Anxiety is part of our primal fear response. Originally, fear evolved to protect us from predators.
This fear response is governed by a very primitive part of the brain.
In preparation to deal with a predator, our 'fight or flight' response is evoked - our body and mind prepares to either fight or run away.
Your heart rate increases.
Your breathing increases.
Your adrenaline levels rise.
Your perceptions become focused on potential danger.
The physical feelings triggered by anxiety are exactly the same as if we were actually faced with an actual threat to our survival.
The pounding in your chest and the breathless feeling are symptoms of your muscles preparing for action and the primitive part of our brain responsible for controlling this gets 'crossed-wires' about it.
Nowadays, in most stressful situations there is nothing to fight - no wolf or sabre-tooth tiger to hit with a stick. If we can't fight, the only other option available to that primitive part of our brain is to escape - to get away from the threat.
We want to get away from the source of our anxiety and become increasingly anxious if we can't.
Next time we are faced with the situation which originally provoked the fear response, the feelings of anxiety return. If this happens often enough we will begin to feel anxiety about anxiety.
If you know beforehand that a situation is going to make you feel anxious - why wouldn't you feel anxious about that? If you know you are going to blush and stammer at a social event, it's only natural to get stressed about it. This is called social anxiety.
The feelings associated with anxiety are overwhelming. They are, after all partly responsible for our survival as a species.
In the face of these feelings it's easy to forget that no real threat actually exists - there is no danger. But deep down, in a part of our brain that does not deal with logic, we are convinced of a threat.
If we don't intervene then over time we teach ourselves to be anxious - a subconscious spiral...