Psychology World Podcast, we're going to talk about the abnormal and clinical psychology topic of How to Make Anxiety Your Ally?
When I came across this article was interested to say the least because it relates to the video on the Psychology Book Page about the psychology of stress. And making stress your friend.
Anyway, with the Pandemic being chaotic and adding anxiety to our lives. Our initial reaction is to suppress our feelings or avoid it entirely.
This is wrong.
Whilst this might be helpful in the short term, in the longer run this can create more problems and we miss opportunities to face our fears.
Why Do We Avoid Our Anxiety?
We do this because of the Anxiety Disease Story. Where we're told by society, that anxiety is a dangerous, life-threatening condition that must be avoided at all cost.
I understand why people think about because it can be disruptive and it can cause psychological distress to the client. Yet this story about anxiety doesn't help.
Since the more you avoid anxiety, the more it grows. Also, saying don't worry as we all know only increases our worry.
How to Make Anxiety Our Friend?
Interestingly, in 2013 Harvard Researchers found socially anxious people who were told to believe anxiety benefited them copied better during the tasks.
This is all about a Mindset shift to believe that we get anxious because our body and mind want us to benefit from this. It wants us to know that our mind and body are ready to handle a threat. So, of course, our body wants to help us protect ourselves and our future.
Since that is what anxiety is all about. It comes from our ability to think about the future. Then we get anxious because we care about it and we don't want everything bad to happen to us. Leading us to get anxious so we can make sure our future is okay.
How Do We Make Anxiety Our Friend?
The best way is to practise this new skill so when you next get anxious or you know something who does. Remind yourself and then that this is your body and mind wanting to help you deal with a threat. So identify that threat and deal with it.
And remember you are in control.
I really hope you enjoyed today's clinical psychology episode. If you want to learn more, please see the links below:
Have a great day, everyone!
Reference:
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