Functional Anxiety

A common symptom around diagnoseable clinical anxiety is rumination-thinking about something for extended periods of time with it impacting the way you are able to live your life effectively. This is one symptom of a larger experience. People get so focused on something and the possibilities of outcomes or possibilities of impact of the past that they are not able to just live. In order to help people with this rumination, the mental health industry has published an endless amount of books, podcasts, articles, and seminars to help people think about not thinking about their anxiety. Interesting approach. 

Many times, people have anxiety around things that have happened before. Good therapy helps you move through this. I was rear-ended a few years ago at a red light and for several months after that I would get really anxious for a flash if I saw someone approaching quickly in my rearview mirror. It was real anxiety based on a real everyday possibility that had really occurred. Good therapy helps you identify things like this and put them where they belong. Bad therapy causes you to unnecessarily ruminate even more. 

Functional anxiety helps you have an appropriate level of stress to do something. You need to realize its functional though. If we think every glimpse of anxiety must mean there's an issue we get stuck on the wrong goal. So there is some discernment involved. We need to consider why the anxiety is there and what you need to do about it. Maybe you feel anxious about a conversation you need to have and you don't need to find a way to cope with the anxiety but you need to have the conversation. Doing is a great way to deal with distress. 

If you have trouble discerning what is anxiety that needs to be dealt with compared to what anxiety is good and functional reach out to us today for a free consultation.