“Human beings are hardwired to feel fear if we are threatened, if we were walking in the jungle, and a tiger jumped out at us, we should feel fear. Fear is a good emotion it can keep us alive, if we didn’t feel fear when we see a tiger we could be eaten alive. Our body puts us into emergency response mode to keep us alive.”
When we become fearful our heart starts to race, our muscles become stronger and our body is put into fight, flight, faint or freeze mode.
Anxiety is when our body goes into emergency response mode but there is no emergency. For example, if someone had anxiety walking down a quiet street, they would feel the same panic and terror they would if they saw a tiger, but they are not in danger. Their brain has misread a safe situation as a very dangerous situation, that is anxiety.
Our brains are designed to be fast when it comes to detecting threats, but they are not always accurate. For example, if there is a rustling in a bush and it could be a tiger or it could be a bird, your brain thinks it is better to set off the emergency response and be wrong than to take the time to be accurate and risk being eaten. It is this lack of accuracy that causes anxiety.