Why Do People Experience Anxiety and Fear?
A snake glides along the ground, hissing. A little girl held in her mother's arms cries in fright. Her mother tells her: snakes are poisonous; if a snake bites someone, that person dies; from now on, when you see a snake, run far away. A sturdy, bright-eyed boy happens to pass by too. Without a word, he chases the snake, grabs its tail, and whirls it round and round in the air until the snake is dizzy. Calmly he puts it into a bag, takes it to the vendor who buys snakes, sells it, and happily uses the money to buy what he wants.
The mother of the snake-fearing little girl gives her daughter pocket money every day; the girl never has to worry about allowance and would never think of catching snakes to earn it. Her parents live a refined, perfectionist life, dressing the little girl beautifully; any slight flaw feels like a regret to them.
The snake-catching boy is wild. He catches not only snakes but also soft-shelled turtles and turtles; as soon as he jumps into a pond, the creatures in it are doomed, for there is nothing he dares not grab. He is often covered in mud and dirt.
When she grows up, the little girl fears not only snakes but anything that looks like one, screaming in terror. Her mother has always told her that these things are dangerous, so she has developed a subconscious fear of them. Because she was overprotected by perfectionist parents in childhood, as an adult she fears not only snakes but many things. From childhood she has felt the world is unsafe and that she herself is never good enough; whenever a peer outperforms her in some achievement, she feels dejected.
Over time, the little girl feels powerless and afraid of everything. Often a sudden fearful thought triggers her self-protection mode. For this reason she frequently withdraws from friends and relatives around her, wanting to hide alone in a corner, cut off from everyone; she feels this is the only way to relax. But when she actually lives alone, inexplicable panic attacks strike. When she sees cockroaches, mice, or spiders, she screams; when thunder rumbles outside, her heart pounds. She becomes restless and wants someone to protect her again, but when she approaches people, the old troubles of relating to others begin to plague her once more.
The people around her are exhausted by her, and she realizes this is her own problem. She feels guilty and does not want to pressure others. Even when others never feel pressured by her behavior, she forms thoughts in her own mind: By doing this I am adding to his burden; I am making him stressed; eventually he will tire of me and leave me; I must not torment him. Her sensibilities grow ever finer and more considerate of others; when she approaches people, they are moved by her warmth, yet distressed by her shifting moods, wondering why she is so unpredictable.
When she grows up, one day the snake-catching boy and the snake-fearing girl meet. The boy is moved by the girl's gentleness and delicacy; the girl is drawn to the boy's bravery. The two come together and feel as if they have found their soulmate. But soon the girl's unpredictability returns. The warm, forward-marching boy is repeatedly met with coldness; he is deeply wounded, and each time she grows cold without warning he wonders, Did I do something wrong?
Because of this, the two dare not talk of marriage or share future plans. Yet they find each other so attractive that neither wants to leave. So they drift in and out of a relationship: the girl waits for the boy to open her heart, but the boy is careless and does not know how, repeatedly walking into a wall. Yet each time his warmth and bravery melt the ice in her heart and they reconcile. Still, he never truly understands what lies deep within her heart; the girl is anxious and lonely.
Finally one day the boy recognizes that the girl is the little girl who once cried in her mother's arms, and suddenly understands why she is so capricious. The girl has long awaited this day, but when it actually arrives, she is seized by fear once more. She wonders: Now that he has seen my true face, will he leave me because I am cowardly? She finds it hard to trust the boy's love and is easily filled with inexplicable negative thoughts.
Medically, this girl is a typical patient with anxiety disorder and phobia, with mild depression as well. Anxiety and phobia result from the combined effects of genetics and environment. Typically, the parents of anxiety patients have three traits: (1) they are demanding perfectionists; (2) they overprotect their children; (3) they rush to tell children about the dark side of the world. Thus their children grow up unable to relax; these anxiety and phobia patients are constantly seized by fear, anxiety, and depression.
Although they are already wonderful, they never feel their own wonder. Walking across a bridge, seeing a child who was just there vanish in a blink, an ominous thought rises: Did the child fall off the bridge? When others talk about murders, they feel instinctive revulsion, as if thinking, Are you talking about these things because you hope they happen to me? Walking in a square, they feel an inexplicable fear of making a fool of themselves or of some danger. Standing at a height, they feel a force pushing them downward, giving them an impulse simply to jump. They are especially afraid of hearing about the dark side, yet their own minds constantly conjure terrifying dark images.
