Hardly anyone would argue with the first word of the title: anxiety, by definition, concerns the future. It’s unlikely that someone worries about having gotten a bad grade in fifth grade; but whether there will be a promotion at the end of the year or not is a recurring anxiety. The second word, however, is less obvious: why does correctness matter?
I proceed from the idea that anxiety is an attempt, in the present, to report to oneself from the future for actions taken in the past. We are not afraid of events as such — we are afraid of our reaction to those events. Andrey is not afraid of being fired: he is afraid that he will reproach himself. Olga is not afraid that her boyfriend will cheat on her: she is afraid that she will be ashamed to tell her friends about it. Finally, Kuzma is not afraid that his residence permit won’t be extended — he is afraid that he will be anxious from having to solve a million problems at the same time.
There is a catch: all these emotions stem from a sense of control. Andrey is afraid of his emotions because among them there will be the thought: “I should have argued less with my boss.” That is, in the future some event will occur that rests on Andrey’s actions in the past — actions that were under his control! Olga is afraid that her friends will say: well, the signs were there! Her shame is a reaction to her own mistake: what a fool, she didn’t notice that her suitor smelled of different perfumes every day. And Kuzma is already scolding himself in advance: what a devil he is, didn’t pack his things into boxes ahead of time, hoped for the best — who do they even publish rejection statistics in Telegram channels for?
The bad news is this: you do not know the future. Andrey is just as afraid — I should have argued back then; maybe they would have noticed my initiative and praised me. And Olga is afraid too: why dump a good guy? He works at Golden Apple, after all! And Kuzma is already pretty fed up with living among boxes, hauling them back and forth.
The good news is the same: you cannot and will not learn to see the future or its dependence on your actions — so choose what seems right to you in the moment. Sometimes you will mess up, of course, but negative emotions are inevitable — so over millions of years of evolution we have learned how to live through them.