The Upside of Anxiety

How to worry well

- Patricia Pearson

I AM AN ANXIOUS TRAVELLER. I arrive at airports and train stations extra early. I triple-check all of my documents, feel a tightness in my jaw and a slight clench in my stomach until I’ve arrived where I’m going. Non-anxious people tease me for being a “nervous nelly.”

I used to feel bad about it, seeing it as irrational and weak. Not anymore. I could write a book on this subject—actually, I did: A Brief History of Anxiety (Yours and Mine). I’ve learned to respect my tendency to be hypervigilant.

Recently, I was driving along a rural road at the start of a long trip that would mainly be on a large motorway. I began feeling that something could go wrong. What if I run out of petrol? I worried, even though I still had plenty. So when I spied a petrol station just before the road I was going to take onto the motorway, I gave in to my angst and decided to fill up. Just in case.

And that’s when I discovered that one of my front tyres was badly deflated. If I’d overpowered my unease, talked down my anxiety, the tyre would have blown at speed on the motorway. My urge to plan ahead even though it wasn’t strictly necessary saved me from a potentially catastrophic scenario.

A GROWING NUMBER of psychologists and neuroscientists are getting the message out that anxiety and other negative feelings have a role to play in our lives. Tracy DennisTiwary, who recently published Future Tense: Why Anxiety Is Good for You (Even Though It Feels Bad), thinks our culture goes overboard in demonising difficult emotions.