Anxiety is a deeply misunderstood emotion, so much so that most of us don't know the difference between anxiety (the emotion of motivation) and panic (the emotion that protects you from danger). This misunderstanding gets in the way of our ability to work with anxiety, because if we don't know which emotion we're feeling, we won't know how to respond to it or work with it skillfully.

And if we don't know that procrastination is a perfectly valid way to work with anxiety and motivation, we won't understand how we (and others) function.

In 2020, I wrote a book called Embracing Anxiety, but just 10 years earlier, I was ignorant about anxiety. Luckily, in late 2010, I heard psychologist Mary Lamia talking about anxiety on a radio show, and I realized what had caused my emotional ignorance.

Dr. Lamia is a clinical psychologist and educator who was being interviewed about her children’s book Understanding Myself: A Kid’s Guide to Intense Emotions
and Strong Feelings. Toward the end of her interview, Dr. Lamia talked about anxiety as the emotion that motivates us to get things done (such as tasks, plans, and projects).

Dr. Lamia noted that we respond to our anxiety in one of two ways. In one anxiety response, procrastination, people focus on deadlines and wait until their anxiety reaches a level of intensity that compels them to act, like........

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