Michelle: Everything you've been told about anxiety is wrong. The sweaty palms, the racing heart, the sleepless nights... what if that's not a bug in your system, but a feature? A superpower you've been taught to fear instead of use. Mark: A superpower? Honestly, Michelle, on most days it feels more like a curse. My superpower seems to be worrying about emails I haven't sent yet. That doesn't feel very heroic. Michelle: I get it, and that's exactly the mindset we're going to challenge today. We're diving into the brilliant book, Why Anxiety Is Good for You by neuroscientist Wendy Suzuki. And she's not alone in this thinking. It's part of a larger, really exciting movement in psychology. Mark: A movement? Michelle: Yes, leading clinical psychologists like Tracy Dennis-Tiwary are also championing this idea. Dennis-Tiwary is fascinating—she's a professor of psychology and neuroscience, but also a health-tech entrepreneur developing digital tools to help people manage anxiety. So this isn't just an abstract academic theory; it's being put into practice. Mark: Okay, so we have serious scientists and entrepreneurs saying my anxiety about public speaking is actually a gift. I'm skeptical, but I'm listening. Where do we even start with an idea that big? Michelle: We start with a simple perspective shift. Have you ever seen that famous optical illusion, Rubin's Vase? Mark: The one that's either a vase or two faces looking at each other? Michelle: Exactly. You can't see both at once. Your brain has to choose. The book argues that anxiety is the same. We've been trained to see only the ugly, terrifying vase. But if we relax our gaze and shift our perspective, we can see the two faces—the hidden gift. We can see anxiety for what it truly is: information, energy, and a tool for a better future.

Mark: I like the analogy, but in real life, it's hard to see the 'gift' when my heart is pounding out of my chest. What is the gift, exactly? Michelle: The gift is preparation for the future. The book draws a crucial distinction between fear and anxiety. Fear is what happens when a real, present danger is right in front of you. The author tells a great personal story about reaching into an old box in her attic and touching something warm and furry that moved. Mark: Whoa. I would have jumped out of my skin. Michelle: She did! Her heart raced, she broke out in a sweat—that was pure fear. The danger was a field mouse, it was right there, and once she moved it outside, the fear was gone. Anxiety, on the other hand, is apprehension about an uncertain, imagined future. It’s what we feel when something bad could happen, but hasn't happened yet. Mark: So fear is the mouse in the box. Anxiety is worrying there might be a mouse in the box next time. Michelle: Perfectly put. And that worry, that anxiety, is designed to make you more vigilant, more prepared. It's a survival mechanism. The book gives this incredible, high-stakes example of astronaut Dr. Scott Parazynski. Mark: The name sounds familiar. Michelle: He was on a space shuttle mission in 2007 to the International Space Station. They were installing these massive new solar panels, but a guide wire snagged and tore a huge gash in one of them. The panel couldn't fully expand, jeopardizing the entire mission and the power supply for the station. Mark: That sounds like a nightmare. What did they do? Michelle: They had to improvise one of the most dangerous spacewalks ever attempted. They attached Parazynski to the end of a 90-foot boom on the station's robotic arm. He was dangling out in space, trying to perform delicate surgery on this live, high-voltage solar panel. Mark: That's insane. The anxiety must have been off the charts. Michelle: Exactly! But here's the key. Parazynski said that anxiety was his fuel. The anxiety about the mission failing, about the potential dangers, is what drove him and the team to prepare relentlessly. He had trained for years, developing surgical skills that suddenly became critical. His anxiety didn't paralyze him; it focused him. It gave him the energy and precision to spend seven hours in the void, cut the snagged wire, and save the mission. Mark: Okay, that’s an amazing story. But he’s a highly trained astronaut. How does that translate to my anxiety about a work deadline or a first date? I'm not exactly performing surgery on a solar panel. Michelle: But the underlying mechanism is the same. Your brain is doing for your presentation what NASA's mission control did for Parazynski. It's flooding you with energy and focus because it perceives an uncertain, high-stakes future event. It's trying to get you ready to perform at your best. Mark: But why does it have to feel so terrible? The butterflies, the racing thoughts—it feels like my body is betraying me. Michelle: The book has a fantastic quote for this: "It feels terrible because it’s trying to tell us something important that we’d rather not hear—as a good friend often does." The discomfort is a feature, not a bug. It's an alarm bell screaming, "Pay attention! This matters!" The problem isn't the alarm. The problem is that we've been taught to just smash the alarm clock instead of listening to what it's telling us.

