Overreacting out of fear

How we react to fear can make a difference in our emotional health.

Fear in animals is a mechanism designed to protect us from predators, preparing us to fight or flee. But overreacting out of fear, i.e., becoming paralyzed or losing control, is a mechanism that benefits the predator.

In humans, things are not particularly different. When we feel threatened by danger, a series of chemical, organic and behavioral reactions are triggered, which together we call fear.

It is a response a response designed to resolve a specific situation and keep us safe.. In fact, it is a healthy reaction that in our society has a paradoxical character. On the one hand, we suffer very high levels of fear, but on the other hand, we do not find the danger from which we must flee or with which we must fight, which is lived as a continuous and contradictory experience of anxiety.

The problem of overreacting and giving in to fear and anxiety.

The chronification of anxiety and fear of fear, as a result of trying to avoid it at all costs, makes us increasingly prone to overreacting. To suffer the dramatic experience of panic, which consists of a series of thoughts and chemical reactions affecting the organs that involve a disorganization of behavior, incompatible with self-protection, which leaves the subject at the mercy of his enemy, performing a series of useless actions to defend himself.

From a psychological point of view, panic implies the organism's claudication and the experience of impotence to perform any protective or attacking action.

The reasons for a person to overreact with panic to a situation are multiple. From the true nature of the danger that indeed is immense and unapproachable, to the erroneous self-perception of fragility or of his capacity to defend himself.

Panic and chronic anxiety are often associated with ritual behaviors lacking any usefulness, such as compulsion or magical thinking, delusions and hallucinations, disorganizing behavior and the person as a social being.

But panic is, at the same time, a good Trojan horse for any virus and therefore, something that makes us more vulnerable to COVID-19 and to many other viruses that we normally carry, such as herpes, for example. And also many others that others can transmit to us, even though we hardly notice all of them now.

Taming fear and avoiding panic is a Herculean task.. It cannot be solved with a piece of advice or a sleight of hand, it resides in that area of the brain called the amygdala, which is in charge of the emotional life of the person and is inseparable from it. At most, what everyone could try to incorporate into their daily lives to improve their capacity for self-care would be:

• Increase self-control over every situation.
• Improve one's sense of self-efficacy.
• Increase freedom to make decisions.
• Improve the ability to withstand small risks and achieve success.
• To increase the capacity to resist.
• Increase knowledge about the problem and take an active role in seeking solutions.
• To have support and action groups.
• Put in its place the notion of fear, assuming that it is designed to trigger the flight and fight responses.

We must remember that in the animal world inducing panic is, in many cases, the main strategy of a hunter seeking to minimize his effort and risks.