職場必備:焦慮能讓你表現更出衆(上)

You have an important presentation tomorrow but your heart is racing and your mind is serving up a steady stream of what-ifs: What if I'm not fully prepared? What if it goes badly? You're running out of time. The last thing you need is all this anxiety.

明天你有一場重要的演講，但你心裏像揣着只小兔子，腦子裏裝滿各種疑問：如果我還沒準備好怎麼辦？如果演講講砸了怎麼辦？你沒多少時間了。眼下你最不需要的就是心中這焦慮了。

Actually, a little anxiety may be just what you need to focus your efforts and perform at your peak, psychologists say.

然而實際上，據心理學家們稱，適度的焦慮可能恰恰是你要集中精力、達到巔峯狀態時所需要的東西。

Somewhere between checked out and freaked out lies an anxiety sweet spot, some researchers say, in which a person is motivated to succeed yet not so anxious that performance takes a dive. This moderate amount of anxiety keeps people on their toes, enables them to juggle multiple tasks and puts them on high alert for potential problems.

一些研究者表示，在安然過關與緊張到崩潰之間有一個微妙的焦慮平衡點，只要焦慮度沒有超出這個平衡點，人們就能在焦慮的刺激下獲得成功，而不是因壓力過大而表現失常。這個適度的焦慮能夠讓人們保持警醒，使得他們得以同時應付多項任務，並對可能出現的問題隨時保持高度的警惕。

"Coaches and sports psychologists have always known that you don't want your athlete to be relaxed right before an event. You need some "juice" to go fast," says Stephen Josephson, a psychologist in New York City who has treated athletes, actors and musicians.

紐約心理醫師斯蒂芬•約瑟夫森(Stephen Josephson)表示，“體育教練和運動心理學家很清楚，在比賽前夕不能讓運動員太過放鬆了。你需要一些刺激來讓自己出色發揮。”約瑟夫森曾爲一些運動員、演員和音樂家提供過心理諮詢服務。

It can be tricky to achieve. Some overly optimistic people and those with attention-deficit hyperactive disorder may lack enough anxiety to take action. Others - mostly procrastinating perfectionists - must create anxiety-producing situations in order to get anything done.

有時候成功完成一項任務也許沒那麼容易。一些過於樂觀的人，以及那些患有注意力缺陷多動障礙(attention-deficit hyperactive disorder)的人可能會缺乏足夠的焦慮來刺激他們行動起來。還有些人──大多數是辦事拖沓的完美主義者──則必須製造出一個能產生緊張感的環境才能順利完成工作。

Regulating anxiety is also difficult because humans' ancient threat-detection system hasn't kept pace with modern man's ability to fret about the future, ruminate about the past and imagine all kinds of terrible scenarios, says Dennis Tirch, associate director of the American Institute for Cognitive Therapy in New York. So the body's primitive fight-or-flight response kicks in even when the threat at hand is a daunting social engagement or a 20-page report.

紐約美國認知療法協會(American Institute for Cognitive Therapy)副會長丹尼斯•蒂爾奇(Dennis Tirch)表示，管理焦慮也是一件難事，因爲人類的威脅察覺系統自遠古進化發展而來，與現代人擔憂未來、反思過去、以及想象各種可怕場景的能力並不同步。因此，一旦威脅來臨，哪怕所面臨的威脅只是一項令人頭疼的社會責任，或是一份20頁的報告，但人們“要麼戰鬥要麼逃離”的原始反應機制便會立即發生作用。

Of course, too much anxiety can be painful and destructive. Anxiety disorders affect about 40 million American adults - 18% of the population - in a given year, according to the National Institute of Mental Health. Only about one-third of them seek treatment. The disorders run the gamut from panic attacks and specific phobias to obsessive-compulsive disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder and generalized anxiety disorder, a random kind of worry described as free-floating and relentless. Sufferers also have a high incidence of depression and physical ailments, including migraines, high blood pressure, heart disease, digestive disorders and chronic pain, according to NIMH.

誠然，焦慮過度或許會讓人感到痛苦，而且也極具破壞性。根據美國國家心理健康研究所(National Institute of Mental Health)的數據，美國某一年當中受焦慮症困擾的美國成年人數約爲4,000萬，相當於美國人口的18%。其中只有三分之一左右的患者尋求治療。焦慮症具體包括很多種類，比如突發性恐慌、針對特定事物的恐懼症，此外還有強迫症、創傷後緊張症、以及一種隨時可能陷入憂慮狀態的廣泛性焦慮症。據美國國家心理健康研究所稱，焦慮症患者同時伴隨出現抑鬱症以及偏頭痛、高血壓、心臟病、消化系統紊亂以及慢性疼痛等身體疾病的機率也很高。

The terms anxiety and stress are often used interchangeably, although stress includes anger and frustration, while anxiety is typically worry and unease.

