Why anxiety isn’t always bad for us
Rather than avoiding it at all costs, we should harness the emotion in a positive way, according to a new book. Marianne Power reports
Ionce read that people who get depressed tend to live in the past, while people who suffer from anxiety spend their days imagining the future. That made sense to me.
As a depressive sort, I can spend many an hour reliving everything I’ve ever done wrong, ever. As hobbies go, I wouldn’t recommend it. But in lockdown I picked up an exciting new one: sitting bolt upright in bed at 3am, heart pounding, with a sense that something terrible was about to happen. What, I didn’t know.
The pounding heart came back when I’d write an article. What if there were a mistake in it? What if I were sued? If friends didn’t text back immediately, I panicked that I’d done something wrong. Contrarily, I would also panic if I got a message asking if I was around to chat. What had I done?
Having spent years not really understanding anxiety, I’ve now had a taste of it and I’m not a fan. But a new book says I should be.
Future Tense: Why Anxiety Is Good for You (Even Though it Feels Bad), by psychologist Tracy Dennis-Tiwary, argues that far from being a “bad” feeling that we need to suppress, anxiety is our friend, alerting us to things that need addressing and giving us the energy to do just that. Anxiety might not feel good, but, she argues, it’s actually trying to help us.
“We mental-health professionals have promulgated this idea that any experience of anxiety is dangerous and potentially a disease, so we have to eradicate it and avoid it and suppress it and soothe it. But that’s the opposite of what you should do,” says Dr Dennis-Tiwary.
She explains that emotions are there for a reason. If we are angry, it’s because somebody or something is getting in our way, and we need to defend ourselves. If we are anxious, it’s because there is something we need to do to prepare for the future.
We are living in an age of anxiety. Even before the pandemic, one of the biggest pieces of research done into anxiety in this country showed that the UK had experienced an “explosion” of anxiety since 2008. The financial crash, austerity, Brexit, climate change and social media were blamed for the rise. The figures ended just before the pandemic began, when, unsurprisingly, anxiety rose even further. In the UK, prescriptions for anti-anxiety medications have almost doubled over the past 15 years, with a sharp rise amongst under-25s.
But could it be that we need to rethink anxiety? Is it really possible to see it as a friend rather than a foe?
First of all, we need to differentiate anxiety from fear.
“Fear is about present threats – for example, if a snake is about to bite you. You are certain that there is a present danger and your body responds with fight or flight, so that you can protect yourself. Anxiety has nothing to do with the present moment – it is all about the future. It’s using one of our greatest human attributes, which is to think about the future and imagine all the possibilities – both good and bad,” explains Dr Dennis-Tiwary.
Anxiety is an emotion distinct from anxiety disorders, she says.
“We might have intense anxiety, but that’s not the same as an anxiety disorder, which is when our ways of coping with anxiety are disrupting our ability to live life.”
So, if we’re socially anxious and our way of coping with that is by no longer going out, that’s a disorder. Being nervous about going out is not a disorder.
Anxiety is on a spectrum, says Dr Dennis-Tiwary. Everyday anxiety is there to help us and we should be listening to it, not running away from it.
“Say you’re up at 5am, with freefloating anxiety. If you have the view that anxiety is a problem, you’ll ignore it. You’ll get up and try to do something else. Or you take medication – which can be helpful sometimes – but you won’t hear what it has to say. But what if you sat there and asked anxiety what it has for you. ‘Could it be about the argument I had with my husband last night? No, we resolved that… Could it be the deadline looming? No, that’s in hand…’ And then you’re like, ‘Oh, wait a second, I’ve been trying not to accept that I’ve been waking up with stomach pains every morning. I need to investigate this.’ ”
So, anxiety’s job is to alert us to a problem and then give us the chemical drive to do something.
“There is excellent evidence that shows that it makes us more productive, more creative, more innovative. There’s a study where people were asked to write about something anxiety-provoking in their own life, while some wrote about things that made them happy and angry. Then they were asked to do a problem-solving task. They found that the people who felt more anxious were actually more persistent in problem-solving. And they were actually more creative – they came up with more ideas of a higher quality.”
The pounding heart of anxiety is pumping oxygen to the brain, so that we can think more clearly. Anxiety also boosts the social-bonding hormone oxytocin, which makes us seek connection.
Dr Dennis-Tiwary adds: “Anxiety also boosts dopamine, which is the feel-good hormone. One of its most important functions is to help us pursue goals, so if there is something important we want to achieve, dopamine starts to activate. It is not just about averting disasters, it’s about pursuing positive possibilities. The biology of anxiety prepares us for that.”
The story we tell ourselves about our anxiety is important, as demonstrated by a trial where socially anxious people were asked to give an impromptu talk to a panel of judges who had been told to look uninterested. The people were split into two groups. The first was just sent straight in. The second group was given a pep talk first, where it was explained to them that their anxiety was actually helping them to perform better.
After the test, the people who had had the pep talk had lower blood pressure, their heart rate was slower and calmer, and they had performed better.
But what if you are anxious for no reason? Nobody is sick, there’s enough to pay the bills – and still your heart is pounding and your thoughts are racing?
“Sometimes, we are just on high alert and we don’t find a specific reason for it,” says Dr Dennis-Tiwary. “Sometimes, being on high alert can become a habit, we get stuck in a worry loop.”
If that is the case, there are a few things we can do. First, we should cut back on caffeine and alcohol, and increase our exercise. Next, if your mind is constantly going into the future, find ways to be here, in this moment. Mindfulness meditation helps, as does any kind of exercise, being in nature, gardening or listening to music. Writing a to-do list can help us to feel some sense of control.
Cognitive behavioural therapy is considered the gold standard for anxiety. This kind of therapy helps you to understand your behaviour and gives you the tools to do things differently. Medication can also help, alongside therapy.
But the worst thing we can do with anxiety is to try to suppress it.
She worries about the lengths we are going to to avoid anxiety in society: with trigger warnings, safe spaces and the rise of “snowplough” parenting, when parents try to remove all obstacles from their children’s lives.
This avoidance builds a sense that we are weak and unable to cope with difficult things – which is not true.
“Our emotional systems are like our immune system,” she explains. “If our immune system isn’t exposed to germs, it remains weak. If our muscles aren’t used, they atrophy. It’s only by feeling our anxiety – listening and acting on it – that we can cope better next time.”
If anxiety is a beeping smoke alarm, my approach has been to rip it down, wrap it in a duvet and hide it. It’s time to face up to what the beeping is about.
I have some ideas about what’s going on: financial worries, strained friendships, an uncertain future in a world that seems to be imploding. It can feel like so much is out of our control, but there are small things that we can do – whether it’s calling a friend, writing a to-do list or cutting down on coffee. I’m lucky, my anxiety is very mild compared to what many live with, but I don’t want to ignore it any more.
Perhaps anxiety can be a call to action. Yes, there may be difficult times ahead, but if I take my head out of the sand and do what needs to be done, there might be some good times, too.
Anxiety’s job is to alert us to a problem and then give us the chemical drive to do something