Anxiety: what if it's not all bad?

Anxiety is a natural response to a world that is trying to hurt us. You’re not a mess of issues, you have prepared yourself to expect the worst. This keeps you on your toes and ready to act…often against yourself.

“It is no approximation of health to be well-adapted to a sick world.”

-Krishnamurti

Generally developed as a coping skill early in life, Anxiety becomes such a practiced response to everything from not being with your partner to whether you locked the doors or not. You mind knows that it needs to worry about something, and sometimes its intuition can be right. Maybe your partner is cheating on you. Maybe you should double-check the door locks next time.

However, when it becomes the dominant experience in your life it can lead to hypertension, type 2 diabetes, and mental decay. We are built as humans to experience anxiety, but only for short bursts of time. If we were in danger of being mauled by a wild animal, or unsure about what mood dad would be in when he got home from work…these are moments we need to be prepared for. But to be in that state constantly is the limitation of our psyche and biology.