Episode 25: When worry and anxiety can be helpful

Noel Bell's psychotherapy Podcasts

Anxiety, perhaps closely followed more recently by trauma, are words that can be overused in counselling and psychotherapy circles. Anxiety is a term that is even more dominant in mental health settings when you look at the news. Anxiety becomes dysfunctional when it stops being helpful. Our fight/flight response can get activated when we’re not actually in danger, but under perceived danger. We perhaps need to have our survival system triggered and activated when we are faced with a wild animal running towards us in a narrow alleyway. In that scenario we may receive a surge of adrenaline to help us to either flee or deal physically with the threat being presented. Anxiety, in that instance, is a response to fear, when adrenaline starts to pump around the body and this could be viewed as healthy worry.