WHEN I used to be requested to write down this text, my coronary heart began beating sooner, my fingers began shaking and my ideas went into overdrive developing with what felt like lots of of objectively wise the explanation why I couldn’t do it. I might inform you that as chief subeditor at New Scientist I don’t usually get an opportunity to write down. However the fact is I not often write as a result of I’m very anxious about it. What if the folks I contact don’t reply? What if I write one thing silly? What if I’m silly? What if, what if, what if.

Clearly, I selected to write down this text, partly as a result of I’m cussed and hate that these anxious emotions maintain me again from doing issues I’d get pleasure from, and partly as a result of I discover that doing the issues that make me anxious helps me overcome that feeling (see “5 scientific methods to assist cut back emotions of tension”). However my foremost motivation was to reply questions which have been bothering me for years: what precisely is anxiousness and what’s occurring in my physique and mind to trigger this sense?

Answering that first query is troublesome, partially as a result of there isn’t any one option to really feel anxious. “I’d say there’s as many sorts of anxiousness as there are folks on this planet,” says Oliver Robinson, head of the Anxiousness Lab at College Faculty London.

We do know everybody experiences anxiousness – it helps prime us to be prepared in presumably dangerous conditions. Take into account strolling house alone at nighttime, the place that feeling…