Anxiety: Challenge by Another Name

In the article "Anxiety: Challenge by Another Name," James Lincoln Collier

explains that anxiety is a very common part of our life in our society and that to

defeat anxiety is to confront it and face it as we grow and learn from it instead of

backing away. Collier uses several of his personal experiences and explains

how each helped him to overcome his anxiety. With each obstacle that he faced,

he developed three basic rules for himself. Collier had a chance to go on a trip to

Argentina with his roommate, Ted. Being away for two months sounds exciting

but he is having a second thought, and he end up turning down the invitation. It

scared him of being in a new, strange country. He regreted by not going through

the Argentina trip, and it taught him a lesson. This lesson made him developed

his first rule: "do what makes you anxious, don't do what makes you depressed."

He also found out that the person he admired, Duke Ellington, still has stage

fright, eventhough he has been performing for more than thirty years, and by

knowing that, Ellington inspired Collier. After doing a couple of interviews, he

noticed that he is not that scared anymore. He had benefited and discovered

from the process of phychologist call "extinction." Which he had came up with

his second rule: "you'll never eliminate anxiety by avoiding the things that caused

it." Collier had put out his anxiety by confronting it; in addition, Collier developed

his third rule: "you can't learn if you don't try." To illustrate his third rule, some

years