Guest Author - Jim Lowrance
Anxiety is one of the most common emotions we all experience. Without the anxiety mechanism, we might not have the sudden "presence of mind" and the sudden increased ability to react and jump out of the way of an oncoming truck that is barreling down the street, on a direct path to run over us! This mechanism, called the "fight or flight response", that gives us the extra strength and energy, to fight or run, is designed to protect us and so in situations like these (to use an old cliche), "anxiety is our friend".
Anxiety also helps us when we have tasks to perform. People who perform as actors in Broadway plays or have important public speeches to make or a Fireman who has a fire to put out etc..., all depend on the fight or flight response, to enhance their performance and to provide them added inspiration for the task at hand, so again, in cases like these, anxiety is our friend.
Dis-ordered anxiety can cause fears/phobias to develop and to cause ordinary situations to become avoided. One example of anxiety that develops into a "disorder", is when a person becomes fearful of social situations and settings. A certain degree of anxiety is normal in social settings because it actually lends toward a respectful attitude and helps us put our best foot forward when making friends and acquaintances but when shyness becomes full-blown fear, the anxiety then becomes a disorder.
Another way to look at this, is to say that under normalcircumstances, anxiety happens in the "order" it is supposed to. Unfortunately in some people, the anxiety "fight or flight response", begins to trigger at the inappropriate times, or in a "disordered" fashion. Anything that can be labled "disordered", must also have the ability to be in the correct "order", just like something that is colored can become discolored.
The way in which anxiety can become a "disordered" thing, is when it does not happen at the appropriate time or is "out of the order" in which it was meant to be. This does not make the anxiety itself an unnatural thing, only the timing becomes unnatural!
Anxiety becomes "Anxiety Disorder", when a person has developed learned behaviors, that causes it to activate more often than it should and due to things that have become triggers for anxiety that normally should not be. Triggers are also called "phobias", meaning simply "fears" of various different things. Some people develop more fears, due to the anxiety reaction itself. This is due to a fight or flight response to a specific thing, being experienced as "negative" by a person and they will then have the negative type response to that same experience/trigger, repeatedly, until they are able to overcome that fear/phobia. Other persons exposed to that same trigger, might have a postive anxiety reaction to it, that we might actually call "positive excitement". An example of this might be a person who becomes phobic around snakes and their anxiety response feels very negative to them when seeing a snake and this triggers their phobia. Another person who loves seeing and being around snakes, might get very excited and have just as powerful an adrenaline surge (fight or flight response), when seeing a snake but instead of it causing them to want to run away from the snake, it makes them want to chase and catch it. This is not such a ridiculous example because I have a nephew, who when he was young, caught many snakes in his life and loved every minute of it, even being bitten a few times!
The point of this look at the term "disorder", as related to anxiety, is so that we can better understand that anxiety can be used positively or negatively in our lives. No one has anxiety mastered to the point that it works for them positively in every situation they experience but it gives us a goal in life, to learn to channel it into positive energy as often as we possibly can. We can also work on those phobias, to try and change them into positive experiences, so that the negative feelings begin to fade (Easier said than done!). One person can experience an adrenaline surge as a very negative experience, such as someone who has a negative panic reaction to a rollercoaster ride, while another person on the same ride, will have just as strong an adrenaline reaction but will experience it as fun and exciting!
People with Anxiety Disorders should be encouraged to know that with help through treatments, such as "Cognitive Behavioral Therapy" and other positive treatments, they can learn over time, to change those learned behaviors, so that more anxiety reactions, become positive, rather than negative experiences.
