Reacting, Responding and Anxiety

Your consciousness and unconsciousness are both active simultaneously, but they work independently. Your unconscious, ‘auto-pilot’ systems react to keep you alert to what’s going on in the environment around you and filter out all the information that’s unnecessary. At the same time, your conscious mind is free to respond, to make decisions and reflect on the important stuff. Those two systems toggle on and off together all day long so much so that we hardly even notice it. When something happens that takes you by surprise and your auto-pilot has reacted, it’s up to you to use your conscious awareness to look around and decide how you want to respond. Maybe, the threat is real and you need to do something, but it might also just be a false alarm you can choose to ignore. Sure, you’ll still have the deal with a brief burst of bodily arousal either way, but if you can start to notice the difference between your reactions and your responses, then you’ll probably be able to start dealing with your ‘anxiety’ more effectively.