Future Tense

A psychologist confronts our pervasive misunderstanding of anxiety and presents a powerful new framework for reimagining and reclaiming the confounding emotion as the advantage it evolved to be.

We are taught that anxiety is dangerous and damaging, and that the solution to its pain is to eradicate it like we do any disease. Yet cutting-edge therapies, hundreds of self-help books, and a panoply of medications have failed to keep debilitating anxiety at bay.

That’s because the anxiety-as-disease story is false – and it’s harming us.

In this radical reinterpretation, Dr Tracy Dennis-Tiwary distils the latest research in psychology and neuroscience, combined with real-world stories and personal narrative, to argue that the discomfort of anxiety is a tool, rather than something to be stamped out at all costs. Detailing the terrible cost of our misunderstanding of anxiety, while celebrating the lives of people who harness it to their advantage, FUTURE TENSE reveals how we can live and grow with anxiety.

Author Biography

Tracy Dennis-Tiwary is a Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at The City University of New York, and the Director of the Stress, Anxiety, and Resilience Research Center and the Co-Executive Director of the Center for Health Technology at Hunter College. She has been featured and interviewed in dozens of major media outlets to discuss her work, including the New York Times, ABC Special Report “Screentime” with Diane Sawyer, Wall Street Journal, CBS, CNN, NPR, The Today Show, The Daily Mail, and Bloomberg Television.