How Anxiety Traps Us, and How We Can Break Free

This article suggests ways of countering the excess stress that can be experienced in the face of a challenge. The author warns us of the principal psychological biases that lead us to exaggerate the perception of threat. Freeing ourselves from these biases is not a question of reassuring ourselves through illusions, but of becoming aware that stress focuses our attention on dangers and thereby biases our understanding of reality. The article proposes several techniques aimed at examining the situation in a more thorough manner, with the benefit of a more objective assessment of reality—and of a reduction in one’s level of stress.