Feeling Afraid in the Absence of Danger: How Odd Is That?

You’re probably reading this book because you’re bothered by a lot of worry that you recognize is unrealistic and exaggerated. It sounds odd to say, but that’s the good news. You don’t really have all the problems that your worries suggest. The bad news is that these worries function like a red flag to a bull. The red flag isn’t a threat to the bull, but its appearance leads the bull to charge and make himself vulnerable to the swords and spears of the matador. Your worries aren’t a threat to you, but their appearance invites you to struggle to get rid of them, and that’s what makes you vulnerable to more worrying. When you resist your thoughts, you hope to be the matador, but you’re actually the bull.

This chapter will help you see how this kind of worry is not evidence of a weak or troubled mind but a natural consequence of how our brains are organized. This is really important, because if you keep getting “suckered” by the idea that your worries mean there’s something wrong with you, you will keep getting tricked into responding in ways that make things worse, rather than better. You’ll keep taking the bait. So let me show you how these worries are the natural consequence of the kind of brains we have and the world we live in. This will put you in a good position to use the different responses to worry that will come in the following chapters.

Fear for Sale

If you frequently get anxious in response to your worry thoughts—if you frequently get afraid when you’re not in danger—does this mean there’s something wrong with you?

The short answer is no. This is part of what it is to be human. We can feel afraid even when we know we’re not in danger.
For evidence, you need only go to your library, your favorite bookseller, or the movie listings in your area. What’s the evidence? It’s the scary books and movies that are so commercially successful in our culture. Billions of dollars change hands around the globe every year in the business of scary entertainment.
You might wonder why someone would want such an experience, much less pay good money for it. That’s a good question, but it’s not what I find most interesting about scary entertainment. The most interesting thing about scary books and movies is that they work. People can read or watch material they know to be pure fiction and actually feel afraid! Scary movies may not be your cup of tea, and you certainly don’t need to go see any, but I want to point out to you that they work, and to help you see what this says about humanity in general.

It’s Only a Movie, But It Can Still Scare You

People who watch scary movies already know “it’s only a movie.” That doesn’t matter. They become afraid anyway. This ability, to become afraid even when we know we’re not in danger, is a characteristic of our species. If it weren’t, Stephen King would be writing for Good Housekeeping Magazine! If you tend to blame and criticize yourself for becoming afraid of your own exaggerated and unrealistic worries, this is very important information to consider.
If you watch a really scary movie and become afraid, you might try telling yourself “it’s only a movie,” but this rarely takes away the fear. If you’re really worried about something, and a good friend tells you to “stop worrying about that,” that usually doesn’t help either.
One reason this rarely works is that we don’t directly control our thoughts. We can direct our attention to a particular problem, such as a math problem to be solved, or a crossword puzzle to be completed. But we can’t compel our brains to produce only the thoughts we want and none of the thoughts we don’t want. No one can.
The problem we have with worry isn’t just that we don’t control our thoughts. The problem is that we often forget that, or don’t know it, and think that we should be controlling our thoughts. This leads us to an unnecessary and counterproductive wrestling match with our thoughts.

Why Do I Have These Thoughts?

Maybe you see the point I’m making about scary movies but still blame yourself for getting worried and afraid. Sometimes people point out to me that they could understand getting afraid while watching a scary movie, but they’re getting afraid without the scary movie, and this is why they blame themselves.

It’s true that they’re not going to a theater in their external world, but they are watching a scary movie, of sorts. It’s “in their head,” in their internal world, in that space we all use for imagination. It’s a private showing that’s always open for an audience of one. It’s a one-person show, a monologue of all kinds of unrealistic “what if” thoughts of unlikely calamities.
Why is this movie playing there, in your head? To understand this, you need to consider the purpose of anxiety.

What’s the Purpose of Anxiety?

What do you think anxiety is good for? Why do we have the capacity to become anxious?
You’re in the ballpark if you identified something about providing an alert to potential danger. It’s to identify potential problems and threats, before they develop into a full blown crisis, so that we can devise solutions and live more safely. That’s a good ability. We need that. More than any other species, probably, we have brains that give us the ability to imagine different future scenarios and plan responses. This is how some early hunter figured out how to trap huge mammoths in a pit where they could become food for the entire tribe. This ability helped us become the top predator on the planet, even in a world with bigger, stronger, and faster predators that had bigger teeth and claws.

