26 Don’t Let A nxiety Run Your Life
might enable you to distract yourself and avoid your audi-
ence’s scrutinizing gaze. Similarly, you might rush through
the speech or end it abruptly so that you escape the perceived
threat of the audience. W hether the threat is real or not, your
anxiety coordinates various physical and mental systems to
enable you to react in such a way as to fend off or f lee from
possible harm.
W hat’s important to consider in the current context is a
key distinction some researchers draw between fear and
anxiety: whereas fear is often associated with a specific stim-
ulus that poses an immediate risk, anxiety represents an
apprehensive approach toward nonspecific threats that may
occur at some uncertain future time. Essentially, anxiety
maintains a free- f loating sense of dread that something bad
might happen without knowing exactly what form it will
take and when it might occur. A keyed- up feeling, the feeling
of being on your toes, contributes to the high levels of dis-
tress inherent in prolonged anxiety. It’s true that there are
times when sustained levels of anxiety appropriately help
people stay alert because something could go wrong at any
moment— think of combat situations or insurmountable
financial difficulties. Most of the time, however, prolonged
anxiety usually doesn’t prove especially beneficial, making
it important to draw a line between helpful and unhelpful
expressions of fear.
Helpful vs. Problematic Emotions
So far, our discussion of emotions and anxiety might seem a
bit counterintuitive, because we have been talking about
emotions having an adaptive, functional value, yet these are
the very phenomena that seem to be causing your problems.