How to Translate Our Anxiety into Excitement

According to science and 15 years of psychiatric consultations

As a social scientist living with diagnosed social anxiety disorder for 15 years, the terms anxiety and excitement are nothing new to me. Both anxiety and excitement create the same biological response — the “fight or flight” response — that prepares our bodies for stress or thrills. Whenever we have a racing heart, this can make us overwhelmed with anxiety or charged with excitement, depending on our mindsets and what we’re doing.

The good news is we are able to translate our anxiety into excitement by tricking our brains. The bad news is, however, this does not mean we can say goodbye to anxiety forever. Translating anxiety into excitement is a scientifically proven trick to help us cope with our anxiety; yet, this trick is not necessarily a panacea for us to live an anxiety-free life.

Shared Physiological Responses

Affective science tells us that anxiety and excitement activate the autonomic nervous system, specifically the sympathetic branch. This branch activates our “fight or flight” response to manage danger or threats. Such a response invokes a range of physiological responses, such as rapid breathing and being adrenalised.

Here the feeling of anxiety is physiologically nearly identical to the feeling of excitement. Both feelings produce an elevated heart rate and a feeling of butterflies in our stomachs, although the feelings are different. Despite their similarities physiologically, excitement stems from the emotion of joy, while anxiety comes from fear. The former allows us to take advantage of opportunities and possibilities, whereas the latter puts us in a position of survival.

Symptoms of Anxiety

As said, anxiety is necessary for us to self-regulate how to manage danger and threats. However, the symptoms of anxiety, if overwhelming, can significantly negatively affect our daily lives. Our anxiety, being a complex affective state, can result in chronic stress, panic attack episodes, and general anxiety symptoms like overpreoccupation, worry, disrupted concentration and pervasive fear. These symptoms are often accompanied by a tension headache or tachycardia, alerting us that our mind-body state fails to properly function to an extent that leads to possible physical illnesses.

I’m sure we all have moments where we try to combat anxiety head-on. However, the outcomes are often dissatisfactory as we fail to calm ourselves down by simply telling ourselves that we are safe and calm. A better, more effective approach, which is scientifically grounded, is to turn that feeling of anxiety into excitement. Dr Alison Wood Brooks from Harvard Business School published a paper entitled Get Excited: Reappraising Pre-Performance Anxiety as Excitement. Here Dr Brooks explains how positive self-talk is good for us, because this changes how we think, followed by how we feel.

Reappraising Anxiety as Excitement

To be specific, she recommends that people who are anxious can reappraise anxiety as excitement. This means people can initiate self-talk by repeatedly telling themselves that “I am excited” or undertake any activities that signal the message of “getting excited”. Such an approach helps transition our threat mindset into an opportunity mindset, improving our performance against any triggered anxiety.

This is also the approach that my former psychiatrists and psychologists often asked me to do. Was that helpful? Sure, tentatively, I felt that my mind and body became more settled (while being excited) and secured. However, such a trick does not necessarily help root out our specific triggers of anxiety. When our triggers of anxiety occur, engaging in self-talk to reappraise anxiety as excitement can temporarily minimise our anxiety level. Yet, in the long term, we still have to either avoid or overcome our personal triggers of anxiety in order to seek optimised health and wellness.

Final Thoughts

In sum, we often fail to suppress anxiety by simply telling ourselves to calm down, especially when our anxiety level is intense. In addition to engaging in self-talk to reappraise our anxiety as excitement, we can also undertake activities, such as swimming, dancing or playing team sports, to let our mind and body reach excitement.

The line between anxiety and excitement is often very thin. In the long term, we can regularly practise how to shift our perspectives when interpreting anxiety or excitement to make a difference. We should normalise the practice of self-affirmation to reframe anxious thoughts as exciting news, in order to rewire our mind-body state to better self-regulate its encounters with danger or threats.

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