Last time, I talked about the JOY response, which is, biologically speaking, the approach response. Now it’s time to go through to the avoidance emotional responses, or anger, fear, and sadness.

But I want to start with the FEAR response, because the ANGER response often follows fear.

The FEAR response basically helps us know something is dangerous to us, that something may harm us. We have a fear response to someone wanting to harm us, to some bad circumstance that’s happening to us or could happen to us, and to anything that we consistently worry about. Worry is a type of fear response.

We have many words that mean the FEAR response, and they include anxious, panicked, afraid, scared, nervous, and stressed.

What’s so important about understanding the fear response, like the anger and sadness responses, is that it is equal to and as normal and healthy as the JOY response. All of our emotional responses are equally important to our survival, to healthy living, to feeling safe, secure, and happy.

Finally, the FEAR response is the basis for what we clinically call anxiety. They are the same, they are not different, and understanding the FEAR response as something normal, healthy, functional, and vital is absolutely important to understanding how to treat anxiety from a clinical perspective.