Anxiety can affect the mental health of people and appears to be a large and growing problem in the Western world.
First let us ask if feeling anxious a normal state for human beings? The answer here is a definite yes. Anxiety serves to keep us safe from possible perceived threats that we need to process. It is an early warning system that tells us we need to observe our environment differently and pay special attention at least until we have more information and know how to handle a situation. Very often this early warning system enables us to take appropriate action before a problem gets worse.
What is worrying in today's world is however that the word anxiety now denotes a mental disorder. You only have to Google in the word anxiety to realise that most people feel it is something that they need to get over. What is less apparent on the web is anxiety skills training. It is almost as if it is by chance that we learn how to deal with our own anxiety. Few of us know how to process our anxiety - one of the cognitive skills that is sadly lacking from our educational curriculum.
Anxiety can be seen on a continuum. At one end anxiety arises when there is a perceived threat that needs processing and at the other end is the person whose anxiety mechanism is out of control which leaves them in a state of heightened anxiety most of the time. This end of the anxiety continuum has a hugely negative impact on a persons' life.
However there is another continuum. That is the continuum of people's ability to process anxiety and deal with it effectively. At one end is the person who always seems to be able to stay calm, react appropriately and resolve the anxiety inducing situation. At the other end is the person who is totally controlled by the unpleasant feelings and physical symptoms associated with extreme anxiety.
Added to those two situations is the fact that anxiety is taught to us by out society, and certainly as children we can develop very negative reactions to anxiety producing situations if that is the behavior we see around us. Throw in for good measure our personalities and our personal environmental experiences and perhaps we have a valid case for teaching anxiety appropriate skills as part of our educational system.
This might just go a long way to reducing the incidence of anxiety from becoming a mental health problem. Worth thinking about!
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