Dealing With Anxiety

After my college career I'll be applying for positions as a high school/junior high school guidance counselor. I absolutely love talking with people and being there for them when disaster strikes anywhere from school schedules to friend groups. However, in the past anxiety was unfortunately something that I had very little understanding in. I saw it in my friends, girlfriends, relatives, and I could never empathize with them as strongly as I could if they were actually going through rough times (rather than just worrying about them). Then in psychology we learned about the Big Five Model of Personality and the trait of neuroticism. I learned that some people tend to experience negative emotions more often then others and I learned something incredible about anxiety. Our lecturer told us that people experiencing anxiety do so because the future disaster seems, to them, so prone to happen that they psychologically convince themselves that it has happened. He went on to tell us that when something has happened to us inside our heads it feels like it's happened in real life. This insight allows me to empathize with people dealing with anxiety now and years later as a counselor. Through my understanding of this concept I will be able to help people deal with their anxiety by teaching them to handle things as they come instead of everything that has a chance of becoming a reality.

Andrew Otto