False Anxiety Essay

The human body has developed a pain response in order to avoid injury. For example, if an individual were to place their hand on a hot oven, the excruciating pain would signal the nervous system to move the hand immediately before experiencing irreversible damage. Whenever an injury cannot be avoided, however, it activates a series of mechanisms to repair the organism. Evidence of these systems comes from blood platelets that clot wounds to prevent bleeding out. Some cells cause inflammation of the tissue, which raises the temperature of the injured area and is adaptive because it prevents pathogens from entering and spreading into the host. The area of injured tissue also remains very sensitive to pain in order to avoid any type of stimuli

In order to comprehend the adaptive purposes they serve, one must first understand the term coined by Walter Cannon as the ‘’fight or flight response’’ in 1929 which describes changes in an organisms physiology and hormone production in order to survive; whether it is by standing ones ground or by running away. This response creates a lot of anxiety and stress that can be considered good, especially for survival. Anxiety and stress operate just as a smoke detector would and usually trigger false alarms. The cost of these false alarms does not outweigh the benefit of surviving in case it was not a false alarm. This clarifies the fact that anxiety and stress are adaptive responses, even if they produce discomfort and linger around when triggering false alarms. After all, evolution does not care about one’s comfort; rather, it is only concerned with one’s fitness. It is maladaptive at times to reduce all this free floating anxiety and stress; this is evident when looking at individuals who take anti-anxiety medications. These individuals are more likely to act on impulses that would have been prevented by anxiety, but are now putting themselves in harm’s way in order to reduce the uneasy