A False Prediction

But this ability to imagine future developments isn’t perfect. It can’t be. We don’t know the future until we get there, and our imagined projection of what will happen is subject to error. And there are only two possible types of errors.
Type One is called a “false positive.” You believe something is present when it’s not. If a caveman huddles in his cave all day, quaking with fear because he thinks he hears a saber-toothed tiger lurking nearby, when it’s just a couple of rabbits that could be a meal for the clan, that’s a false positive. He won’t get eaten by a false positive, but it might prevent him from going outside and gathering food that he needs, or discovering that a nearby tribe is coming to attack him.
Type Two is called a “false negative.” You believe something is absent when it’s actually present. If a caveman strolls out of his cave, confident that there are no saber-toothed tigers around when one is quietly, patiently hiding behind some rocks, that’s a false negative. The caveman can get eaten by a false negative.
No brain is error-free, so you have to have some kinds of errors. Which type would you choose? Thinking there’s a tiger when there’s none, or thinking there’s no tiger when there is one? Our brains generally favor Type 1 errors over Type 2, and chronic worry is the result. This means you will probably never be surprised by a saber-toothed tiger, but you might instead spend a lot of time huddling in a dark, barren cave fearing tigers that aren’t actually there, while daredevil tribes steal your crops and enjoy a meal of broiled rabbit.
Having a brain that favors Type 1 errors probably helped our species survive. And, like every other trait, it’s distributed in different proportions among the population, just like height. Some people have a lot of this tendency, and some just a little. It helps the tribe to have some of both types of people—aggressive warriors who have so little fear that they will go out and bring home a mastodon for lunch, and cautious members who won’t have any part of that, but will also live long enough to raise a new generation, and feed it by growing corn.
So there are advantages, at least to the species, to worrying. That’s why we often have a tendency to worry. And some of us, by virtue of our genetic heritage, have more of a tendency than others. If you struggle with chronic worry, the odds are good that others who came before you in your family line had a similar struggle.
But, you might wonder, isn’t this all learned? Haven’t I trained myself to be a worrywart? And doesn’t that make it my fault?

Is It All Your Fault?

No. You might be assuming that we’re all born as a blank slate, that all our personalities and traits develop from learning, but it’s not so. If you go to the maternity ward of your local hospital and see all the new babies, as the proud relatives come to see them there, you might notice how they all have different reactions to the lights and the noise. Some look directly at the source of noise and light and appear interested. Others cry and show signs of distress. Others show no interest either way. These are newborn babies, and yet they’re clearly quite different from each other in their apprehension, and interpretation, of threat.
If you struggle with excessive chronic worry as an adult, there’s a good chance this tendency goes back earlier in your life, even before it appeared to be a problem. You might stop to consider—did you show any tendencies toward extra worry in your childhood and early years? What stories do your parents and older siblings tell about you about this? It’s frequently the case that this trait goes back a ways, even before people clearly recognized it for what it was.
Our brains didn’t evolve to balance bank accounts, do quantum physics, or enjoy novels. They evolved to help us survive, by watching out for danger and solving problems. Brains that were more sensitive to danger—even if they saw ten tigers for every one that actually existed—had an advantage, and the people who had them were more likely to survive, and reproduce.
Our brains have the same basic function today—to watch for danger and solve problems. However, our environment has changed radically. We don’t deal with saber-toothed tigers, rock slides, and swamps as much as we used to. Still, our brains continue to watch for bad possibilities, however remote and hypothetical, and try to figure out ways around them.
We also spend more time “in our heads” than our ancestors did. In modern civilizations, people spend much more time processing information—books, Internet, movies, and so on—than did our ancestors, who were much more focused on dealing with the physical objects in their environment. We get so used to working with thoughts that we often equate our thoughts with reality. We mistake the content that exists in our internal world for the objects and events that occur in our external world. It’s not the same. That content is just our thoughts about the external world.
And, there’s no off switch to the brain. It does this all the time, whether you like it or not. Like other vital functions that are important to our survival, it proceeds without our conscious control. That’s why you see more scary movies in your head than you would otherwise choose, if it were entirely up to your conscious, deliberate choice.
Worry is not your enemy, although it can easily seem that way. If you have chronic worry, it can cause you a lot of trouble and unhappiness, and you will be much better off when you find a better way to relate to it. But chronic worry is not some terrible enemy that seeks to ruin your life. Nor is it some shameful flaw in your brain structure or your character. Chronic worry is more like a useful ability that has grown disproportionately large and influential even as the need for it has declined. Chronic worry is to ordinary worry as five pounds of chocolate is to one ounce. One will make you feel sick, while the other is a nice addition to your diet.
If you struggle with chronic worry, it’s a problem, a problem to be solved or left unsolved. But don’t get tricked into believing that it’s your fault, or your enemy.