Anxiety is commonly considered as a form of negativity, it is something people want to get rid of. We associate anxiety with dismantling, destructing, and demolishing. If someone is anxious, we probably will tell him to chill and forget it.
It is as if anxiety shouldn’t exist in the beginning.
But what will happen if anxiety somehow disappears for a day? How will our lives change? Let’s imagine.
The day without the anxiety starts as your alarm clock rings. As usual, you switch it off, and you don’t want to leave the cozy bed.
The first trouble comes: the desire to work is weak, too weak to throw a person off the sweet bed. In a typical day, the abhor and worry of getting blamed or punished force you to get up and work. This initiative sounds horrible, but it is this anxious feeling that drives the majority of us.
However, since anxiety has disappeared, you can only feel the coziness that glues you on the bed.
Logically, we know it’s compulsory to get up. But just as it’s hard to dispense bad habits, it’s nearly impossible to override the heavenly sensation with sole logic. If anxiety didn’t disappear, it could counter the desire to lie in the bed. This may not feel good, but it prevents even worse events from happening.
A day without anxiety probably ends here, but that would be boring. So let’s assume that you somehow managed to get up, what will happen next?
As you arrive at the office, you realize that you forgot to bring an important file. That does not happen coincidentally — the anxiety that would have reminded you is absent today. Recall the anxious feeling when you mess up something important — sometimes it can be disturbing, but you may not be aware of your mistakes if not for it.
Anxiety is a way our mind reminds us of something important. It knows how bad things may turn if we neglect it, so it sometimes screams at you to make you realize its message. Anxiety is friendly, it just doesn’t behave so.
But this friend is not here today, so you are not reminded.
After the mindless mistake, you have to give a presentation. As soon as you start speaking, you realize that it is hard to concentrate — you cannot feel the tension in the room. You cannot perform optimally because you are not mentally prepared. Giving a presentation feels no different from reading a tale, but you have to force yourself to keep a straight face.
The mental energy is not at its maximum output. Normally when we are anxious, more blood flows to our brain to enable better cognitive abilities (despite uncontrolled anxiety can lead to the opposite as well). That is what gives people superhuman reflexes when facing life or death situations.
At this moment, you should start missing the ability to feel anxious.
There may be positive aspects, but overall, it will not be good to live without anxiety. Anxiety doesn’t care how we feel as much as how we do, it prevents you from all sorts of catastrophe, like the ones in the anxiety-less day. Every emotion is a part of our cognition, trying to ignore or escape from them is essentially fighting against ourselves.
The existence of anxiety is not wrong. What’s wrong is our perception and manipulation.
