Archive for the 'anxiety' Category

we’re socially anxious because we’re attending to others’ fear (at least partly)

Not always, of course. But this study suggests that socially anxious people are better at picking up on others’ subliminal expressions of fear.

Speaking personally, I like a conceptualization of social anxiety that sees the anxious as highly accurate, much more so than a conceptualization that sees the anxious as reading things into situations that aren’t there. I’m much more amenable to having it explained why my perceptions are both accurate and giving me problems (and then helping me figure out what to do with the accurate input I am receiving), than I am to being told I’m imagining it all (and should therefore simply ignore any environmental input I get that the person who’s telling me this thinks doesn’t exist - but how to tell that without farming out my good judgment?).

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August 09 2007 | anxiety | 2 Comments »

insomnia predicts future anxiety but not future depression

Based on two surveys 11 years apart headed up by Dag Neckelmann of Haukeland University Hospital in Norway. Reuters article. Via Spikol. Insomnia at time 1 predicted anxiety disorder at time 2, but not depression, although depression and insomnia co-occurred.

I thought the fact that it wasn’t significantly predicting depression (despite predicting anxiety) was pretty interesting, since insomnia and depression are widely known to be related (and anxiety and depression can both co-occur and each cause the other). Maybe insomnia is a byproduct of early anxiety that isn’t yet diagnosable? Maybe it’s a version of the same phenomenon where lack of sleep can make bipolar people hypo/manic?

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July 09 2007 | anxiety and circadian rhythms and depression | No Comments »