From Fight-or-Flight to Fictional Frights: Why Your Brain Overthinks

What if they see the mistakes I made? My boss will be furious. If I get fired, how will I pay for the apartment? What if I get sick and can't work? What if the plane leaves without me? What if I forget everything and they don't give me my certificate? Did I lock the door? My cat scratched me—what if she has toxoplasmosis? Does my wife still love me? What if we get divorced? How will I live then?

This relentless inner monologue, a storm of worries that leaves us feeling unsettled and raw, is a familiar territory for many. It’s that gnawing feeling in your soul, a confusion that makes it hard to breathe. All these sensations—worry, anxiety, a soul-deep restlessness—are shades of a single, powerful, basic emotion: fear.

The Purpose of Our Oldest Guardian

Fear isn't just a feeling; it's a finely tuned system for survival. We are equipped with a range of basic emotions, and each one has a profound evolutionary purpose. Anger, for instance, exists to help us defend our boundaries. A person who can't access anger often finds themselves walked over, unable to protect their own space.

So, what is the meaning of fear? Its purpose is nothing less than self-preservation. An ancient human without a fear of heights wouldn't live long enough to pass on their genes. One without a fear of strangers might embrace a foe and meet a swift end. One without a fear of vast, open spaces would be easy prey for predators. Fear is the ancestral guardian that has kept our species alive for hundreds of thousands of years. We are here today because our ancestors were afraid.

Anxiety is simply a form of this guardian. It is fear of a medium intensity. At its highest intensity, fear becomes horror, panic, or fright. Anxiety is its simmering, ever-present cousin. The critical difference between these states lies in one simple factor: the proximity of the trigger.

Imagine standing face-to-face with a hostile tribe. The trigger is immediate and close. Your reaction will be high-intensity fear: panic, a desperate urge to fight or flee. Now, imagine you see that same tribe 150 meters away in the distance. You won't feel horror, but you will feel a prickle of medium-intensity fear—anxiety. What are they doing here? I hope they don't come this way. The trigger is distant, so the emotional volume is turned down, but it's impossible to ignore.

When the Mind Takes Over

Our reaction to a threat is also dictated by its proximity. When faced with intense, immediate fear, our primal brain takes over. There’s no time for complex thought; the response is pure instinct: fight or flight. It’s a simple, effective reaction designed for moments of pure crisis.

But what happens when the trigger is distant, when we are in a state of anxiety? Fighting or running makes no sense. The brain, unable to simply ignore the potential threat, shifts its resources. Instead of priming the body for immediate action, it supercharges our cognitive function. Our thinking kicks into high gear.

The ancient man who saw the distant tribe didn't run screaming. Instead, his mind raced, developing a plan. If they approach, I will smile to show I'm not a threat. I'll let them see my weapon and tell them I'm part of a large hunting party nearby. They'll know that harming me would bring the wrath of my armed tribesmen down on them. He turns on his cognitive function to its maximum setting, creating a sophisticated strategy to ensure his survival. His anxiety, in this case, is a useful tool. It sparks the creation of a plan, expanding his behavioral options beyond simple fight or flight.

The Paradox of the Abstract Mind

Herein lies a uniquely human problem. We are the only creatures on Earth with such a highly developed capacity for abstract thought. This means we are the only creatures who can invent triggers that do not exist in reality.

There is no actual threat of dismissal, but a person can conjure that trigger in their mind and torment themselves by endlessly developing plans to avoid it. There is no evidence that people think they're a fool, but they can invent this social threat and constantly police their own behavior to prevent it. A person who has successfully earned money their entire adult life can invent a future where they are penniless and dying in a ditch, then exhaust their mental energy trying to prevent this phantom catastrophe.

None of these triggers exist in the real world. They are ghosts conjured by our own powerful minds. An anxious person often feels these thoughts simply appear, as if from nowhere, outside of their control. And then, the mind does what it’s programmed to do when it senses a distant threat: it starts planning.

The Flawed Logic of Avoidance

The problem is that we apply our ancient problem-solving software to these self-generated, fictional triggers. This leads to two critical mistakes in our thinking.

1. We build plans to avoid an event that isn't happening. Imagine an employee, anxious about being fired, starts working frantically to avoid it. When his boss asks what he's doing, he might as well say, "I'm building a plan so you don't fire me." The boss, who had no such intention, is now forced to consider the very idea. The act of avoiding a non-existent event can sometimes sow the seeds for it to occur.
2. We build plans that rely on changing other people's behavior. The anxious employee thinks, I will do everything possible so that my boss doesn't fire me. This is a strategy doomed to fail. Nothing is more transparent or frustrating than seeing someone grovel, fuss, and contort themselves in an attempt to manipulate your feelings or decisions. You cannot build a sound plan based on controlling another person's actions.

A New Framework for Planning

If your anxiety is rooted in a fictional or highly unlikely trigger, the solution is not to stop planning, but to change the logic of your plans.

Instead of building a plan to avoid the feared event, build a plan for how you will act if the event comes true.

Let's revisit the fear of being fired. The old, anxious logic is: How can I avoid being fired? I'll work late, I won't make mistakes, I'll never disagree with the boss. This is a plan of avoidance and people-pleasing.

The new, empowering logic is: What will I do if I get fired? The answer immediately becomes proactive and concrete. I'll update my resume. I'll check job search platforms. I'll reach out to my professional network. I'll polish my portfolio.

When you build a plan like this, your brain receives a powerful message: If this trigger does materialize, I already know how I will act. I have a strategy. The need to endlessly ruminate on avoidance disappears. The anxiety subsides because you have replaced a vague, uncontrollable fear with a concrete, actionable plan.

This logic applies to any invented fear:

• If you have anxiety about a divorce, don't build a plan on how to avoid it. Build a plan on how you will act if it happens.
• If you have anxiety about a relative's death, you cannot plan to avoid the inevitable. Instead, you can build a plan for how you will navigate your life and honor their memory if that time comes.

When anxiety is based on a real, distant trigger, it sharpens our minds and helps us survive. But when it's based on a fictional trigger, our planning must shift. We cannot build our lives around avoiding ghosts. We must build our plans based on action, resilience, and the trust that if the worst should happen, we have what it takes to face it.

References

• Beck, A. T. (1976). Cognitive Therapy and the Emotional Disorders. International Universities Press.

  This foundational work explores how our thoughts (cognitions) directly create our feelings. It details how anxious individuals often engage in "catastrophizing"—imagining the worst-case scenario—which perfectly aligns with the article's concept of inventing fictional triggers. The practical advice to shift planning logic is a direct application of Beck's principles of identifying and restructuring distorted thought patterns.

• Barlow, D. H. (2002). Anxiety and Its Disorders: The Nature and Treatment of Anxiety and Panic (2nd ed.). Guilford Press.

  This comprehensive text distinguishes between fear as a response to clear and present danger and anxiety as a future-oriented state of apprehension about a potential, often vague, threat (see pages 65-71). This distinction is the core academic principle behind the article's separation of high-intensity fear (the nearby tribe) and medium-intensity anxiety (the distant tribe), providing a clinical basis for the arguments presented.