Anxiety

Anxiety is an emotion, and a very complex one at that. But first, what do we mean by emotion? I use the work of Clore (1994) and think of emotion as a mental state. According to Clore, an emotion is a mental state in which “a situation is perceived as positive or negative for one’s concerns.” Walking though this definition, the first requirement is a situation. Frequently “the situation” involves other people. Maybe our significant other, maybe people at work, maybe strangers we have to interact with. Some situations involve space, e.g. open space or heights. Other situations may involve animals, e.g. spiders. But, most of the time, most of my clients are worried about situations that involve people.

The second step toward arriving at the mental state we call anxiety is our appraisal of the situation. We arrive at our perception that the situation is positive or negative by evaluating the situation. Much like an agent “appraises” the value of our house, we “appraise” the value (plus or minus) of the situation.

A very import note is that we do a lot of our appraisal of situations outside of our immediate awareness. Since we do these emotional appraisals from birth, we learn shortcuts. We seem to “just know” how we feel about certain things. Actually, we “just know” because we have been in similar circumstances, learned the outcome, and now we compare the current situation to our past experience. We do not have to take a lot of time to think about the smell of good food when we are hungry. We figured that one out a long time ago. I am hungry, I smell food, “woo hoo”, is an immediate, out of awareness appraisal. We may, as we get older, have to think a lot more about how much of that good food we actually want to eat at one time. Going through a more complex appraisal such as, I have high blood pressure, I smell fried chicken, I better not, oh darn, will take a more conscious effort.

The final step is recognizing whether the situation is positive or negative to our concerns. With anxiety this gets very interesting. One feature of anxiety is that it involves our fears. We are only anxious about those things that we fear. The other hallmark of anxiety is that it is future oriented. The outcome of some action or actions is not yet known, and we intend to take those actions. At least one of the possible outcomes of our future action is one we fear. How will I do when I give the speech? I fear I will look foolish. Will my boyfriend/girlfriend call? I fear they are with someone else. Will I get a good performance review? I fear that the boss does not like me. We don’t know whether the situation is positive or negative to our concerns because we don’t know how it will come out. The uncertainty of the result leads to anxiety: I intend to keep my blood pressure under control. I want to please mom and eat what she has cooked. I love the taste of chicken. I don’t know if I can resist the temptation. If I don’t keep my cholesterol down, I fear that I may have a heart attack. I feel anxious. Also notice that the conflict in intents, please mom versus don’t eat the chicken, is part of the appraisal and the uncertainty of the outcome, and therefore of the anxiety.

Putting this all together, it seems reasonable, especially when we are looking for the sources of anxiety, to think of anxiety as a mental state that recognizes the uncertainty in the outcome of a conflict between our intent (what we want) and our expectation (what we fear may happen).

Exploration and Insight

Counseling is a process that begins with exploration and moves to insight. The purpose of these first two phases of counseling is to set the stage for change. Combining the counseling process with the issues of anxiety means that we need to explore situations that are important to your interests. While exploring these situations we will clarify your intentions and your fears. Many times your intentions and fears have been with you for so long that they are hidden, even from yourself, so this process may take some effort. We will also explore the origins of your uncertainty in these situations. Until the exploration work is done the anxiety may seem to come out of nowhere. But, when the intent, the fear that conflicts with the intent, and the uncertainty associated with the outcome of the conflict is clear, then the feeling that “I must be crazy” is replaced by insight. With insight the problem is out in the open and accessible for resolution.

Change

Any of the dimensions of an anxiety provoking situation are potential candidates for a change that can resolve the problem. For instance, it is possible to work on our fears directly. Cognitive approaches are designed to correct distortions in how we think, including what we fear. If the fear is eliminated or minimized then the anxiety goes away as well. Once your intentions are clear, it is possible to change your intentions. I like to find out “what moves you.” If your intent is misguided, say you want to be right “all of the time”; a change in the direction of your intent may reduce anxiety. It is also possible to reduce the level of uncertainty in a situation. For example, building skill tends to increase the consistency of your performance, thus reducing uncertainty and anxiety.

When thinking through the options for change it is important to note that intent is not automatically “good” and that fear is not automatically “wrong”. Also, some of our intents may have been subtly developed to avoid our fears. One intent may conflict with another intent. It gets very tangled! Because there are so many possibilities, as many as there are people and problems, a resolution tailored to the individual is always necessary.