Clearing Fear & Anxiety Fear is inside of us all, it is a survival mechanism. When your senses identify something that might pose a threat or if it sees a stressful situation, your brain activates a set of reactions that get you ready to either go into battle, freeze and stay still, or enable you to escape as quickly as you possibly can. This reaction is in all mammals and known as the "fight, flight or freeze" response.
state of high alert. The emotional memories stored in the central part of the amygdala may play a role in anxiety disorders involving very distinct fears, such as fear of heights or spiders. The hippocampus is the part of the brain that encodes threatening events into memories. Anxiety puts us in a heightened sense of awareness so we're prepared for potential threats. As with fear, it is there to give our body a message that something is not right but it is designed to be a quick response and then switch off again.
This fight, flight or freeze response helped our ancestors when their life was being threatened by a tiger, or they had to run to chase food but these responses aren't useful to us anymore with the conveniences of our standard of living, we no longer have to run away from wild animals or go hunting for our food. What happens when you start to feel excessive anxiety, or you live in a constant state of anxiety is your body What Happens To Your Body When You Are never turns off your fight, flight or freeze response, Experiencing Fear? and you live with the physical and emotional effects of anxiety on a day-to-day basis, even when there's no Fear is regulated by a part of the brain called the cause for it. amygdala. When this response is triggered it temporarily overrides all conscious thought, so that What Happens To Your Body When You Are your body can redirect all of its energy to facing the Experiencing Relaxation? immediate threat. For a long time relaxation techniques like meditation This physical response happens because it releases and yoga have been known to help with anxiety hormones and neuro-chemicals causing an increase in disorders. We now know that anxiety disorders show breathing and heart rate, it moves blood away from the an imbalance in the chemistry of your brain. Relaxation intestines and sends more blood to the muscles to help techniques can also influence your brain’s chemistry. you to run away or fight. All of your brain's attention goes into fight, flight or freeze mode. As mentioned above, the sympathetic nervous system responds to stress and fear by releasing stress What Happens To Your Body When You Are chemicals into the bloodstream, including adrenaline, Experiencing Anxiety? noradrenaline and cortisol. This gives your body a fast response to fear, but shutting down the stress system Anxiety is a sense of fear that puts your body into a takes more time. 6
