Fear and Anxiety

Basis of emotional experiences are based on peripheral and physiological sensations such as heart rate and blood pressure. Fear and anxiety can be an adaptive response when one is confronted with an event that threatens their survival. Humans experience a kind of fight or flight response. Overall, sensory feedback controls emotional expression. Mild to moderate anxiety. It is clear that high levels of anxiety and fear can lead to impaired psychological functioning, intellectual errors, and disturb concentration and memory. Yet, there is evidence that suggests that moderate levels of anxiety may serve as an adaptive function.

It is believed that moderate anticipatory anxiety about realistic threats is necessary for the development of coping behavior. From an existentialist perspective, moderate anxiety is an appropriate response as an adaptive function to particular events or threats in one's life. This anxiety can be used as a motivation to change oneself or adapt to the situation.

• Anxiety is the result of psychological and physiological processes in the body.
• Anxiety is not the same as fear although it is related to it.
• Anxiety is the response to danger that warns you from "within" - as an instinct - that there is danger and you may lose control of the situation.
• Fear is the reaction to real danger that can cause harm.
• Fear is usually short lived. Anxiety lasts longer.
• It is normally difficult to assess whether your reaction is due to anxiety or fear.
• Anxiety and fear coexist in almost all situations in varying proportions.
• It is more important to find out the causes of your symptoms than to decide if it is fear or anxiety

Conclusion

The amount and severity of anxiety that is faced is important in determining whether it will impair the functioning of an individual. There are several different perspectives on the motivations of fear and anxiety: cognitive, learned and physiological. I think that there is always some physiological reaction that occurs when an individual experiences fear and anxiety. And I believe both the cognitive and learned perspectives help us understand the motivations of fear and anxiety. Conditions may vary from situation to situation or culture to culture. Being afraid of spiders is a product of one's experiences in the environment. And if one is attacked at night while walking home, the motivation behind one's fear and anxiety may be a complex relationship of all three perspectives.

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