Anxiety, one of our basic emotions necessary to sustain life, sometimes affects the life of the person positively and sometimes negatively. Specialist Clinical Psychologist Mustafa Eldek gave information about healthy and unhealthy anxiety.
Anxiety takes its origins from the individual's childhood experiences. It includes the child's relationships with peers as well as adults such as parents and teachers. Anxiety, which is a contagious emotion, develops with the child's environment. The most important factor preventing the formation of the basic sense of trust in the baby is the anxious mother. The look, tone of voice and general mood of the anxious and fussy mother affect the child. He now interprets the outside world with the language of anxiety transmitted from the mother. With advancing age, the negative and humiliating attitudes of the family and the environment, sarcastic language and anxiety disorders are allowed to develop. Contrary to what is known in the society, the practice of reward-punishment in child development does not cause anxiety in the child. With the inconsistent attitudes and behaviors of the parents, the child does not know what to expect and reinforces the feeling of anxiety. Anxiety that comes in this way becomes more and more common. For example, if she perceives her mother as a rejecting person, she may be afraid that some of her features will remind her and even that all women will reject her.
We can divide anxiety into healthy and unhealthy. If the level of anxiety we feel is proportional to the perception of danger we foresee, this anxiety is healthy. Healthy concerns give us a to-do list. Let's say we're going on a long journey. Is my wheel okay? Is the car fully serviced? Does my spare tire have air? Such concerns are healthy. Because it deals with possible problems with logical possibilities and gives a work list to take action. We can do long haul maintenance on the car. We can check the wheels and see if there's a problem. And what if I have a heart attack on the way and the car goes off the road? Let's take concerns like what if a pedestrian jumps in front of me or if I don't see a pothole and the wheel goes into it and explodes and the car goes off the road and rolls over. These are unhealthy concerns. Because these situations are possible, but the probability of them happening is very low. Second, there isn't much we can do to prevent it from happening. So it's largely out of our control. If we think about these things and worry too much, it will negatively affect our lives. "If it happens?" Negative automatic thoughts such as these are unhealthy concerns.
There are two main issues in anxiety disorders. First, the danger is exaggerated and catastrophic, and the probability of its occurrence is seen as high. Second, the person sees himself as inadequate and weak in dealing with these situations. Disorders such as obsessive compulsive disorder, panic disorder, health anxiety under the heading of Anxiety/Anxiety are mostly related to exaggeration of danger. It is an exaggeration of the danger that our clients who have an obsession about cleanliness think too much about the risk of disease transmission or call an ambulance because they think their heart rhythm is increasing. It can be seen in disorders such as generalized anxiety, phobias and social phobias due to the inadequate perception of one's own resources. Individuals with cat phobia may worry excessively with the thought that they will suffer serious injuries, or individuals with social phobia may have negative automatic thoughts such as trembling and talking nonsense. While healthy anxiety activates us and offers the opportunity to be more successful, unhealthy anxiety increases avoidance and complicates life. If you think you are experiencing unhealthy anxiety, please seek professional support.
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