Understanding Anxiety: An Evolutionary Perspective

Understanding Anxiety: The Evolutionary Perspective

When discussing anxiety with my clients, I often remind them: Anxiety is a fear response. To truly understand why we experience it, I like to turn to evolutionary biology. Our fear response, which triggers anxiety, is essential to our survival. In ancient times, fear kept us safe by preparing us for real-world threats—like food shortages, dangerous animals, or neighboring tribes. This fear response was our natural instinct to fight or flee to ensure survival.

The Shift to Internal Threats

Fast forward to today, and the world has changed dramatically, but our fear response hasn’t evolved as quickly. While we’re no longer facing saber-toothed tigers or hostile tribes, we’re still being triggered by threats. However, in the modern world, these threats are often internal—things like work stress, social anxiety, financial worries, and personal insecurities. These are not threats we can physically run from or fight in the traditional sense. In fact, this disconnect can leave us feeling helpless.

The Fight-or-Flight Response No Longer Serves Us

Our brains are hardwired to respond to these internal threats as if they were life-or-death situations. The natural response is to either fight or flee—but these options are ineffective when the threat is emotional or mental. You can’t fight your racing thoughts or run away from your anxious feelings.

When we try to fight or flee from anxiety, we inadvertently intensify it. Anxiety typically gets louder when we resist it, and we find ourselves caught in a cycle of trying to outrun or overpower something that’s not physically present. This often leads to a sense of frustration and helplessness, and ultimately, the anxiety becomes more pervasive.

The Losing Battle: Fighting Anxiety

 
We often end up anxious about being anxious. This is a common experience for many people—feeling anxious because of the anxiety itself. In our attempts to suppress the discomfort, we inadvertently engage in a losing battle with our own emotions. We think, “If I could just stop feeling this way, everything would be okay.” But the harder we try to stop the anxiety, the stronger it becomes, much like trying to fight against a tide that only pulls you deeper into the water.

This cycle can lead to an even greater activation of the sympathetic nervous system, which is responsible for the fight-or-flight response. When we engage in this unproductive battle, our bodies stay in a heightened state of alertness, preparing us for a threat that doesn’t truly exist. Our pulse quickens, our muscles tense, and our minds race.

Anxiety's Impact: More Than Just the "Fight or Flight" Response

In extreme cases, this heightened anxiety can lead to a panic attack—a sudden, overwhelming surge of fear and physical symptoms that may feel like we are losing control. However, even when we don’t experience panic attacks, the ongoing battle with anxiety can lead to more subtle but equally damaging consequences:

Avoiding meaningful activities:
As anxiety increases, we may start avoiding situations that trigger it. This can lead to missing out on opportunities, whether at work, in social situations, or even in our personal growth.

Falling short on goals:
Anxiety can rob us of motivation. The fear of failure or fear of what might go wrong can cause us to procrastinate or avoid taking action on important goals. This can contribute to a cycle of self-doubt and feelings of inadequacy.

Distraction and disengagement:
The more we struggle against anxiety, the more we may find ourselves distracted by it. We might become so preoccupied with managing or avoiding anxiety that we forget about what truly matters—engaging in life and pursuing our goals.

The Takeaway

Understanding anxiety through this evolutionary lens helps us see that nothing is “wrong” with us—our brains are simply doing what they were designed to do. The problem is that today’s worries don’t match yesterday’s threats, so the old fight-or-flight system often misfires. When we stop battling anxiety and start acknowledging it for what it is—a protective instinct that’s gotten confused—we can begin to loosen its grip. From that place, we can refocus our energy on what truly matters: showing up for our lives, pursuing our goals, and taking meaningful steps toward the future we want.

In the next chapter, we’ll dive deeper into how Acceptance—a key skill from Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)—can help us build a healthier relationship with anxiety and regain control.