From Ethan Yoshida

Brodhead High School

To the editor:

I’m a sophomore in high school. I’m not even 16 yet, but I’ve had a lot of issues, most of them based around the fear of something that has and most likely will not happen. Anxiety is like a spider. Elusive and unwanted. You don’t notice it, but by the time you do, it’s too late. Its webs are everywhere.

And now I shall provide some interesting info about why anxiety is useful even if it has a bad reputation, ridiculously using only a TV show (Sanders Sides) and a graph.

Anxiety is “... a natural fight-or-flight reflex. That’s what you’re instilled in humans to act as.” (Sanders Sides). The Yerkes–Dodson curve (named after the psychologists, R. M. Yerkes and J. D. Dodson) graphs how tension/anxiety affects our performances. Think of it as a rainbow. Where you want to be is right in the prime degree of constructive tension, in the middle. “Too much anxiety pushes us to the right side of the curve and our performance is hindered.” (Sanders Sides). But with too little anxiety/tension, it pushes you to the left side of the “rainbow,” hindering performance yet again, causing laziness/procrastination. You’d be amazed at how relevant a TV program can be.

The world will be better if people learned not to hate anxiety, but to balance it. However, I know how bad anxiety can be and if you’re struggling with anxiety/something else, just know that there are resources available to help you.