焦慮(anxiety)和緊張(stress)這兩個詞經常可以相互替代使用，不過緊張一般是伴隨着怒氣和挫敗感，而焦慮通常是指擔憂和不安。

The notion that moderate anxiety can be beneficial goes back at least to 1908, when Harvard psychologists Robert Yerkes and John Dodson posited that arousal (as they called it) enhances performance - but only to a point. When anxiety gets too high, performance suffers instead.

適當的焦慮可能會帶來好處這個觀點往前至少可以追溯到1908年，哈佛大學心理學家羅伯特•耶基斯(Robert Yerkes)和約翰•多德森(John Dodson)在那一年提出這樣一個假設：保持一定的“警醒度”（他們用了這個詞）可以提升表現，不過只在一定程度上。當焦慮過甚，表現反而會受到負面影響。

The Yerkes-Dodson curve - an upside-down U shape - is still taught in psychology courses, and modern neuroscience has helped confirm it. Studies have shown, for example, that the brain learns best when stress hormones are mildly elevated.

耶基斯-多德森曲線（一條先升後降的倒U形曲線）如今仍是心理學課程上的一項內容，且得到了現代神經系統學的證實。比如說，有研究表明，當應激激素水平略有提高時，大腦的學習能力最強。

High anxiety can make even simple tasks more difficult, says psychologist Jason Moser at Michigan State University.

密歇根州立大學(Michigan State University)的心理學家傑森•莫澤(Jason Moser)稱，較高的焦慮水平甚至會讓一項簡單的任務變得難以完成。

In a study published earlier this month in the International Journal of Psychophysiology, he and his colleagues monitored the brain activity of 79 female and 70 male students while they performed a letter-identifying exercise. The students performed equally well at first, but the women who identified themselves as highly anxious had to work harder at it. Those subjects showed far more activity in a part of the brain - the anterior cingulate cortex - thought to be a center of anxiety. And once the worrying women started making errors, they made them at a higher rate than the other subjects, suggesting that the extra effort the anxiety caused was taking a toll, Dr. Moser says.

莫澤和他的同事於今年6月份在《國際心理學期刊》(International Journal of Psychophysiology)上合作發表了一項研究結果，該研究對79名女學生和70名男學生在完成一個辨別字母的練習過程中的大腦活動進行了監測。起初學生們的表現同樣良好，不過那些認爲自己高度焦慮的女生完成練習時需要付出更大的努力。這部分學生大腦中的前扣帶皮層──這部分腦組織被認爲是控制焦慮的中樞──表現得比其他學生活躍很多。莫澤稱，而一旦這些焦慮的女生開始犯錯誤，這些最初的錯誤會使得她們的錯誤比率超出其他學生，這意味着焦慮引發的額外努力正讓她們付出代價。

How do you find the sweet spot between anxiety that energizes and anxiety that paralyzes?

怎樣才能在激勵表現和破壞表現之間，找到這個適度焦慮的平衡點呢？

Most therapists see more patients suffering from too much anxiety rather than too little, although withdrawal and lack of ambition can be a hallmark of depression. Dr. Josephson says that overly optimistic people with ADHD often have an insufficient sense of urgency to get things done. One form of treatment is what he calls "motivational interviewing: stressing the negative future consequences of not finishing and explaining that once the task is through, they'll feel a sense of calm and relief," he says.

大多數心理醫師接待的焦慮症患者中，受焦慮過度困擾的人要多於焦慮刺激不足的人，不過缺乏行動動機有可能是抑鬱症的表現。曼哈頓的心理醫師約瑟夫森稱，患有注意力缺陷多動障礙的過份樂觀患者通常缺乏足夠的緊迫感來完成一件事。他說，其中一個治療方式是被他稱爲“動機式晤談法“的治療方法，即強調如果任務不完成未來可能發生的各種負面後果，並向患者解釋，一旦任務完成，他們將感到平靜和欣慰。

Another group of people can't get anything done without some level of anxiety. "There are people who subconsciously set life up to give them a thrill, by always being almost late, nearly missing a deadline, spending more than they should," says Marianne Legato, a professor of clinical medicine at Columbia University in New York. "I call them fretters."

另外一類患者在沒有一定水平的焦慮感刺激下，會一事無成。紐約哥倫比亞大學(Columbia University)臨牀醫學教授瑪麗安•雷加圖(Marianne Legato)說，“有一類人總是下意識地讓自己的生活陷入一種驚險狀態，他們經常會差一點就遲到、或是趕不上最後期限，他們總是要花費比正常狀態更多的時間。我將這類人稱爲煩躁者。”