Anxiety and Excitement — The Same Soup

Anxiety and excitement share the same physiological and psychological ingredients: fear and faith. What distinguishes them is not the presence or absence of either, but the ratio between them.

“Anxiety and excitement are the same soup with the same ingredients, but with different quantities. Anxiety is a bit of faith with a lot of fear. Excitement is a lot of faith and a bit of fear.” — Philippe Jacquet

What this means clinically

Many people arrive in therapy wanting to eliminate anxiety. But anxiety cannot be eliminated without also eliminating the conditions for excitement. Fear and faith are not enemies — they are the two ingredients of a life genuinely engaged with what is uncertain.

What changes in good therapeutic work is not that fear disappears. It is that faith grows. The soup doesn’t change. The quantities do.

Anxcitement — the threshold state

Between anxiety and excitement there is a state where fear and faith are roughly matched. It is uncomfortable, but it is alive. It is the signal that something real is at stake.

Book a consultation with Philippe Jacquet — psychotherapist and Jungian analyst, London.