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*Anxiety disorders currently affect approximately 40 million adult Americans.
*Experts say people have negativity bias, which means we’re hardwired to pay more attention to threatening and scary information than positive, assuring information.
*This can increase feelings of stress and anxiety in many people, but there are a number of ways practicing optimism can help.
As the most common mental illness in the United States, anxiety disorders affect 40 million adults.
“If we look at anxiety from a psychological understanding, we think about it as a miscalculation. Anxiety happens when we overestimate the likelihood that something bad will happen and underestimate our ability to handle it,” Natalie Dattilo, PhD, clinical psychologist and director of psychology at Brigham & Women’s Hospital.
Fears and anxiety come from an innate place, said Steve Gross, licensed social worker and founder of the Life is Good Kids Foundation.
“Human beings have something called human negativity bias, which means we are hardwired to pay more attention to threatening and scary information than positive, assuring information,” Gross told Healthline.
This tracks back to survival when early humans hunted for food, water, and shelter. The constant threat of attack kept humans in fight-or-flight mode.
“Some anxiety is a physiological response when your body produces a lot of adrenaline and goes in threat detection mode. While the anxiety may be a hyper-exaggeration of the risk of something, the body is trying to keep you safe,” said Gross.
Still, both experts say practicing optimism can help reduce anxiety.
“I think of optimism as a mix of positive thinking, feelings of hope, goal-driven behavior, and confidence. It isn’t about glass-half-full thinking or rose-colored glasses necessarily. It’s about how you explain the things that happen to you in your life, especially the things that don’t go well, and what you expect to happen in the future,” Dattilo said.
For instance, when things don’t turn out well, an optimistic person is more likely to think that they’re experiencing a temporary setback rather than a doomed future.
While this may come across as denial or unrealistic, Gross says an optimist recognizes the bad things in life but chooses not to dwell on them.
“Our definition [of optimism] is our capacity to see, feel, and focus on the goodness in ourselves, in others, and around us,” he said.
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