Anxiety

I was watching a television series today titled, “Brain Games”.   The series through example and explanation tells you how your brain works and why.   I’m not really sure if I’m more interested in the how or the why part, but both sides are fairly fascinating.

There are a lot of “play along at home” games to see if you get caught like the majority of the population.   In a lot of cases you want to get caught, meaning miss something or be scared by something—because that means your brain is working as it should be.  

The episode I was watching today was on fear, which was singular as tomorrow is Halloween.   There were multiple ways our brain works to help us determine what should be something to be afraid of.   This is a good thing because you want to run away from that snake or dodge off the side of the road from the oncoming car or not drink the strange liquid from the creepy man if it will save your life.

So from the perspective of the show, fear was a good thing, a skill our brain acquires from use and experience.    So what about anxiety?   Anxiety feels awful and sometimes seems like you can’t escape it.   The show defined anxiety as: “a condition where your brain can’t determine weather a situation is a threat or not.”  

That’s about the best definition of anxiety that I’ve ever heard, and sums up exactly how I feel when I’m suffering from it.   Anxiety is no fun.

The Big Boy Update:  My husband and son were working on carving a Creeper pumpkin (character from Minecraft).   My husband is pretty good at anything involving fine motor skills and can carve a killer pumpkin.   I heard my son say from the kitchen, “dad, are you an artist?”

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter was just in from school this afternoon when she asked me, “mom, what does ‘speech’ mean?”  I explained it meant that you had something to say to people.   She said, “in that case, I have prepared a speech: ’I’m hungry.’”