3min chapter

Life Examined cover image

Understanding anxiety —and its surprising upside

Life Examined

CHAPTER

Anxiety and Emotions in the Evolution of Humans

Anxiety is not the same as fear. It makes us into mental time travellers into the future. We take this unique human capacity to imagine and plan for the uncertain future, to actually simulate it in our mind. What anxiety does is also increase levels of the ner transmitter dopemine in our brain. And dopemin actually primes us to work towards positive goals. Also increases levels of social bonding hormon oxitosem which prime us to seek out social support,. In moderateo kind of atly high doses, making us more creative. So anxiety does all these other things. It primes us and recruits our biology in ways that we never talk about. That's why we

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