you know what anxiety feels like we all do everyone experiences anxiety in some way or another it's something that connects all of us together why we feel anxiety and what it really is that may surprise you without anxiety we'd all be in serious trouble as soon as your brain senses you're in danger a little piece of it called the amygdala kicks in it gets your body ready to react that could mean fight run away or shut down it's called the fight flight or freeze response this reaction goes back millions of years to our distant animal
ancestors animals whose amygdala were more sensitive to danger were more likely to stay alive and off-the-menu over millions of generations this developed into the system we all know as anxiety so you see anxiety itself is not all bad but when there is no immediate life or death threat and your amygdala keeps telling your body that you're in danger that's when anxiety becomes a problem your amygdala doesn't know the difference between getting a and public speaking or failing a test human society has only existed for a relatively short time it's messy and complicated and you using
an auger Migdal a just haven't had time to catch up so sometimes when we're in uncomfortable situations our brains misread the risk and overreact our hearts beat faster and we breathe heavily pulling more oxygen into our bodies the muscles in our arms and legs tense up and fill with blood our skin perspires to pull us down this would all be great if we needed to fight or run but instead we just feel tense and sweaty sometimes our minds go blank and we feel like we can't move or talk that would be great if we needed
to hide instead we just feel stuck when things trigger our anxiety sometimes we try to avoid them like our ancestors avoiding a predator but that can cause problems when those triggers are important parts of life like going to school or meeting new people things that won't just give up and go away so how does knowing all this help well it starts with remembering what's really going on there's nothing physically wrong with you it's just your amygdala trying to tell you it thinks you're in danger even if it gets confused about how much danger you're really
in understanding why we feel anxiety is an important step in learning to manage it you
