Anxiety Can Actually Be Good

Although anxiety is considered by many as a bad thing, it can actually be a good thing in certain situations. Melinda Beck in the article “Anxiety can Bring out the Best” refers to the issue of anxiety and discusses different approaches to it that regard its good and bad impacts on human health. Beck is addressing the problem of interpretation of anxiety as a health threat, and instead of that, she nominates several other aspects of anxiety vision and benefits that it can bring to the human body. Moreover, Beck’s article shows that the proper degree of anxiety has a good influence on people, and even helps them to do their best, while excessive worrying leads to bad consequences. Thus, anxiety can also be a good experience that turns into helpful emotion in the most suitable time.

To start with, anxiety can actually be good to human health if its amount is moderate since it keeps people on their toes. In such condition, human mind becomes more concentrated on the task and becomes ready for potential problems. For instance, coaches and sports psychologists indicate that athletes have to be in a little stress before competitions because such condition will be rather beneficial to them in performing. In addition to this, Melinda Beck (2012) states that information about beneficial impact of anxiety dates back to 1908 – the year when two psychologists of Harvard University, John Dodson and Robert Yerkes, have suggested that anxiety increases productivity, but overly worrying makes performance poorer (n.p.). Nevertheless, the golden mean can be hardly achieved – overly optimistic people can experience a lack of anxiety, while others cannot do anything without creation of situations that force a feeling of anxiety. In addition to this, modern people feel anxiety about present, as well as, past and future, even when the threat has pretty primitive character. Therefore, too much anxiety cannot actually be good to human health because it supports the development of anxiety disorders.

Moreover, Michigan State University psychologist Jason Moser sticked out the hypothesis that high anxiety negatively influenced people that had been expressed in complication of actually simple tasks. In his study, Dr. Moser used the theory of mind and implicit knowledge that clearly showed the relationship between the activity of the human brain and the degree of anxiety. Dr. Moser and his colleagues used method of monitoring of the brain activity in their analysis of 149 students, among which there were 79 women and 70 men. The sample can be estimated as the representative one because it covers a large number of subjects, as well as tracks the connection between emotional impact of anxiety and its display in the physical activity of the brain. In the study, students executed a letter-identifying exercise, where women with high degree of anxiety began to make more errors than men with the moderate amount of anxiety. Therefore, Dr. Moser and his colleagues have found that high anxiety has negative impact that is represented in lower brain activity, while its moderate number supports good performance.

In conclusion, anxiety can be actually good for people, but too much anxiety supports directly opposite outcome. While overly optimistic people have poor sense of anxiety and thus cannot show good results, others cannot do their best without some stimulation as thrill and worrying. Taking into consideration Dr. Moser’s study, the moderate number of anxiety is really beneficial for brain activity because it keeps people in suspense when overly worrying interferes good performance. Furthermore, finding of appropriate level of anxiety is not an easy task, but it has crucial importance to athletes, musicians, actors, as well as ordinary people. Therefore, the beneficial impact of anxiety is obvious, and adoption of this fact can help manage all fears and achieve the desired result.

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