[박진영의 사회심리학] You must feel anxious to survive : Donga Science

Anxiety basically comes from “uncertainty”.

It is an emotion in response to potential dangers that are unpredictable and completely out of our control. Since life is something that cannot be predicted and controlled even tomorrow, getting rid of anxiety is impossible and, in fact, there is no need. Indeed, anxiety is quite an adaptive emotion. The important thing is to learn to “use” anxiety.

be anxious to survive

All emotions, especially negative emotions, have their own reason for being and their purpose. Positive sentiment in general is a general sign that life is going well, while negative sentiment is a specific sign that something is going wrong.

Just as hunger is a sign of malnutrition, suffocation is a sign of problems with normal breathing, sadness is a sign of losing something precious, and anger or fear is a sign of a fight-or-flight emergency. . If positive emotions mean a green light or no signal needed, negative emotions act as red flags or warnings that something is wrong.

Also, as with most warnings, negative emotions such as fire warnings, heavy rain warnings, and confirmed Covid-19 case warnings are specific to the problem situation, and the accompanying reactions are also specific. For example, if you’re hungry, you’ll eat quickly, and if you’re short of breath, you’ll secure a comfortable posture or breathing space. If you are angry, you attack the target of your anger, and if you are afraid, you run away from the target. These are specialized feelings for “problem solving”.

In other words, there is a full 24-hour emergency and safety room that instinctively senses danger within us, and the alarms that are triggered here are negative emotions. It is no exaggeration to say that most of us are still alive thanks to negative emotions. Negative emotions don’t exist, so the reason there is no life that doesn’t respond to any danger is that that life is already extinct.

Umbrella when it rains

Thus, even when the negative emotion’s internal disaster message sounds “ti-ring,” you can act as if you received a disaster text message in real life. For example, suppose there is a heavy rain warning. No one would interpret a heavy rain warning as notification that the floods have already cleared away and all homes have been swept away. Or, I don’t like rain so much, but I don’t think there is anyone who thinks about why heavy rain occurs in my life, gets depressed or denies the possibility of rain itself. Most will refrain from going outside for a while or pack raincoats and umbrellas.

Most of the anxiety we experience in our daily lives is actually ‘Why don’t you pack an umbrella in case it rains?’ It’s a bit of a suggestion. The same goes for anxiety about the future. In the situation room in the heart, focus on the various disasters that may occur and think, “Can rain, snow, hail, typhoons, etc. come?” Keep an eye out for the negative possibilities themselves.

Since ensuring safety is the top priority, it’s just a matter of thinking about the bad possibilities as fully as possible. Having only bad thoughts doesn’t mean that “only bad things will happen in the future” and that “every catastrophe you can imagine will happen”.

The smoke alarms respond honestly to all fire-related signals, so they buzz for grilling smoke, not like they did it on purpose to annoy me.

So when you have vague anxiety, let’s check the following facts first.

① Does the problem situation really exist? How bad is it? Is it directly related to me?

The room of disaster situations in our minds is sometimes overly creative. There is a tendency to increase worry by thinking about things that are unlikely to happen and there is no relevant evidence. Worrying about the rain when there are no clouds is an unnecessary drain on your mental energy. There is also a seriousness in bad things. With the alarm going loud, I wonder if a tsunami is coming, but if you know, it could be a forecast of local downpour. Not all bad things concern me directly. For example, if a stranger walking by on the street says he hates you, there’s a lot of bad stuff, but the impact that person can have on you is limited. What appears to be a serious problem with the substance is likely not to be at all.

② Is Anxiety Helpful?
Some bad things are completely out of my control. For example, what if the Covid crisis continues next year? In the case of the concerns themselves, of course, you need to keep them in mind, but it’s best to avoid overreactions like wrapping your head around things that you can’t completely fix on your own, and then refraining from eating and drinking completely. Psychologist Mark Leary tells this story in his book, The Curse of the Ego. “If you worry about what to do if the plane crashes, first of all, the chance of it happening is low, and even if it does crash, worrying doesn’t stop it.”

③ Use anxiety as a stimulus
Let’s not forget that the only way we can use anxiety adaptively is by using anxiety as a stimulant and by taking desirable actions, such as actively using emergency text messages. If you’ve deemed your anxiety to be of the “reasonable” kind, the next step is to stop thinking and do something about it.
For example, let’s say you’re in a state of anxiety about an upcoming important meeting or presentation, various assessments, department transfers, the distant future, and human relationships. First, apply 1) and 2) above. If a disaster message called anxiety comes, we acknowledge the fact and check the contents. The internal disaster text message tends to play persistently until we check the content, so check it as soon as possible and state the cause of why I am anxious.

Next is an assessment of the rationality of the anxiety. After all, if you’re anxious about things that don’t really interest you, or things you don’t know about anyway, like anxiety about a plane crash, and it doesn’t change just because you’re anxious, remind yourself that there won’t be much gain over the pain. .

But if the cause of your anxiety is relatively “specific” and related to solving a specific problem, the kind of anxiety that can trigger the desired “action,” then take action. After realizing important things were coming, I took a deep breath to control my mind, reminded myself of the importance of the task, made my preparations and plans, and watched an interesting comedy program for an undisturbed state of mind. stress. a mountain, etc. Everything is good. Or, if you feel like you’re going to fail this time, it’s good to prepare for the “next opportunity.” You don’t have to completely fix everything right now. Anyway, the best I can do now is do what I can.

At the end of focusing only on things I couldn’t do or otherwise couldn’t control, lethargy and meaninglessness remain, but experiences focused on “things I did” and “things I could do”, even for trivial things like taking a deep breath , are a valuable asset called “embedded trust”, it becomes an absolute force to fight against any uncertainties and problems in the future. Rather than hoping for things like clairvoyance or the elimination of uncertainty, which we can’t have no matter how hard we try, just accepting specific, reasonable anxiety and doing what we can do about it one by one will save us from anxiety.