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Why do people have anxiety?
People tend to have anxiety when they experience fear. Sometimes this anxiety is warranted and useful, such as when we are in a physically dangerous situation. However, much of the time anxiety is not so helpful, such as when it keeps us from talking to an interesting person or trying something new.
The best way to cope with anxiety is to challenge it. There is a technique called Exposure-and-Response-Prevention which involves us facing our fears directly until we no longer have debilitating anxiety in the face of them. If I am afraid of bridges I need to develop a plan (usually a progressive one, involving strengthening thoughts, going out a little way on to the bridge, and so forth, until I can tolerate standing in the middle of the bridge for long periods of time). However, it will be important that I be able to tolerate being in the middle of the bridge once I get there, because if I run off in a panic, it will actually make my fear worse.
Some anxiety is more existential—a chronic feeling that we should be someone other than we are. The psychoanalyst Karen Horney spoke of the Ideal Self and the Real Self. She wrote of “The tyranny of the should.” She spoke about how, when we are not living up to our Ideal Self, we feel anxious (she used the older term “neurotic”). It is when we can accept who we actually are—our Real Self—that we are no longer anxious and most content. Understanding who our Real Self is requires openness to introspection, acceptance of feedback from our experiences and from others, and humility. It also requires a lifetime, and is not ever fully accomplished.
