Anxiety is a natural response to stress or potential danger, rooted in the human body’s evolutionary fight-or-flight response. It is characterized by feelings of worry, unease, or nervousness, and can occur in various situations where a person perceives a potential threat. Anxiety disorders, however, involve excessive and persistent anxiety that is disproportionate to the actual threat.
The fight-or-flight response is an adaptive physiological reaction that prepares the body to either confront or flee from a perceived threat. This response is essential for survival, as it allows individuals to quickly assess and react to potentially dangerous situations. During the fight-or-flight response, the body undergoes various physical changes, such as increased heart rate and contraction strength (“pounding heart”), decreased carbon dioxide and increased oxygen in the bloodstream, elevated blood pressure, rapid breathing, and dilated pupils. Blood is shunted from internal organs such as the digestive system, and from the skin, to the musculature giving rise to nausea and to cold and clammy palms and tingling of the hands, feet and sometimes mouth. The nausea may cause vomiting which diverts demand and therefore blood away from the digestive system and to the musculatre. In extreme situations, the bowels may evacuate as well. These changes all help to mobilize the maximum amount of energy, speed, strength and increased alertness, enabling a person to better handle the situation. Stories such as of a young mother lifting a car off her child are genuine and are extreme examples of the fight flight response, in this case “fight.”
Anxiety disorders arise when the fight-or-flight response is triggered inappropriately or excessively, causing the individual to experience anxiety even when there is no imminent threat. This heightened response may have been advantageous in early human history when physical threats were more prevalent. However, in today’s complex social environments, we often face “symbolic” threats, such as threats to self-esteem, status, or the opinions of others. In these situations, a heightened fight-or-flight response can be maladaptive, leading to excessive anxiety and impaired functioning.When the body goes into fight-flight mode it consumes energy at a ferocious pace leaving the individual feeling exhausted afterwards. It is a state that can be sustained only for a very short time without beginning to cause damage. A very strange example of the fight-flight response is the reality of a Voodoo curse: If a person genuinely believes he has been cursed, he enters this fight-flight state but in a situation where neither reaction is possible. If he maintains this state of extreme terror for a few days he actually may die from the stress.
Interestingly, individuals with anxiety disorders often excel in actual crisis situations where action is possible. Their heightened fight-or-flight response allows them to remain vigilant and act quickly under pressure. We have all heard of those cases where a mom exerts superhuman strength to save her child.
However, when the perceived threat is not life-threatening or even nonexistent, the constant activation of the fight-or-flight response can be detrimental to mental and physical health. This is akin to a high-performance race car running at 9,000 rpm while up on blocks in the garage, expending a significant amount of energy without actually going anywhere.
In conclusion, anxiety disorders result from an overactive fight-or-flight response that is no longer adaptive in modern environments, where threats are often symbolic rather than physical. This heightened response can be both a blessing and a curse, providing an advantage in crisis situations but causing distress and dysfunction in everyday life.