Andrew Huberman· PhD
I think I'm wired to be a little bit more on the anxious side and to predict what's going to happen next and what needs to be done and so until I'm actually engaging in certain behaviors that anxiety hums a little bit high for me the gears turn a little bit faster perhaps than than I would like when I wake up in the morning but once I engage I feel like the the speed of that gear turning uh matches the demands of Life pretty well I feel um agency okay um so if you don't mind could we explore this this feeling of anxiety or lack of anxiety that I think people are pretty familiar with within themselves at different times of day and under different conditions because to me it seems like a um an interesting lens to to explore this notion of character structure and defenses is anxiety a healthy defense or an unhealthy defense or does it simply depend on the circumstances well we all have some degree of anxiety in us right we all have some awareness that like we're navigating the world and like not everything is is perfect right this is not Nirvana so there's some anxiety within us and the thought is that that anxiety can keep us Vigilant about the things we should be vigilant about you know health and safety right but that too much anxiety then becomes counterproductive and we can look at this in a very regimented way right so so some anxiety makes sense right it keeps us being careful it keeps you keeps you being careful as you're pulling out of a driveway for example right so okay it can be it can be absolutely fine but let's say you bring something to clinical attention that isn't absolutely fine right let's say I didn't know you and you come in we have the example that that we that you used before where where you you walk into work and there's a group of people that you that you know well and like right let's say you told me when I walk in there I I feel very anxious right I don't feel like things are okay right so then we would go through we say that's not good right maybe it's impacting your professional life things are not going well like you really want this to change because it's impacting your life in a negative way and we say okay let's look at that from the perspective of structure of self right so first unconscious right is it that just genetically are you built with just High levels of anxiety right so we could learn okay have you always been anxious like this is this has this always been in your life since you were a little kid no matter what so we're looking for biological nature so to speak variables we might also look for things