Anxiety, Not Always Best Friend
How nice it would be to always see fear as a dark star friend, a natural survival mechanism that warns us to keep the door shut when the wolf is out the door, or priming us to fight, flee, or freeze, if, and when, the wolf finds his way in.
For the most part, our instinctual responses to anxiety no longer fit the stresses of modern times. More often than not, we're not facing a wolf-like threat. The stresses we face today require us to slow down, limber up our brain and do our best problem solving.
When we're too anxious we won't be able to gather new information, think clearly about problems, explore our options, give calm and clear feedback to others, and find creative solutions that consider the needs of all. And fear can run its course, flooding our system with adrenalin and hi-jacking the thinking part of the brain. We can't see two sides of an issue, much less three or four.
Most devastating to self esteem is that the ability to see the many-sidedness of our own self gets lost. We get locked into a narrow view of who we are, and lose sight of our own possibilities. Anxiety digs a big negative groove in our brain and makes it impossible to hang on to a positive thought for more than five seconds.
It's obviously hard to feel good about yourself when anxiety disrupts your memory and concentration, leaving you unable to read, write, study, analyze, or take in new information.
In a crisis, most of us can readily identify anxiety the culprit behind our poor mental functioning. Anxiety also operates as a chronic, underground force that we may fail to identify the cause behind our poor functioning, our unhappy relationships, or our low self-regard.
Psychology Today
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