The Anatomy of Fear – Why Anxiety Feels Inescapable 😵💫
Why Does Fear Feel So Real?
If you read my last post, you know that fear shapes our perception, keeping us stuck in patterns that feel impossible to break. But why does fear feel so physically overwhelming?
Why does it take over our bodies, make our hearts race, our stomachs clench, and our minds spiral?
The answer lies in your brain’s survival system—a security system that hasn’t had a software update in thousands of years.
Fear vs. Anxiety: What’s the Difference?
Fear and anxiety are often used interchangeably, but they’re not the same thing.
Fear is an immediate reaction to a real, present threat. Your body floods with adrenaline, preparing you to fight, flee, or freeze.
Anxiety is different—it’s a prolonged state of anticipating danger, even if the threat is uncertain or imagined.
Fear subsides once the danger passes. Anxiety lingers, bubbling beneath the surface, ready to boil over into overthinking, panic, or avoidance.
Analogy:
Think of fear as a fire alarm going off when there’s actual fire. Anxiety is a malfunctioning smoke detector that won’t stop beeping—even when there’s no fire.
And that’s where the brain’s security guard comes in.
The Amygdala – Your Brain’s Overeager Security Guard
Job: Detect threat → Trigger response → Keep you alive.
Your amygdala is the alarm system of your brain. It’s ancient, fast, and reacts before you even have time to think.
Problem? The amygdala doesn’t check if the threat is real.
Example:
• You see a shadow in your room at night → Your heart pounds, body tenses, breath quickens.
• Then you realise—oh, it’s just my coat on the chair.
• But your body already reacted before your rational brain had time to catch up.
That’s how the amygdala works—it prioritises speed over accuracy. And while this kept our ancestors alive, it doesn’t work so well in modern life.
Instead of protecting us from predators or enemy attacks, the amygdala now overreacts to emails, social situations, and financial stress, triggering the same survival response as if we were being chased by a lion.
The Hippocampus – The Brain’s Faulty Historian
Job: Store and process memories → Act as a reference library → Check past experiences to see if a threat is real.
If the amygdala is the alarm system, then the hippocampus is the fact-checker—it’s supposed to look at past experiences and say:
❌ “Calm down, this isn’t actually dangerous.”
✅ “Yes, this is a real threat—act fast.”
Problem? The hippocampus sometimes misfiles fear memories.
Example:
• You nearly drowned as a child → Your hippocampus stores that fear.
• Now, as an adult and strong swimmer, you still panic near deep water.
• Why? Because your brain didn’t store that fear as ‘past tense’—it marked it as ‘current danger.’
And when fear gets triggered, your body floods with stress hormones, trapping you in the cycle.
The Fear Loop: How Anxiety Becomes a Prison
When your brain perceives a threat (real or imagined), it floods your body with stress hormones:
🔥 Adrenaline → Immediate panic response (racing heart, muscle tension, hyper-awareness).
🔥 Cortisol → Keeps you on edge for longer, preparing you to “survive.”
The problem?
Your brain doesn’t know the difference between real and imagined fear.*
Ever laid in bed at night, spiralling about the worst-case scenario, feeling your heart pound as if it’s already happening?
That’s cortisol in action—trapping your body in a fear loop.
And the longer this cycle repeats, the more the brain reinforces it.
Why Anxiety Feels Inescapable (And Why It’s Not Your Fault)
If you’ve ever felt stuck in anxiety, you might have blamed yourself for overreacting.
But the truth is, it’s not your fault.
This system was designed for a different time, a different world. It evolved to keep humans alive in a world full of immediate, physical dangers.
Now, we’re surrounded by 24/7 stress triggers:
• 📢 News & social media constantly bombarding us with fear.
• 📧 Emails & notifications keeping us in a state of hyper-awareness.
• 💰 Financial stress & societal pressure convincing us we’re never secure.
So, if you’ve ever wondered “Why do I feel anxious all the time?”—this is why.
It’s not you.
It’s your biology.
But just because it’s automatic doesn’t mean you have to stay stuck in it.
Healing Is a Spiral, Not a Straight Line
If you’ve ever thought you had healed from something, only for it to resurface years later, let me tell you:
You are not broken.
Healing isn’t linear. It’s a spiral, like the shell of a nautilus. You don’t move in a straight line; you revisit old wounds in new ways as you grow.
🌀 Think of it like this:
• A book you read as a teenager feels different when you read it again as an adult.
• A song you heard years ago hits differently now because you’ve changed.
That’s what healing is.
This is why grief, trauma, and anxiety don’t just disappear.
Your nervous system remembers.
But the choice you have is this:
Will you let it control you?
Or will you reclaim your power?
Because once you understand how fear works, you can start rewriting the script.
References:
*Kosslyn, S., Ganis, G. & Thompson, W. Neural foundations of imagery. Nat Rev Neurosci 2, 635–642 (2001). https://doi.org/10.1038/35090055
What’s Next? (How to Break the Cycle)
One of the fastest, most powerful ways to challenge fear’s grip? Journaling.
And before you dismiss it—I get it. I used to resist it too.
But when I started writing down my spirals, something changed. Fear was no longer this vague, shadowy presence. It was just words on a page—and words can be questioned, rewritten, reframed.
In my next post, I’ll break down:
Why journaling shifts fear from subconscious to conscious.
How it reconnects you with your true self.
The simple exercise that completely rewired my thinking.
