What are the reasons for fear and anxiety?

Answer 1

There are psychological discussions of this subject, and philosophical and metaphysical discussions.

The psychological view is that *normal* fear and anxiety serves to promote survival and comfort, the "fight or flight response" that others have mentioned here. The Mental Health Channel (1) explains it this way:
" Everyone experiences anxiety as a normal reaction to threatening, dangerous, uncertain, or important situations. Psychiatric medicine classifies anxiety as normal or pathological. Normal anxiety can enhance some people's function, motivation, and productivity, such as the person who works well under pressure. People with generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) experience pathological anxiety, which is excessive, chronic, and typically interferes with their ability to function in normal daily activities. Generalized or "free-floating" anxiety is distinguished from phobia because it is not triggered by a specific object or situation."

Moving into more philosophical or metaphysical areas - which I do because these ideas are presented but not proven even though they sound right - there are several more views.

One precursor of fear and anxiety today is information overload. We have many channels that feed us a lot of events that we cannot do anything about, so our level of concern is constantly stimulated. This is like ringing a fire bell which should tell us to put out the fire or run away, but the news brings us hundreds of situations daily where we can't fight or run. Our alarms are going off, but we can't do anything.

Another thought is -- the more you have, the more you have to lose. This keeps the alarm bells ringing within us. Kris Kristofferson wrote it into his song "Me and Bobby McGee" where he says (2) "Freedoms just another word for nothin left to lose,
And nothin aint worth nothin but its free,..."

So nature's reasons for fear and anxiety are to protect us. Our worldwide culture's reaction no longer protects us from fear and anxiety even though we use "protection" as a justification to call for more protection. It has gotten to a stage such that the more "protection" we have, the more fear and anxiety we feel about any hazard, real or potential. As humans in general, we're at the paradox, the Catch-22, that whatever we're likely to choose to do, that action will eventually (culturally) raise our level of fear and anxiety.

Answer 2

Throughout history, their purpose has been to provoke the fight of flight response. The body undergoes numerous physiological changes that increase survivability in dangerous situations, and fear is the emotion that causes these changes to occur. Unfortunately, we now still feel fear at times even when we're not in any real danger. It's mostly a useless and inconvenient (at least) emotion these days.

Answer 3

the stress, the fear is synonymous of insecurity. You must have control of your emotions. For the anxiety you must learn to relaxation and of breathing there are diverse methods, the suitable one

Answer 4

I don't know if you are male or female, but female's anxiety is very often caused by messed up hormones especially at the menopause seton.

Answer 5

To protect one's corporeal self; in other words, a defense and action plan that your body utilizies to make sure you don't get yourself killed in hostile or unknown situations.

Answer 6

WELL....im also struggling with that i hate it,i mean how do you even know if your really suffering from that? is it like a mental thing or a life kinda thing you know? well id love to share more with you about this subject you know share problems lol so if you have msn or yahoo please contact [e-mail] < thats my [e-mail]< thats my yahoo messenger well hope to hear from you!!!

Answer 7

when one cannot do one's work with confidence , the fear of the unknown, fear of failure