What is Anxiety?
Basic Knowledge for Anxiety Regulation
Anxiety is one of the ways our body tells us that something, some aspect of our lives, isn’t working as it should. In this sense, it usually appears as a defence mechanism, occurring in response to both real and imagined threats. So, a person who feels anxiety when speaking in public will experience that anxiety both in that specific situation and in the moments when they fear that the situation will occur (anticipatory anxiety). To manage it properly, it’s important to understand that anxiety isn’t our enemy, as it prepares us to respond to a situation that is perceived as threatening. It’s only when we can’t regulate this anxiety, when it comes in an excessively intense form, that it becomes harmful.
“To manage it properly, it’s important to understand that anxiety isn’t our enemy, as it prepares us to respond to a situation that is perceived as threatening. It’s only when we can’t regulate this anxiety that it becomes harmful.”
Anxiety is related to fear, with anxiety commonly appearing in anticipation of feared situations. For example, a person who has a great fear of gaining weight will tend to have high anxiety around foods that, according to them, can cause weight gain. In this case, a high level of anxiety towards a specific product, such as oil or chips (French fries), would be an exaggerated response, and would be telling us that something is not right. In this way, one might consider whether the fear of gaining weight really deserves the attention and importance it is being given and, consequently, whether those chips are as harmful as we feel they are. The same would happen in the previous case, where there is an increase in anxiety in the face of public speaking. In this case, a small increase can be beneficial, causing us to be more attentive or to practice our speech more before the feared situation. However, a high level of anxiety would produce just the opposite effect, interfering with my preparation and study of the speech, and even leading to a block at the moment of performance, causing the person with anxiety to potentially go blank.
“In this case, a small increase can be beneficial, causing us to be more attentive or to practice our speech more before the feared situation. However, a high level of anxiety would produce just the opposite effect…”
As we have seen, feeling anxiety can be a beneficial or harmful process, depending on how well it is adjusted to the real situation. It can be useful, increasing my level of activation at a necessary moment, or making me more cautious in certain situations, but it also has the power to affect us negatively when it is triggered excessively. It is therefore important to understand how and why it comes about, learning to regulate and accept it, to become proficient at managing it in the situations in which it appears.
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