Andrea Fella on anxiety

Anxiety can come with thoughts, worries. Anxiety is more the physical feeling. Worry is the mental cogitation. And so anxiety and worry, I think, come together a lot. And so when there's anxiety our minds go into trying to lay out the map ... I think that this is connected to that problem-solving part of our minds. So what I would say about all of this is that there's something connected to discernment in all of these states. So the fact of climate change, for instance: that there is something going on there, and it deserves our attention, and because of this kind of response or reaction around "I don't know what's going to happen," that reactivity around I don't know what's going to happen, that agitation comes into the mind and begins to obscure or overlay or overshadow the simple discernment of this may be a problem. What do we do about this? How can we engage in this? What kind of choices can be made? ...

The difference in the mind that is in reactivity around worry versus the mind that is balanced in discernment around problem-solving is how much agitation is in the mind. So is the mind actually calmly reflecting, hm, this might be happening, these are some options? A kind of distinction here around worry.