Many folks not only have to figure out how to live creatively with moods, but also have to wrestle with anxiety.
I have found that it is sometimes useful to compare two states of mind which are very, very similar in terms of how the body is reacting, but are very different from an emotional standpoint.
Imagine that you are about to face the thing that you are most afraid of… focus on the physical sensations that you might have: racing heart, dry mouth, quick breathing, perhaps even a bit of tremor…
Now imagine that you are doing something incredibly exciting and perhaps even dangerous, but also fun. One example that comes to my mind because we live near the San Francisco Bay, is windsurfing.
You are standing on the board, speeding along but always just a second away from flipping over… focus on the physical sensations 
that you might have…. they are pretty much the same as in the first example.
However I bet that the meaning of those two states is very different.
The point is that anxiety is composed of two aspects: a physical reaction which involves the activation of the sympathetic nervous system, and which is almost impossible to distinguish from thrill seeking and fun excitement; and a mental component which interprets that physical reaction as a potential catastrophe, rather than as something fun and exciting.
Over the years we have come to wonder whether the typical therapy response to anxiety – relaxation training – makes as much sense as it might seem.
The idea is to take a state of high sympathetic nervous system activation and turn it into a calm state. Might it not be easier to change the way we label or attribute meaning to the state? To think of it as excitement rather than anxiety.
A long time ago one of us was starting a career that involved suddenly doing lots of speaking. Unfortunately, he had a pretty bad case of stage fright. At first he tried desperately to use relaxation techniques, with not success. But then he read a book that said, imagine that rather than mounting the podium to give a talk, you are climbing up the first hill of an exciting roller coaster… capture and use the energy (rather than trying to suppress it). That approach seemed to work.
An idea that is very much in harmony with MoodSurfing….
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