The Surprising Benefits of Anxiety

09 May The Surprising Benefits of Anxiety

Whether you are an anxious person, you have an anxiety disorder, or you suffer from occasional bouts of angst, we all know that feeling of nervousness and dread.

Anxiety can sometimes be mildly distracting, and at other times, all-consuming. Anxiety affects us on many levels, impacting our emotions and our bodies as physical sensations, and often contributing to negative thoughts.

Motivation: While overwhelming anxiety can lead to paralysis, some anxiety can motivate you to take action when facing challenges, According to Amen Clinics. In a study focused on the benefits of worry, the researchers noted that worry illuminates the importance of taking action to prevent an undesirable outcome. For example, anxiety and worry may motivate you to work diligently to avoid failure and successfully complete a work or school project.

A 2018 study found that some anxious people in work environments have learned to harness anxiety to help them focus on tasks. They use their anxiety to regulate their performance. Anxiety can be very useful when it comes to things like test-taking and competition. Research shows that students and athletes who experienced some anxiety actually displayed improved performance on tests or while participating in competitive sports.

Resilience: In a presentation at the 2019 annual convention of the American Psychological Association (APA), psychologists acknowledged the beneficial role stress and anxiety can play in our everyday lives. Specifically, one presenter, Dr. Lisa Damour, noted that the stress and anxiety inherent in taking on a challenge and working to the edge of our abilities can actually make us stronger and more resilient when we are faced with new difficulties. She said that moderate levels of stress and anxiety “can have an inoculating function, which leads to higher than average resilience.” Examples of anxiety helping to build resilience may occur when you start a new job or take on a more challenging role at work.

Cautiousness: Anxiety is designed to protect us from danger and allow us to react quickly to emergencies. Anxious feelings are part of the fight-or-flight stress response. Practically speaking, for example in California, when the warm Santa Ana winds start blowing in the fall, anxiety may put you on alert and prompt you to trim the foliage surrounding your home in case a brush fire erupts. On the other side of the nation, the fear of flooding from a looming hurricane may drive you to use sandbags to protect your property.

Anxious people also tend to be more cautious, and that’s a good thing. A U.K. study found that anxious adolescents had fewer accidents and accidental deaths in early adulthood than those who did not suffer from anxiety. In cases like this, anxiety may serve to keep you safe – and alive!

Longevity: In 1921, psychologist Lewis Terman at Stanford University in California embarked on what has become the world’s longest-running longitudinal study. It began with 1,500 children starting at age 11 into adulthood, collecting a variety of data that might predict later success. The fascinating results show that the trait most associated with longevity was conscientiousness. The don’t-worry-be-happy people died the earliest from accidents and preventable illnesses because they tended to underestimate risks.

A new study from the University of Edinburgh and University College London that examined health information on more than 500,000 people also found that people who are highly neurotic (anxious people) are more likely to live longer. The researchers believe that their worrying dispositions drove them to underestimate their wellness and take action to check and care for their health. In other words, they were very vigilant about their health. Meanwhile, the non-neurotic patients were less likely to seek treatment for symptoms and had health difficulties later on!

Warning Signs: Anxiety can be like a red flag or warning sign to an area of your life that needs attention. In this regard, the unpleasantness of recurrent worry and nervousness may be serving you well. Dr. Damour, the APA presenter mentioned above, noted this positive attribute of anxiety in her talk. She described anxiety as an internal alarm system that was handed down by evolution to alert us to both internal and external threats.

Perhaps you have anxiety about something your teenage child is doing and it’s telling you to pay attention and take action, or maybe you need to end a relationship that is no longer working, or maybe your anxiety is increasing because you have an important deadline approaching, and you need to get working. Whatever the warning signal is, your anxiety may be alerting you to take notice or action on something very important.

Empathy: Suffering makes us more empathetic human beings, and that is definitely the case when it comes to suffering from anxiety. Personal struggles with painful anxious feelings have likely made you a more empathetic person, according to research. That means you may be more sensitive to, loving, and accepting of loved ones and people in general who are dealing with personal challenges. The world is a better place with more empathetic people.

Good Leadership: Leaders need to run multiple scenarios and be prepared for any outcome. It turns out that anxious people are really good at this, and often prepared for a crisis when it arrives. These are very important qualities for effective leaders.

Interestingly, data shows that anxious people process threats differently, using areas of the brain that are responsible for taking action. Anxious people react quickly in times of danger and tend to be more comfortable with uncomfortable feelings.

If these qualities are applied intelligently, anxious leaders are wonderful at making their teams more resourceful, productive, and creative.

A double-edged sword

While moderate amounts of anxiety can be beneficial in the ways just mentioned, too much anxiety can cause panic attacks, health problems, and destructive behavior. If your anxiety is out of control, or if it’s interfering with your daily life, it’s time to seek professional help. (AMEN CLINIC)