When she first became aware of an increase in anxiety, Tracy Dennis-Tiwary was a professor of psychology. In New York City, I worked closely with clinicians and one of them said that they were seeing a lot of parents and kids with anxiety.
Dennis-Tiwary thought treatments would make a difference. 30% of adults in the US are affected by anxiety disorders. Over the past 15 years, prescriptions for anti-anxiety medications have doubled in the UK and tripled in the US. Oxford University Press named anxiety the word of the year after a survey of 8,000 children.
The idea that anxiety is something to eradicate is literally a recipe for more anxiety
The challenge of the moment is the word on everyone's lips. We have a million self-help books, but the field has not kept up with the treatment and prevention of physical disease. None of it is sticking.
I was part of the problem until about a decade ago, when I started to think. The idea that anxiety is something to manage or eradicate, a habit to be broken, is wrong and actually doing us harm. It is a recipe for more anxiety.
This is the main message in Dennis-Tiwary's new book. She concludes that the problem isn't anxiety itself, but our beliefs about it and our attempts to avoid it, which are not only destined to fail, but also to make us weaker and more fragile. It is a vicious cycle.
Dennis-Tiwary says anxiety is different to fear. Uncertainty is the feeling that something bad could happen, but not. You are anxious about failing your exams because of the discrepancy between where you are and where you want to be. About the lump. She says that anxiety is designed to feel bad so you sit up and listen. When we are rewarded, our dopamine levels increase, which is a feel good hormone. Dennis-Tiwary says that anxiety can focus the mind, drive you to revise harder, and seek new pathways towards your chosen career.
When our ways of dealing with anxiety impede on normal life, it's called functional impairment. We might stop leaving the house. In cases of obsessive compulsive disorder, we might make rituals to make the feelings go away. Exposure and response prevention is one of the treatments advocated by Dennis-Tiwary.
She wants to change our approach so that anxiety doesn't drift into a disorder. When she learned that her son would need open-heart surgery within months of his birth, she gave the example of her first pregnancy. Her anxiety was off the scale but she still had to do everything she could to avoid the worst outcome. She gathered knowledge from every paper she read about her son's condition and planned for every contingency.
When there is little we can do to address a future uncertainty, anxiety helps us forge forward with creative solutions. There are many ways to cope with this. It's a good idea to connect with friends and family. It's helpful to cultivate things that immerse you in the present moment.
Whatever works for you isMindfulness is one technique. It is possible to find flow and bring yourself to the present through exercise. Whether you perform or listen to it. People are walking in nature. Making a daily to-do list can claw back some sense of control and achievement.
If you attempt to avoid the feeling, it's the worst response. Dennis-Tiwary says that humans are anti-fragile and grow when challenged. atrophy sets in if our muscles aren't used. It takes feeling our anxiety, listening and acting on it to cope better next time.
Dennis-Tiwary expressed grave concerns over our collective anxiety-avoidance techniques like safe spaces and triggering warnings.
There is a counter-productive development of snow-plough parenting. I know it's hard being a parent, but we have to have faith in our kids, acknowledge their emotions, and show we have confidence they can figure it out. We need to help them.
This is something that speaks to me. My youngest daughter was the target of some bad behavior at school in 2020. She got off her phone. She stopped talking to her peers. My daughter's anxiety over ever going back or making new friends was sky high after the schools had closed. I was tempted to tell her she didn't have to. I came close. I thought about moving. I inquired about other schools. I studied home school. But then what? She would have to return to the world at some point. The kids lived around us. They would never be more than a click away on social media. I knew that the best outcome was the most difficult to return to.
Anxiety brought my daughter to rock bottom, but by sitting with it, getting through not around, she’s stronger and wiser
In the months that followed, my daughter used many of the methods outlined in Future Tense. Each day she filled notebooks with lists. She began to follow interests and find more time for herself, but at first they were basic. Some actually worked. She befriended a girl over a shared interest at a film course. I asked a family in Madrid if a teenage girl was interested in a fortnight's exchange, since we weren't going on holiday that summer. I saw my daughter after she returned from that trip.
It probably took my daughter a full year to feel safe in new friends. She is stronger and smarter because she sat with her anxiety and got through it. I couldn't be prouder. It feels terrible, but it is beautiful.
Tracy Dennis-Tiwary's Future Tense: Why Anxiety is Good for You ( Even Though it Feels Bad) is available for purchase from guardianbookshop.com.
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