Why Has The Body Not Evolved Socially?
You experience anxiety because you’re human. It shows up to try to protect you—when a deadline is approaching, rent is due, or there’s an upcoming test you’re preparing for. In these moments, anxiety isn’t a flaw or a failure; it’s your nervous system doing its job by helping you stay alert and respond to what matters. When you get stuck feeling anxious, it can feel overwhelming, exhausting, and make it difficult to take action.
We need a healthy amount of anxiety to help motivate us for action. When we have too little or too much that is when we start running into issues. The Yerks-Dodsen law speaks to this phenomenon: A healthy amount of anxiety is what we can call “optimal” anxiety.
When we hit this sweet spot we are able to focus and it helps us perform at our best. When we have too much anxiety it starts to impair our cognitive function due to activating the fight or flight response. We may feel panicked or frazzled resulting in an inability to start a task. Not having enough anxiety results in a lack of motivation and feeling disconnected from life.
The goal is not to get rid of anxiety but to change our relationship with it. It’s to learn how to embrace discomfort vs run away from it. When we stop resisting the experience of anxiety we will start to notice an increase in confidence, healthier mindset in daily life, and reducing avoidance.
Our nervous system has not evolved with where we are today socially. Let me paint you a picture.
When we were hunters and gathers, in order to survive our brain had to be on high alert for danger. For example, if a gatherer was picking berries and all of a sudden they saw someone eat a berry then have an adverse allergic reaction due to the berry being poisonous. That is important information for survival. The gatherer would remember that that specific berry and bush is something to stay away from. They wouldn't remember how nice of a day it was or how it felt when they were laughing with their peers. That information would not be important for survival. Learning where a poisonous berry bush is, that is important to the survival of a species.
Now let's fast forward to the year 2026. We don't need to go picking our own berries or hunting our own food on a daily basis. Instead you will go to the grocery store to pick out your produce and food items for the week.
Let's say you got yelled at from a staff member for going down an aisle that was supposed to be closed. Your brain is going to view that encounter as threatening and you may feel flustered and panicked. Now instead of this being a poisonous berry, it's a confrontation. Your brain will encode that experience as dangerous and the next time you go to the grocery store you might feel inclined to avoid that specific store or you may even feel dread as you head to the store. In these moments we have to help the body recognize that this is not danger, it's uncomfortable but discomfort is not danger.
In this encounter you may feel threatened or flustered and your brain will encode this information. It is the same feeling that the gatherer felt when they saw an adverse reaction from their peer to a poisonous berry. Consciously, you may know that the situations are not the same. Of course, one piece of information is vital to the survival of humanity and the other is an uncomfortable confrontation. Unconsciously, your brain does not know the difference. The uncomfortability of both situations stay with you and stayed with the gatherer. In the future, the grocery store can elicit the same feelings as the poisonous berry bush.
We have to learn to speak our bodies language and help our body and brain recognize this is not dangerous. We have to help give it new messages that strengthen neural pathways.
The body naturally goes through a stress response cycle. If this cycle gets interrupted then emotions, trauma, stress, will all get stuck in the body. One of the easiest ways humans disrupt this cycle and take the body out of feeling, is by thinking. Our biggest advantage, evolutionarily speaking, is our greatest disadvantage when processing stress.
When we encounter a threat the body will automatically go through these steps:
We become alert
Possibly respond in the fight, flight, freeze response or some level of performance
Shake it off and move through it
Then return to safety
If an individual disrupts the fight, flight, freeze response and instead thinks “I shouldn't feel this way” or “I need to pretend this does not bother me, it's so embarrassing I'm getting tearful." This takes us out of being able to feel, move through the experience, and return to a sense of safety.
By working with a trained therapist and starting anxiety therapy you will get the chance to recognize when you are stuck and what you need to do differently. Anxiety does not have to consume each second of every day. ERP therapy for anxiety may feel counter intuitive at first, but you can learn how to trust yourself again. It is possible!
