Anxiety: Friend or Foe
By Susan Heitler, Ph.D.

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From the audiotape
Anxiety: Friend or Foe.

To understand anxiety, let's picture two dogs and one bone. One very meaty, juicy, attractive-to-a-dog bone. And two big, strong dogs. What are the dogs likely to do? There are basically four options. If you were one of those dogs, what would you do? One dog can growl and attack. In human terms, what would we call the emotion that dog is feeling?

Aggression. The action is aggression, and we would call the feeling anger.

Dog number two. Dog number two sees dog number one attacking and quickly sits down or even lies down or rolls on its back. What is that submission action going to cause in the way of a feeling if that dog were a person?

Depression. What you experience when you feel powerless and give up on getting what you want.

So far, we have anger from attacking and depression from submitting. One dog might take a look at that bone, want it, take a look at the other dog who is growling, turn around, and head away. He could go somewhere else and do something else so he's no longer thinking about the bone that looks so delicious and juicy. What's that equivalent to in human behavior?

Avoidance or flight. And avoidance, coupled with doing something else so you won't think about what you ran away from, is the prototype for addictive behaviors. For turning off and running to take a drink, take drugs, overeat, overwork, watch TV. These are all enterprises that enable people to get distracted once they have chosen a flight response to a conflict.

That leaves one more option for our dog. In fact, for both dogs. The first dog could growl, giving off a warning signal that he wants the bone. The second dog could growl, giving off an equal warning signal that he wants the bone. Growl, growl. The dogs are hovering around the bone. They don't really want to get into a fight so neither of them attacks the bone nor the other dog. Nor do they want to give up on the bone. So they stay there, and hover and growl. What would you call the emotion that they would be feeling if they were people?

Anxiety. Anxiety arises in response to a conflict situation when you feel poised in a situation with no acceptable action options. Anxiety is associated with immobilization in the face of a troubling situation.

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