Dr. Sarah Williams on the benefits of anxiety, how  anxiety mindsets affect our physiology and real-world experience, how we can change our anxiety mindsets, appraising stress as challenging vs. threatening and much more...

 Chapters 0:00 Intro 0:54 Cognitive anxiety and Somatic anxiety 3:30 The benefits of anxiety 7:46 Why our mindsets about our anxiety matters 13:45 Changing our anxiety mindsets 19:09 Application of anxiety mindsets to psychotherapy  22.10 Stress appraisals 24:30 Mastery imagery  27:57 Making anxiety work for us in life

 Dr. Sarah Williams is a world-renowned researcher in anxiety reappraisal and imagery. Her scores of papers have been published in health psychology and sport and exercise psychology journals. Sarah is also a Lecturer in Sport Psychology and Coaching Science at the University of Birmingham.

 Further readings mentioned in this episode ‘Anxiety symptom interpretation: A potential mechanism explaining the cardiorespiratory     fitness-anxiety relationship’ by Williams et. al. (2016) ‘Mastery imagery ability is associated with positive anxiety and performance during psychological stress’ by Williams et. al. (2021) ‘Optimising stress: An integrated intervention for regulating stress responses’ by Crum et. al. (2020) ‘Mind over milkshakes: mindsets, not just nutrients, determine ghrelin response’ by Crum et. al. (2011)