More specifically, anxious individuals have a more difficult time distinguishing between neutral, “safe” stimuli and emotionally-charged or threatening stimuli. How Does Anxiety Affect Our Perception and Discrimination Between Different Stimuli ? There are fundamental differences in how anxious individuals perceive the world compared to non-anxious individuals, and it has to do with overgeneralization.Īccording to a recent study, people with anxiety fundamentally have a different perception of the world. Ultimately, it means that compared to non-anxious individuals, individuals who suffer from anxiety actually experience the environment differently and have altered attention to particular stimuli and events around them. As it turns out, anxiety can actually cause our brains to undergo certain changes in the neural circuits that respond to fear and stress. However, for people with anxiety, these types of reactions can actually be exaggerated and even occur in response to non-threatening stimuli or events.Īs research continues to be conducted to look deeper into how anxiety affects our perception of the world, scientists have begun to notice differences in how anxious individuals determine whether or not something is threatening or emotionally arousing. See other glossary terms and definitions.Over the course of evolution, humans have retained certain attentional reactions as well as fear responses to potentially threatening stimuli in the surrounding environment. As a result, they gain a more accurate sensory perception and increased understanding about their use over time.Ī person’s sensory appreciation or perception informs their felt sense of bodily knowing (a wholistic bodily knowing made up of emotion, awareness, intuition, sensory appreciation, and embodiment). In Alexander lessons, with a teacher’s help, a person is slowly re-educated. This is because it just feels normal and right to us, while the new improved use of our bodies feels wrong.) When on our own, even with books, we tend to continually lapse back into our habitual misuse. (Note because our usual sensations and feelings feel right, learning the Alexander technique without a teacher is extremely difficult. When someone who slumps first comes to an Alexander lesson and they are helped to improve their use, they may experience their new way of standing and sitting as feeling wrong. Their slumped position feels right, even though they can see they have ‘bad posture’ when they look in a mirror. He also said, “correct apprehension and reliable sensory appreciation go hand in hand”.Ī simple example of inaccurate sensory perception can be seen in the person who habitually slumps badly. This is equally true of things we believe we think, which more often than not are things we feel.”įurther stressing the importance of accurate sensory perception, Alexander stated, “sensory appreciation conditions conception – you can’t know a thing by an instrument that is wrong”. When our sensory appreciation is deceptive, as is the case more or less with everyone today, the impressions we get through it are deceptive also.… When a certain degree of misuse has been reached, the deceptiveness of these impressions reaches a point where they can mislead us into believing that WE ARE DOING SOMETHING WITH SOME PART OF OURSELVES WHEN ACTUALLY WE CAN BE PROVED TO BE DOING SOMETHING QUITE DIFFERENT. “The conception likewise of what is happening within ourselves is dependent upon impressions which come to us through the sense of feeling (sensory appreciation) upon which we must rely for guidance in carrying out our daily activities. It leads to an unreliable sense of feeling where what feels right is actually wrong.Īs FM Alexander saw it, “incorrect sensory experiences” resulted in “misdirected activities”.
This is actually a very common occurrence. ‘Faulty sensory perception’ or ‘faulty sensory appreciation’ comes about when we do not receive accurate sensory feedback about our physical condition, or when we interpret that information inaccurately. This information from the senses tells us about our physical condition and the way we are using our bodies (our use) in relation to our environment. ‘ Sensory perception’ or ‘sensory appreciation’ refers to the information we get from our senses, and particularly from our kinaesthetic sense.
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