Welcome to Your Brain: Why You Lose Your Car Keys but Never Forget How to Drive and Other Puzzles of Everyday Life by Wang Sam & Sandra Aamodt

Author:Wang, Sam & Sandra Aamodt [Wang, Sam]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Neurophysiology-Popular works., Brain-Popular works
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Published: 2010-06-24T16:00:00+00:00

—E. B. White

Chapter 17

Did I Pack Everything? Anxiety

We’re not trying to make you nervous, but the truth is that being too relaxed can kill you. In a world filled with hazards, worrying can offer big advantages for survival. Of course it is possible to worry too much—for instance, if you’re a badger who’s too fearful to leave his den to find food or a mate. It’s also possible to worry about the wrong things, as when a person develops a phobia that turns entering a dinner party into a heart-poundingly scary experience. On the whole, though, anxiety serves many useful purposes, and not just in leading us to exercise caution in the face of danger. Anxiety also motivates positive behaviors, from finishing an assignment before the deadline to storing enough food to get through the winter. Ironically, emotions that make us feel bad often cause us to behave in ways that are good for us, which is why they have become so common.

Although everyone experiences anxiety sometimes, people (and other animals) show individual differences in how easily their anxiety is triggered, how intense it is, and how long it lasts. Some of these individual differences are due to our genes. Having a relative with panic disorder (discussed below), for example, increases your risk of developing the disorder by a factor of about five.

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