Healthy anxiety helps us preserve our life, but unhealthy anxiety can do more harm than good. Think about walking across the street. Healthy anxiety results in walking cautiously, paying attention to traffic lights, looking both ways, and walking briskly across the street. On the other hand, unhealthy anxiety may result in your heart beating wildly as you are anxious about getting safely across the street. You may run wildly across the street in acute panic, stumble, look the wrong direction, create an accident, or you may become so frightened you refuse to cross the street at all!

It is important to remember that not all uncomfortable emotions are bad. As we stated before, uncomfortable emotions can benefit us, help us cope with loss, motivate us to get our needs met and help us perform better on tasks and protect us from danger. We have a problem when our emotions prevent us from our desires, or negatively effect our relationships. What we want is a way to help us identify triggers, identify our responses, assess how we're doing and ultimately gain control of our anxiety.