Our life begins as a fertilized egg containing genetic information from both parents. In anxiety and phobia patients, three parental traits are present: (1) demanding perfectionism; (2) overprotection of children; (3) rushing to expose children to the world's dark side. In the world of anxiety and depression patients, there are only black and white, no shades of gray. They always pursue perfectionism and fly into anger at the slightest disappointment — medically this is called "pseudo-anger." It differs from anger that harms others; they use the form of anger to call for understanding. When these anxiety and phobia patients become parents, they fully inherit their parents' parenting style: overprotecting their own children and rushing to tell them about the world's dark side.
The fertilized egg at the source of our life contains 23 chromosomes; each chromosome records the various biological events our ancestors encountered on this planet. According to cell theory, all living things arise from division of an original cell. Thus the earliest biological events recorded on our chromosomes trace back to the very beginning of life on Earth; every important event in the long history of life on Earth has left traces on our chromosomes. Our genes lie on our chromosomes, and each gene corresponds to a series of biological events. For instance, a gene in the human gene pool may be a fragment of some virus, meaning our ancestors were infected by that virus; their immune systems repelled it and left a trace in the immune system — fragments of the virus — so that next time the virus attacks their descendants, these fragments in the genes help the descendants repel it.
Why does a person become a demanding perfectionist? The reason may lie in ancestors who encountered many dangers, so they were constantly on guard and tried to do everything perfectly. For the same reason, they always wanted to protect their children and warn them of external risks. Their children, grown up, carry the temperament of anxiety and phobia patients: kind and sensitive, yet suspicious and distrustful of others, while deeply longing to rely on and be protected by their beloved.
Why does a single fertilized egg develop into a living being? Because the genetic material in the fertilized egg acts like lines of code written by a programmer, causing the egg to undergo division, differentiation, and growth during development, forming a unique organism. Our brain cells also gradually differentiate from the fertilized egg. In our brain there is a region called the amygdala, which is responsible for responding to fear. In anxiety and phobia patients the amygdala's response to fear is excessive, so they always judge present and future situations as more frightening than they really are; these judgments terrify them, leaving them perpetually ill at ease and tense. Sometimes they think a certain trait in a particular person makes them uneasy, but in fact, when they switch to another person, they will find some trait in that person that also makes them uneasy. Anxiety patients have abnormalities not only in the amygdala but also in the hypothalamus and hippocampus, which affects hormone secretion as well as memory and learning.
Hormonal imbalance fills the body and mind of anxiety and phobia patients with distressing problems. According to the natural law of use it or lose it, the hypothalamus, hippocampus, and amygdala gradually atrophy under long-term abnormal conditions. They develop a host of problems: somnolence, binge eating, headaches, easy tearfulness, sexual impotence, hypothalamic hyperthyroidism or hypothyroidism, and obesity. In old age they are also more prone to Alzheimer's disease, diabetes, and cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases.
When seeking help from neurology, a series of tests can determine whether the hypothalamus, amygdala, and hippocampus are damaged and to what degree, but such damage usually has no particularly effective drug treatment. The good news is that recent research shows the human brain keeps developing into old age, and people can change their own brains through their own actions. To reduce the risk of various geriatric diseases, anxiety and phobia patients need medications that support brain tissue, while also consciously training the brain to promote the development of the hypothalamus, amygdala, and hippocampus.
For example, exposure therapy and desensitization therapy can promote amygdala development by gradually confronting things one previously feared. If we fear small animals, we can, accompanied by someone we trust, gradually approach and touch them, eventually daring to pet them. If we have generalized anxiety and phobia, fearing many things, we can try listing those issues and telling ourselves in our heart that those fearful thoughts are wrong. We can even form a new habit: each time a new fearful thought arises in the brain, remind ourselves three times: These terrifying things are false; I imagined them; they are not real. Over time, the amygdala's normal function can be restored.
Typically, anxiety and phobia patients have strong defensive instincts, though they may not realize it. This makes it hard for them to build lasting intimate relationships. In love, anxiety and phobia patients must strive to overcome the defensive reactions triggered by involuntary anxiety and fear, and avoid withdrawing from the person they truly love. Their partners should also be understanding and caring, soothing rather than aggravating their tension, and wait for them to improve on their own — anxiety and phobia patients usually recover naturally in time.
After such medication and behavioral treatment, most anxiety and phobia patients experience relief and can live basically normal lives; brain function can gradually return to normal, and the risk of various related diseases in old age can be substantially reduced.
When educating our own children, we should also avoid being demanding perfectionist parents, avoid overprotecting and overinterfering, and use fewer scare tactics to teach children to avoid risk; instead, we should teach them how to face danger properly and solve problems.