[abellerose]

I’ve always thought anxiety is simply from different patterns of thought than people without anxiety. We can all share thoughts and fears but people with anxiety have a pattern that results in an unpleasant experience. Maybe one suffering anxiety should analyze different approaches to how one arrives at an outlook and compare to their own for maybe adapting. I’m writing with ignorance because I’ve never had bad anxiety.

[renjimen]

From what I've read, and from my personal experience, is that anxiety comes from negative, inward-looking and expansive understanding of events. That is, anxious people tend to assume the worst, make things more personal (maybe it happened because of me or some innate human characteristic) and let the negativity leak over into other parts of their lives (I failed at this, I'll probably fail at something unrelated).

Conversely, people who remain positive and can isolate negative news to external, transient events are less anxious and end up healthier and happier. That might be contrary to what is actually happening; evidence shows realists tend to be pessimists.

[abellerose]

Well, it's alright to be a pessimist. Not everyone has to be an optimist and wrong to be happy. I consider myself a pessimist and I don't suffer from anxiety. So maybe the assumption is somewhat true.

[renjimen]

Yeah, I suppose you can be a realist or pessimist to a degree and live without anxiety. I think a lot comes down to how you attribute negativity. Take the riots going on at the moment.

An extreme optimist might say they're just another bad-luck event from 2020 (transience) that'll be sure to cause societal reform (positive outlook) and it doesn't have anything to do with their behaviour (externalising).

A realist on the other hand would recognise that the riots are a sign of a deep rooted problem with American society, that the riots may not lead to immediate reform but have the possibility to act as catalyst for changing some things that are wrong with society. Depending on who the person is, they may recognise they could be doing something to help with the problem.

An anxious person would take the negative aspects of a realist's position and make them personal, important and extrapolate out in time and domain. They might think the riots highlight how deeply racist humans are by nature (personalising & extrapolating), that the riots will cause economic instability or violence that will affect the person's life (extrapolating and importance), or that there's really nothing this person can do to change anything (generally feeling helpless).