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Is Freaking Out The Latest Luxury?
When people panic, we make mistakes. We hit the wrong buttons, we deviate from the plan. When we freak out, we stop thinking clearly, we say the wrong things, and we ignore rules. We become single-focused and unable to process our thoughts effectively. Survival hormones surge through our veins giving us three options: fight, flight or freeze.
Evolution hasn’t caught up to the modern times we live in. Most of us are not faced with hungry lions on the way to work. We aren’t usually in life or death situations throughout our day, but adrenaline courses through our bodies at the first sign of trouble. We are planners. We like predictability. Our days are pretty much planned down to the letter and when something goes wrong we freak out.
Much of our modern-day stress comes from emails, texts, road rage, public speaking, confronting a stranger, an asshole at the bar. Fear plays a big part in our stress today. We fear war, taxes, disease, divorce, job loss, death, violence, human trafficking, global warming, and undercooked pork. In our minds, we replay arguments, we ruminate over injustices, we hurt over lost arguments, we overthink possible outcomes to unlikely situations.
Our brains can’t keep up.
Our brains can’t figure out is the stress we are feeling is happening to us in this second (Look! There’s a bear!) or…