This is NPR's life kit. I'm Megan Kane, the shows managing producer. I've always thought of

anxiety as the enemy. As soon as I feel a tightness in my chest or my stomach twisting into knots,

I want to obliterate it as quickly as possible. But according to author Wendy Suzuki,

that might not be the best approach. I say you shouldn't try and get rid of it because

evolutionarily, anxiety evolved to help protect us. We need to recalibrate our level of anxiety

to get it back to that level where it is super protective for us. Wendy Suzuki is a professor

of neuroscience and psychology at New York University. And she wants people to realize that

anxiety isn't all bad. And one of the things that is helpful for that is to kind of appreciate

the value of those uncomfortable emotions that come with anxiety, the fear, the worry,

and what that is telling us about our lives, what we appreciate, what we value, and that is where

the value of anxiety, that is where the good anxiety lives. Wendy has a book called Good Anxiety,

harnessing the power of the most misunderstood emotion. She writes that anxiety is on a continuum,

and of course there are clinical anxiety disorders that can be intense and disruptive.

But if you're having everyday worries, like you're feeling anxious about a relationship

or landing a job, Wendy's book has strategies to help you manage those feelings.

And it was written as an invitation to really talk about and deal with anxiety that can come

with so much shame and embarrassment. Let's approach it and start to really think about new ways

to approach it. So let's do just that. This episode of Life Get, how to have good anxiety. We'll

learn more about how anxiety works and how we can transform it into something positive and productive.

How do you want people to reframe anxiety in your mind?

Yeah. So I would love people to appreciate the fact that evolutionarily, anxiety developed

to protect us. And we've lost that protective aspect too much of anything. Even something good

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