Generally, it is hard to think of the positive sides of anxiety. Many people find it difficult to accept and hard to control. However, anxiety exists for a reason. They are taking a critical part in our life to make them go on.
We all naturally respond when there is a threat. We call the response as anxiety, and we all experience it in our daily lives. You can name it stress or worry, but we usually talk about the same emotion when we use these words.
Anxiety Responses
When we feel fear or anxiety, we naturally experience four symptoms of it.
- Emotional symptoms: Feelings of fear and sense of alarm
- Cognitive symptoms: Worrying thoughts and ideas of inability to cope
- Physiological symptoms: Raised heart rate, high blood pressure, muscle tension, fast breathing, sweating, or digestive problems
- Behavioural symptoms: Avoid confronting feared situations and weakened performance of tasks
Examples of Positive Side of Anxiety
There is a most essential role that anxiety take in our life. It provides us an instinct to survive and safely protect ourselves.
Example 1
When there is an exam coming up, a feeling of stress makes us study. On the day we take the exam, anxious feelings help us focus and motivate us to try our best.
Example 2
If you see a snake in the backyard or wild, you instantly feel the threat and are anxious about it. It helps you to take action to keep yourself safe.
Example 3
Many people try to take care of their body and mind’s health when anxiety or a threat exists. Things like getting old or experiencing an illness make us feel stressed or worried. If we feel emotions like this, we start exercising or eating more healthy food to protect our bodies.
Anxiety helps us to choose between fighting back or running away from danger. We feel anxiety because we can predict the threatening situation that might happen soon. In short, it ends up with protecting our body and ourselves healthy.
In conclusion, try to be friendly and take care of your body when stressed out or anxious. Indeed, our body needs lots of energy when experiencing the four symptoms of anxiety. Working hard to achieve an important task which is surviving. Your body is already doing a great job, even if it doesn’t feel like accomplish something visibly.
Another Phrens Blog Post What Are the Symptoms of Panic Attacks
References
Photo by Hello I’m Nik, Elena Joland, Clarissa Watson, Armin, and Diana Polekhina on Unsplash
- MindSpot. (2021). Anxiety. More information here.
- Passer, M & Smith, R. (2015). Psychology: The science of mind and behaviour. (2nd ed.). McGraw-Hill Education.
- Department of Health, State Government of Victoria. (2020). Fighting your fears. More information here.