David Rosmarin - Make anxiety your friend

Keywords

Resilience- Anxiety - Mental Health - Emotions - Anxiety Toolkit

In this episode of Resilience Unravelled, Dr David Rosmarin, the founder of the Centre for Anxiety (New York, Boston, Princeton), associate professor at Harvard Medical School and Director of the McLean Hospital Spirituality and Mental Health Programme talks about anxiety and how to make it your friend.

Often, people who suffer from anxiety either exhaust themselves trying to cure it or resign themselves to a lifetime of fear and worry but Dr Rosmarin suggests that instead of fighting their anxiety, people can turn it into a strength. 

Dr Rosmarin defines anxiety as a response similar to fear but triggered by uncertain or future events rather than immediate danger. He emphasises that anxiety can be a normal and potentially positive emotion if managed correctly, challenging the notion that it is always negative or pathological.  He also discusses exposure therapy as a technique to deal with anxiety and how leaning into anxiety can be liberating.

 Main topics

• Tools for managing anxiety.
• The importance of spirituality in mental health and how it often gets ignored in psychiatric treatment.
• The concept of increasing tolerance of uncertainty as a way to cope with anxiety.
• The role of community and social connections in managing anxiety and improving mental health.
• How exposure therapy can be used to manage anxiety.

Action items

Find out more about Dr Rosmarin at https://dhrosmarin.com/

His book Thriving with Anxiety: 9 Tools to Make Your Anxiety Work for You is published in October 2023.

Connect with Dr. Rosmarin on LinkedIn for further engagement and updates.