Why Do We Need Anxiety?

We all worry at times. Occasionally for good reason. But worrying can get way out of hand. Worrying and anxiety are intimately related. Anxiety can manifest in many ways, including persistent, excessive worrying. For example, in Generalized Anxiety Disorder, excessive anxiety and worry (apprehensive expectation) about events such as school or work performance has been present more days than not for a period of at least six months. By definition, this continual worrying is difficult to control and causes clinically significant distress and/or impairment in social, occupational or other daily activities. Ironically, worrying--which is typically an attempt to anticipate and prevent bad things happening-- tends to make one even more anxious, creating
The unknown. We worry about what will happen to us, our family, our partner, our business, our money, our home, our possessions, our country, the world, etc. We live in a universe which is inherently unpredictable, dangerous and deadly. Indeed, anxiety (and the worry it generates which generates more anxiety) can be understood as an acute or subliminal awareness of life's insecurity. And the ever-present possibility and absolute inevitability of death. So much of what we worry about has to do with losing what we have: health, happiness, love, wealth, power, status, wisdom, freedom, independence, support, vitality and, ultimately, life itself. Either through making some mistaken choice or via the vagaries of fate. Existential anxiety is a recognition, either conscious or unconscious, that life is finite, existence tenuous, and that all or what little we have can be taken from us at any time. This is why existential psychotherapy places such emphasis on the experience of anxiety, seeing it as an inescapable and even necessary aspect of the human condition. And it is why we worry so much about making important decisions: We don't want to deal with the consequences of making a mistake. So we procrastinate, avoiding the existential anxiety of choosing without knowing for certain whether we are right or
And desiring to see ourselves as we want to be seen. When we are heavily invested in projecting and maintaining a certain image or persona to others, we must be ever-watchful and guarded about that particular persona being penetrated and seen through. We worry about being exposed. Being known. Found out, as, for example, in the so-called "imposter syndrome." Being judged. Criticized. And we worry about knowing ourselves. About being confronted with who and what we truly are. We humans innately harbor a primal fear of the unconscious, the unknown, and of what C.G. Jung termed the shadow. For the persona, as Jung pointed out, is specifically designed to hide our shadow, to keep us from fully knowing ourselves as well as for fooling others. For many, the facade or persona of a competent, confident adult disguises a worried, anxious little girl or boy trying to get by in a scary grown up world. Any circumstance that potentiates such embarrassing exposure, revealing the real person behind the mask, is deeply threatening and, therefore, extremely worrisome. Anticipatory anxiety kicks in: What if I can't hide my feelings? My insecurity? My love? My sadness? My rage? My neediness? My vulnerability? My true self? What many try so hard to hide and worry so much about others seeing is the fact that they feel anxious in the first place. We worry about what people will think of us if they know we have anxieties