Medical treatment for anxiety disorders is not only advisable, but also essential. But that does not mean that we should leave everything in the hands of professionals. Taking charge of our lives is the best way to protect ourselves against anxiety. And if we are clear about the role that our own vision of life plays in the development of anxiety, we will know what we have to stay with. Optimism vs. negativity.
Negativity increases anxiety
Everything goes wrong for me. I’m not going to be able to get over this. I am too weak. Things are not going to get better. A series of negative and pessimistic phrases go around our heads more often than we would like. And it turns out that its strength is enormous because in the end we end up believing that life is a path of suffering. Many times it is that negativity that causes anxiety problems.
On other occasions, when there is already an anxiety disorder, negativity appears as a consequence of that anxiety and its pessimism invades all our reflections so that we cannot get out. It is important to recognize that negativity is one of the worst enemies of anxiety, that negativity makes us more nervous, that it increases our fears and insecurities, and that it ends up blocking us.
Optimism reduces anxiety
What can we do in the face of negativity? Give us a bath of optimism. But it’s not easy either, because some people with anxiety disorders go from seeing life as agony to seeing it as a fairy tale. However, seeing life in a pink color is not optimism, but one more way of distorting the reality produced by the anxiety problem.
Optimism is thinking that we can achieve it, that we are going to put an end to our anxiety disorder and that finally we will be the ones who manage anxiety and leave it solely as an alarm mechanism and not as a switch that paralyzes our lives. Optimism is recognizing that we need help to see things differently. And seek that help.
It is during treatment for anxiety that the use of optimism or negativity is best seen. We know that the process to overcome anxiety is long. If negativity prevents us from seeing small advances in treatment, we will only prolong our disorder. If, on the contrary, we have enough optimism to smile at any achievement, the treatment will be much faster and more effective.
