The essence of anxiety is being constantly in a state of fear. What is the essence of anxiety

The essence of anxiety is an excessive alertness and sustained state of fear towards potential threats, manifested as a sense of loss of control and overthinking of uncertainty. The core mechanism of anxiety involves physiological and psychological processes such as overactivation of the amygdala, negative thinking cycles, autonomic nervous system disorders, cognitive bias amplification threats, and failure of psychological defense mechanisms.

1. Overactivation of the amygdala

As a fear center, the amygdala of the brain continuously releases stress signals during anxiety, even in the absence of real danger. This biological instinct was originally used to deal with survival threats, but anxious individuals often experience physiological reactions similar to life and death crises to ordinary stress, leading to repeated physical symptoms such as accelerated heartbeat and sweating.

2. Negative Thinking Cycle

Anxious individuals often fall into catastrophic imagination and rumination, repeatedly chewing on small probability events as inevitable outcomes. This thinking pattern will enhance the brain's sensitivity to threat recognition, forming a vicious cycle of being more afraid, more concerned, and more afraid, ultimately transforming short-term emotions into sustained psychological states.

III. Autonomic nervous system disorders

Continuous activation of the sympathetic nervous system can disrupt the body's autonomic balance, leading to somatic symptoms such as muscle tension and digestive abnormalities. These discomforts are in turn interpreted as new threats, forming a dual negative feedback of physiology and psychology, leading to the self perpetuation of anxiety states.

Fourth, cognitive bias amplification

Anxiety sufferers exhibit cognitive biases such as selective attention and overgeneralization, actively screening information that meets fear expectations and generalizing individual negative events into universal patterns. This distorted information processing mode will continuously inflate environmental hazard assessments.

Fifth, Defense Mechanism Failure

When normal psychological defense mechanisms such as rationalization and sublimation weaken, individuals lose their effective buffering ability against fear. Unprocessed emotional memories continue to accumulate, leading to strong anxiety reactions triggered by small stimuli, resulting in a sustained decline in emotional regulation ability. Improving anxiety requires rebuilding tolerance to uncertainty, which can be achieved through mindfulness training to reduce amygdala sensitivity, cognitive-behavioral therapy to correct thinking biases, and regular exercise to regulate autonomic balance. At the same time, we should be wary of the false sense of control formed by excessive use of safety behaviors, and gradually cultivate the ability to coexist with fear. Establishing a stable social support network and regular sleep patterns can provide necessary repair windows for the nervous system, fundamentally changing the brain's assessment mode of threats.