Feeling anxious the past few days?
Good.
No, really. It’s good. Here’s something I learned this week, as an anxious person doing research for an article about helping anxious kids manage anxious feelings:
Anxiety, despite its dubious reputation, is actually useful.
I know, I know. You hate your anxiety. I hate mine, too. I hate it and I hate its stupid anxiety face. But let me explain.
First, you should know that, as discussed in this NPR Parenting Lifekit episode, anxiety is adaptive. We developed it as a survival mechanism. You can imagine how cave people might have benefitted from having a worrier in their midst—someone to ask if there was enough firewood for the next night, someone to ask if the berries were poisonous, someone to roust her cave husband from near-sleep to make sure he had rolled the boulder over the cave door at night.
Unlike other adaptations we have discussed previously, however, anxiety has not outlived its usefulness. It is scientifically, measurably useful, right this second, in THIS world. Yes, this one! The one with the Facebook scrolling, the stress shopping, and the helicopter parenting. The one with COVID and racial reckoning and disenfranchisement and civil unrest.
It turns out that a certain level of anxiety is required to propel us off the couch and toward utility. This is called the Yerkes-Dodson Law, visualized as a handy bell curve I shall illustrate thusly:
Anxiety is a spectrum of feelings, you see, and in a surprisingly generous place in the middle of that spectrum, there’s a sweet spot that creates helpful action.
At a certain point, of course, anxiety becomes debilitating, as any anxiety sufferer can tell you. That’s the furthest end of the curve. However, the complete absence of stress is just as unproductive, because our natural state is not to act, but to snuggle under blankets watching The Queen’s Gambit and eating wasabi trail mix. People who feel no stress have no incentive to change their calm and uneventful lives (I mean, would you?), and so they exist in a vacuum of comfort that is of no use to anyone, most especially suffering fellow humans.
Anxiety lights a fire under us so that we DO SOMETHING about the stressors of our existence (and, understatement of the year: there are a few stressors affecting us all at the moment). The trick is getting the fire just right—a candle won’t do it, and neither will a raging inferno. We need a nice campfire, built inexpertly enough that it’s just a little too hot and a little too smoky and has the latent potential to burn the whole forest down if untended.
So how do you know how hot your anxiety fire is burning? Well, your blood pressure is probably a good indication, as is the frequency with which you shower. Also, this link has a more professional rendering of the Yerkes-Dodson curve AND an embedded quiz for determining your stress level.
Scores between 4 and 20 are considered conducive to getting stuff done, and they mean that you are the hero the world needs right now.
(Note: If your score is over the optimal zone, or so high that you broke the entire quiz with the beaming rays of panic emanating from your fingers, two things: 1) I don’t blame you, 2) Don’t despair. Anxiety levels are not static, and you now have quantifiable permission to turn off whatever device you are reading this on, make yourself a cup of hot tea, and scream into a pillow until your vagus nerve gets back online.)
If this Yerkes-Dodson business seems counterintuitive, I understand. Civil discourse is not having the best week ever, and I’ve been tempted to believe that the sick feeling rising in my stomach since Tuesday is a liability. The world needs more Zen, right? Less of my hand-wringing, more of my equilibrium. GOOD VIBES ONLY. Right??
When it’s the Summer of George, yes. When there’s work to be done, no.
You do not have to suppress your worry. It is not only okay, but necessary to reject toxic positivity, spiritual bypassing,and head-in-sand-burying at this juncture. Anyone telling you to calm down, look on the bright side, or let go and let God is thwarting a critical domestic asset, which is the genuine concern of your heart.
Sure, God will work all of this out EVENTUALLY, probably in the form of extraterrestrials rolling in and disintegrating the planet with one fell swoop, but that could take millenia. Look at how long it took us to stop burning people at the stake! Or to invent birth control! Yes, to paraphrase MLK, the long arc of the universe bends toward justice, but we and our anxiety-fueled initiative can pull it along a little faster.
So unite, worriers. I wrote once that perhaps you were born for such a time as this, and it‘s looking more and more like all the parts of you, even the ones you hate, were in the original plans all along. We’ll need our whole selves for the road ahead, anxiety and all.
