There's a lot thats great in this article, but I particularly enjoyed Dr Foose's idea that highly anxious people are better at predicting the future as their uncertainty gives them an edge in predicting and avoiding dangers. Lots of food for thought here.
Yes, I have been looking for someone to re-frame anxiety this way for some time, and she does it so eloquently. My time in nature has shown me that most animals, even top predators, move away from situations that they are not familiar with or that meet some evolutionary markers for danger in the species past. I think anxiety functions in a similar way in humans, having allowed our ancestors to survive both by being generally cautious with the unknown, but also with being able to extrapolate future events more accurately from current conditions. I think anxiety is part of an overall survival strategy of investing in intelligence over claws and fangs. From this perspective, anxiety is a kind of intelligence.
There's a lot thats great in this article, but I particularly enjoyed Dr Foose's idea that highly anxious people are better at predicting the future as their uncertainty gives them an edge in predicting and avoiding dangers. Lots of food for thought here.
Yes, I have been looking for someone to re-frame anxiety this way for some time, and she does it so eloquently. My time in nature has shown me that most animals, even top predators, move away from situations that they are not familiar with or that meet some evolutionary markers for danger in the species past. I think anxiety functions in a similar way in humans, having allowed our ancestors to survive both by being generally cautious with the unknown, but also with being able to extrapolate future events more accurately from current conditions. I think anxiety is part of an overall survival strategy of investing in intelligence over claws and fangs. From this perspective, anxiety is a kind of intelligence.