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One Day at a Time
How Does Your Anxiety Feel?
Daily insights on life in the face of uncertainty, by psychiatrist and habit change specialist Dr. Jud Brewer
Ever wonder why tightness in your jaw and shoulders are linked to anxiety? And did you know that you can use curiosity to change your relationship to anxiety and fear?
The Irish novelist and poet James Stephens wrote, “curiosity will conquer fear even more than bravery will.” I love this — but how can it be?
As I’ve mentioned in previous columns, because fear is the most basic of survival mechanisms, when we get scared, we immediately react. For example, when someone yells “look out,” we don’t have time to check the credibility of the source. We quickly duck or jump out of the way, and then look around after the fact to see if the threat was real. And when there is a lot of fear out there, fear itself can become quite contagious and spread simply via tone of voice or facial expression. So how can curiosity possibly help?
In my last column, I talked about two different types of curiosity: deprivation curiosity and interest curiosity. Think of deprivation curiosity as the destination type of curiosity. If we don’t know something, we get that restless itch to go find the answer. Once we…
