28 Don’t Let A nxiety Run Your Life
however, it can put your mind and body in “defense mode.”
You perceive a danger or high social cost, which causes more
distress and interference than the situation warrants. This
anxiety tends to generalize, meaning you tend to later also
experience it in other situations and contexts. It extends
beyond your immediate and present environment to more
general concerns and possible future incidents. This is what
makes anxiety problematic.
A common response to uncertainty is worry. W hen you
worry, you are in essence attempting to conceive of a ratio-
nal solution that will equip you to deal with the unknown.
Because one of the core action tendencies accompanying
anxiety is avoidance, contemplating over and over again
how to handle or avoid some ominous future event can seem
necessary. A key feature of worry is that it ref lects a negative
form of repetitive thinking. Compared to true problem
solving, which is a proactive approach to a real concern
without an excessively negative focus, worry falls short in
many ways. Often when people worry, they do so to avoid
the prospect of an unpleasant emotion, but dwelling on what
the future may hold actually gets in the way of solving prob-
lems and can be completely unproductive. High levels of
anxiety can cause you to worry about events that are highly
unlikely or to underestimate your ability to cope with disas-
ter, leading you to spend an inordinate amount of time trying
to come up with ways of dealing with all the negative possi-
bilities you can imagine.
As a general rule, even emotions that are inherently dis-
tressing, such as anxiety, facilitate a variety of helpful behav-
iors. How you respond to these emotions determines
whether they will be helpful or harmful. We have seen how
reasonable levels of fear can develop into unproductive,