Feeling anxious actually releases dopamine, motivating us to take action to pursue rewards and make changes to bring forth the futures we desire.

Dennis-Tiwary explains. Anxiety is telling us that we care about the future and want it to turn out a certain way. In fact, feeling anxious actually releases dopamine, which motivates us to pursue rewards and take action to bring about the future we want. For example, we might study harder for a test, schedule a checkup at the doctor, or devote more time to our relationship.

The harder we press emotions down, the more they just zip right back and stronger than ever. Emotions are not a light switch that you turn on and off; there’s a spectrum, and we have skills when it comes to emotions. When we think of anxiety as a disease, it’s an opportunity cost in terms of turning toward this experience and learning the skills to navigate it.

the thing about fear is that fear has nothing to do with the future. Fear is really the feeling that roots us in the present moment when there is certain present danger that we’re facing, like a knife at our throat.

Anxiety, because it has nothing to do with the present moment, it’s making us into mental time travelers into the future.

In terms of information, anxiety tells us there’s this uncertainty, but it’s priming us to navigate that uncertainty, to avert disaster, to make the positive possibilities into reality. That’s what it actually primes us to do. So it can be protective, but it’s also highly productive.

What anxiety does is it’s saying you have this uncertain future, and it’s telling you that you care about the future because you can’t ignore it and you need to investigate.

Anxiety happens to be an activating emotion. It’s one that doesn’t just trigger fight-or-flight, it also increases oxytocin, the social bonding hormone. What you find is that especially with moderate levels of anxiety—not necessarily full-blown panic—you actually increase levels of oxytocin, which primes us to seek out social connection and support. So it’s almost like a fractal beauty that within anxiety it contains some of its own solutions.

The immune system is an easy example to wrap our heads around, because if you don’t challenge the immune system with germs and bacteria and viruses, it will never learn to mount an immune response.

The first principle is anxiety is information. Listen to it.

The key difference is that the disorder is diagnosed with functional impairment, which means that the way that we’re coping with those intense feelings is disrupting our ability to live our life fully and well.

That anxiety can be an ally. But like any ally, you need to negotiate. And that’s the messy work of being human. Even when it blocks us, anxiety can be one of the great features of being human and one of the great inner sources of strength that we have.