Healthy and Unhealthy Anxiety: There Is a Difference

How we think about anxiety (and what we do with it) are critical to how it impacts us. It isn’t easy to tell the difference between healthy and unhealthy anxiety. Few emotions conjure more definitional confusion than anxiety. Websters Dictionary defines anxiety as “apprehensive uneasiness or nervousness usually over an impending or anticipated ill: a state of being anxious.” A rare few of us hasn’t felt this normal human emotion, so ubiquitous is its experience. But anxiety is also a class of psychopathology driving more than 25 diagnoses that span nearly 100 pages in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM5), the diagnostic measuring tool for psychological disorders. So what is it? Healthy or unhealthy? Like to so many constructed dichotomies, the answer to this one is: it depends. Anxiety can be both healthy and unhealthy. And telling the difference largely depends on how it impacts you, what you think about it, and what you do with it. The best way on how to deal with anxiety is by measuring it across these 3 variables to help you determine when anxiety is healthy and when it isn’t: 1. How Does Anxiety Impact You? Conventional thought has held that it is the amount and severity of anxiety that determines whether it is healthy or not. Too much anxiety is generally unhealthy, whereas some anxiety can be helpful, and even healthy. But assessing anxiety’s healthiness has more to do with its impact on your life, than its severity. Indeed the DSM5 uses a t...
Source: World of Psychology - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Tags: Anxiety and Panic Disorders Publishers YourTango Anxiety Symptoms Anxious Emotions healthy anxiety Stress unhealthy anxiety Source Type: blogs