Dan Mushens examines the emotion of anxiety and how it can affect humans in different ways

Eighty years ago to the day, an event took place which is said to have caused mayhem, mass hysteria and pandemonium on the boulevards and sidewalks of America.

On 30 October 1938, Orson Welles’ infamous radio dramatisation of The War of the Worlds was broadcast to the nation; a work of fiction adapted from the H.G Wells novel of the same name.

Legend has it that listeners tuning in to the tale of an alien invasion believed it to be a genuine news broadcast resulting in people running for the hills proclaiming the end of the world is nigh.

Although now commonly recited as an example of induced fear, panic and anxiety - and etched into the national psyche as fact - the evidence seems to suggest an alternative truth.

The traditional and dominant printed newspaper industry are said to have over-exaggerated the few real incidents of public confusion as an opportunity to censure radio media, then a burgeoning method of delivering news.

Whatever the truth, it’s not contentious to say anxiety comes in many forms. It is a mental state generally consisting of psychological and physical symptoms and is induced by apprehension and the sense of a perceived threat.

Contemporarily, we tend to consider anxiety as a character flaw, a personality defect or an inflicted evil that needs eradicated. It could be likened to a dam, preventing a river from gushing forth and releasing its true potential.

For those living with any form of anxiety I wholeheartedly concur that it has the power to reduce the quality of your life. It can be the cause of a dwelling that dominates your thoughts for no worthy reason. It can alienate you from family and friends and cause isolation and loneliness. It can make you feel so worthless and inadequate that you question your own place on this earth; that the future is a place for other people.

That being said, could there be any positives to take from the natural emotion of anxiety? Could the possessor of this nervous energy use it for their benefit and not their detriment – harnessing it like an untapped natural resource?

It was the Danish existentialist philosopher Soren Kierkegaard; influential in the early nineteenth century who wrote substantially on the subject of anxiety and fear. He stated: "...to know anxiety is an adventure that every man has to affront. He who has therefore learned rightly to be in anxiety, has learned the most important thing!"

He said anxiety can just as well express itself as muteness as with a scream and anxiety is the dizziness of freedom. The main tenet to his work on anxiety is that it isn’t a state to be avoided, but rather needs to be wrestled with to authenticate one’s own life.

In the years since his death in 1855, advances in psychiatry and medication have dominated the treatment of anxiety. But in the process, Kierkegaard’s key assertion that some benefit can be extracted from anxiety however unpleasant and paralysing – seems to have been overlooked.

Over recent decades however, methods for the self-management of anxiety such as mindfulness, cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) and neuro-linguistic programming (NLP), seem to have made somewhat of a revival. This reminds us that the management and treatment of some anxiety can be sourced within an individual’s agency. In addition, poor levels of regular exercise and lack of a good diet are often identified as modern lifestyle barriers to reversing the feelings of anxiety.

The student population are often cited as being prone to anxiety with universities placing a big onus on offering mental health services on campuses these days. With students committing much time and finances to complete their studies, it’s perfectly understandable that feelings of self-doubt, apprehension about future employment prospects and pre-examination fears may present themselves. However, these worries are often channelled for overall goodness in the form of relentless studying and making deadlines.

Anxious people can often be labelled as timid, shy, reserved and quiet, but are also considerate, analytical, patient, reflective and caring – great attributes for a career in the social care sector.

Along with love; anger, remorse, guilt and anticipation etc, fear; apprehension and anxiety are all perfectly normal human emotions too, and they can drive people on to success. Maybe we shouldn’t seek to eradicate them from an individual because of contemporary negative connotations of the actual words themselves, but rather promote the normality of feeling them.

Needless to say, I’m not trying to diminish the experiences and struggles of sufferers of anxiety and a combination of interventions are often needed to manage it. But I sometimes feel that anxiety is now such a dirty word that people would rather not have it applied to them. On that note, Kierkegaard also said on the subject of anxiety: "Once you label me, you negate me, and I think there’s some truth in that."

Dan Mushens is a recovery practitioner for Scottish mental health charity Penumbra