Mark: That makes sense. If anxiety is this useful alarm system, why is there a multi-billion dollar industry dedicated to smashing it? How did we get so off track and start treating it like a disease? Michelle: That's the second major part of the book, and it's a fascinating detective story. The author traces how we were sold this "anxiety-as-disease" narrative over centuries. It didn't happen overnight. Mark: Where does the story start? Michelle: It starts, in many ways, with the Church in the medieval period. Anxiety was framed as a spiritual failing, a sign of sin and the fear of eternal damnation. Think of Dante's Inferno—it's basically a literary monument to anxiety, vividly depicting the horrors of Hell to keep people in line. The cure wasn't understanding, it was confession and penance. Mark: So it began as a problem of the soul, not the body. Michelle: Precisely. Then came the Enlightenment, and the "foul fiend of fear," as one 17th-century scholar called it, moved from the soul to the mind. It became a psychological problem, a kind of madness. But the real turning point was the 20th century and the rise of modern medicine and pharmaceuticals. Mark: Here come the drugs. Michelle: And how. The book tells the story of the discovery of the first major anti-anxiety drugs, the benzodiazepines. It was actually an accident. In the 1950s, a chemist at Hoffmann-La Roche named Leo Sternbach was trying to find a safer alternative to barbiturates, which were highly addictive and deadly. After years of failure, his project was shut down. Mark: So he failed? Michelle: He was ordered to stop. But two years later, a colleague was cleaning out his abandoned lab and found a dusty, forgotten vial of a compound Sternbach had made. They tested it, and it was a miracle. It had powerful sedative effects but didn't suppress breathing like barbiturates. That compound became Librium, and its successor, Valium, became a cultural phenomenon. Mark: "Mother's Little Helper," as the Rolling Stones sang. Michelle: The very same. By the 1970s, it was the most prescribed drug in the world. We entered an era of chemical coping, the idea that any whisper of anxiety could and should be silenced. We became a society that wanted to be "comfortably numb." Mark: And you can draw a straight line from that mindset to the opioid crisis, can't you? This belief that all pain, whether physical or emotional, is an enemy that must be eradicated at all costs. Michelle: Absolutely. The book makes that connection explicitly. It's the same cultural logic. But here's the crucial point where we have to be careful, and it's something critics of this perspective often raise. Mark: I was just about to ask. This reframing is powerful, but isn't there a danger of downplaying the reality of crippling anxiety disorders? Some of the reader reviews for books like this are polarizing. People with severe, clinical anxiety sometimes feel dismissed. Michelle: That's a vital and valid concern. The author is very clear to distinguish between everyday anxiety and a clinical anxiety disorder. The key difference is "functional impairment." Everyday anxiety might make you uncomfortable, but an anxiety disorder gets in the way of you living your life. The book isn't saying that someone with, say, debilitating panic disorder should just "embrace the gift." It's arguing that our societal approach to all forms of anxiety—even the normal, healthy kind—has become one of avoidance and suppression, and that this approach is actually making us more fragile and contributing to the rise in anxiety disorders. The book's argument is that the emotion of anxiety is not broken; it’s how we cope with it that’s broken.

Michelle: Exactly. The book isn't saying clinical disorders aren't real. It's saying our relationship with everyday anxiety is broken. And that brings us to the most important part: how do we fix it? How do we actually use this energy? Mark: Right. We've established it's a misunderstood superpower. How do we learn to fly? Michelle: By turning the feeling into action. The book shares a powerful story about a young theater artist named Drew who moved to New York City. The stress triggered his first panic attack—a horrible experience where he felt like he couldn't breathe. The attacks continued for months. Mark: That sounds terrifying. That's the kind of anxiety people want to get rid of, and for good reason. Michelle: Of course. But through therapy, he started to see it differently. He got curious about it. Instead of just trying to suppress it, he started to explore it. He ended up creating a multimedia theater piece called 'Variations on a Panic Attack.' He transformed his suffering into art. He said something profound: "Those panic attacks were horrible experiences, but they were also gifts, because they forced me to finally come face-to-face with my anxiety... Anxiety is my teacher." Mark: Wow. He literally channeled that chaotic energy into something creative. But what about for those of us who aren't theater artists? What does this look like on a Tuesday afternoon when I'm freaking out about a project? Michelle: The book introduces a brilliant concept for this: "excellencism" instead of perfectionism. Perfectionism is the anxious belief that you must never fail. It’s brittle and paralyzing. Excellencism is the drive for high standards, but with the understanding that you will fail, and that failure is just information. It's the mindset of Thomas Edison, who famously said, "I have not failed. I have just found ten thousand ways that won’t work." Mark: I like that. It gives you permission to be human. It's about striving, not about being flawless. Michelle: And it builds what the author calls "antifragility." This is a key idea. It's different from resilience. Resilience is bouncing back to where you were before. Antifragility is getting stronger because of stress and chaos. The author uses a great quote from Nassim Taleb: "Wind extinguishes a candle but energizes a fire. You want to be the fire and wish for the wind." Anxiety is the wind. Our goal is to become the fire. Mark: Be the fire, wish for the wind. That’s a powerful image. But it still feels a bit abstract. Can you make it super practical? What are the actual steps? Michelle: The book boils it down to three beautifully simple principles for befriending your anxiety. First: Listen to it. Treat it as information about the future. Ask it, "What are you trying to tell me?" Mark: Okay, step one: listen. Michelle: Second: If the information isn't useful right now—if it's just vague, free-floating dread you can't do anything about—let it go for the moment. Go for a walk, listen to music, do something to get out of your head. You can come back to it later. Mark: Step two: let it go if it's not actionable. What's the third? Michelle: Third, and most important: If the anxiety is useful, do something purposeful with it. Channel that energy. Don't just worry—plan. Don't just fret—act. Your anxiety is pointing you toward what you care about. Use its energy to move toward that thing, even if it's just one small step.

Mark: So, listen, let go, or act. That's incredibly clear. It feels like the whole message of the book isn't about getting rid of anxiety, but about changing our relationship with it. It's like learning to sail instead of trying to stop the wind. Michelle: That's the perfect metaphor. You can't stop the wind, but you can adjust your sails to harness its power and get where you want to go. The author argues that by rescuing anxiety from its bad reputation, we rescue ourselves. We stop running from the future and start creating it. Mark: It’s a fundamental shift from a defensive crouch to a forward-leaning stance. From "How do I survive this feeling?" to "Where can this feeling take me?" Michelle: Exactly. It all comes back to that quote from the philosopher Søren Kierkegaard that opens the book, which feels like the perfect place to end. He wrote: "Whoever has learned to be anxious in the right way, has learned the ultimate." Mark: Learned the ultimate. That's a big claim, but after this conversation, I'm starting to believe it. So, the challenge for all of us this week, myself included, is this: the next time you feel that jolt of anxiety, that familiar tightness in your chest, don't just push it away. Pause. And ask it one simple question: "What are you trying to tell me?" Michelle: This is Aibrary, signing off.