Psychology Update — Anxiety Feels Terrible, But It Has an Upside. Here’s How to Make It Work in Your Favor

Posted November 29th, 2021 by David Berg & filed under Personality, Psychological Disorders and Therapy, Stress and Health Psychology.

TITLE

Anxiety Feels Terrible, But It Has an Upside. Here’s How to Make It Work in Your Favor

DESCRIPTION

This is a very fascinating article about the experience of anxiety in our daily lives. “Anyone who’s experienced anxiety knows the distress it can bring. Often, this spiky emotion causes a racing heart, headache and knotted stomach. Frequently, we interpret these sensations as a danger sign. For instance, we might mistake social anxiety as evidence that everyone dislikes us or believe performance anxiety means we’re actually impostors.” The article takes a different approach to anxiety to offer a perspective that recognizing it and other emotions can be a potentially positive experience. “While anxiety certainly feels terrible, it does have an upside. In her new book, Good Anxiety, neuroscientist Wendy Suzuki repositions anxiety as a potentially positive force in our lives that can open the door to self-care and resilience—two things that inoculate us from stress. From this vantage point, social jitters might be a sign to reach out for support, while performance woes might be a signal to practice our craft a little more or spend two minutes in a power pose. When we realize anxiety can be a helpful messenger, we can make it work in ways that benefit our psychological well-being.” Unlike other therapies, this particular perspective is based up “emotion-focused research.” The article explains how focusing on the emotions through a series of techniques in psychotherapy can be positive and freeing for the individual. The article can be read along with the chapters on emotion, health psychology, abnormal psychology and psychotherapy.

SOURCE

Time, October 28, 2021, by Hilary Jacobs Hendel and Juli Fraga

LINK TO RESOURCE

https://time.com/6111258/good-anxiety-therapists/?utm_source=email&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=email-share-article&utm-term=ideas_health

(Tiny URL) https://tinyurl.com/v9cyjnzx

CLASS DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:

•How do individuals experience anxiety? How is this considered a really terrible negative emotion for some individuals?

•According to the article, how can anxiety be used to change the negative emotions to a more useful emotion for the individual?

•What is the basis of “emotion-focus” in therapy? How does it work?

•According to the article, how would a person deal with conflicting feelings through this type of therapy?

TAGS

Emotion-Focused Therapy, Anxiety, Recognizing Emotions, Making Anxiety Work for Coping and Stress Management