Anxiety

Our Ancient Alarm System

Imagine you’re back in prehistoric times.

A rustle in the grass — could be wind, could be a dinosaur. Your brain doesn’t wait to check; it assumes danger and runs. That quick reaction kept your ancestors alive.

Fast-forward to now, and the dinosaurs have gone, but the alarm system stayed.

Your “rustle in the grass” might be a text that hasn’t been answered, a raised eyebrow in a meeting, or the sound of an email alert. Your body reacts exactly the same way — heart racing, breath shortening, adrenaline surging.

The problem?

Most of our modern threats aren’t lions — they’re fluffy cats knocking things over. But your brain can’t always tell the difference. It hears the noise, feels the spike, and sounds the alarm.

“Anxiety’s job is to keep you alive, not to keep you comfortable.”

Learning to pause and ask, “Is this a cat or a dinosaur?” is the beginning of managing anxiety, not erasing it.

From Caveman to Smoke Alarm

That ancient response evolved into something like a household alarm system.

When it works well, it keeps you safe. When it’s too sensitive, it starts reacting to burnt toast and kettle steam.

For some people, the alarm has been upgraded — not by choice, but by experience. Trauma, chronic stress, or emotional neglect can turn your basic smoke detector into a CO₂ sensor: always scanning the air for something invisible, subtle, and possibly dangerous.

That’s hypervigilance — the brain’s version of detecting fumes no one else notices.

You’re not “overreacting”; you’re “over-equipped.”

The trouble is, these extra sensors can’t tell the difference between real threat and stale air.

You might feel anxious in situations that are technically safe — not because you’re broken, but because your system is doing its job too well.

The CO₂ Detector and the “Sixth Sense”

A CO₂ alarm doesn’t detect flames. It warns you when the air becomes unsafe.

That’s the part of anxiety that can feel psychic — that “something’s off” feeling before you know why.

Sometimes that intuition saves you; sometimes it exhausts you.

Trauma sharpens that sensor. It teaches your nervous system that silence or calm can be dangerous because danger used to follow it. You start reacting to absence — to nothing — because your body has learned that nothing was never safe for long.

Therapy helps the body unlearn that lesson. It teaches the system to check again:

“Am I reacting to this moment, or to a memory that feels like it?”

“You can’t logic your way out of anxiety — but you can retrain your body to know when it’s safe.”

Momentum Shrinks the Monster

Anxiety feeds on stillness — on overthinking, analysing, hovering at the edge of action.

The longer you wait, the louder it gets.

That’s why once you finally start the thing you’ve been dreading — replying to an email, making a call, opening the bill — it often gets easier. Momentum reassures the alarm that someone’s in charge.

Motion tells your nervous system, “We’re doing something — stand down.”

Even tiny movements — stretching, writing, tidying, walking — can break the feedback loop.

“Anxiety doesn’t need proof. It needs movement.”

When the Alarm Gives Up

Sometimes, constant activation leads to burnout — the alarm still works, but you’ve stopped responding. That’s when anxiety collapses into numbness or fatigue. You’re not lazy; you’re depleted.

It’s like the body’s been shouting for so long that it’s lost its voice.

This is where compassion matters more than correction.

You don’t fix it by forcing more — you rest, recharge, and gently rebuild trust with your system.

Relearning Safety

Rebuilding that trust looks simple but takes practice:

• Notice your cues. Which noises set off your alarm — real or imagined?
• Name small safeties. The sound of your kettle, the weight of a blanket, music, routine.
• Stay curious. “What’s my alarm protecting me from right now?”
• Let it ring, just a little. When you see it fade naturally, you start to believe you can survive the feeling.

Therapy helps you reconnect those dots — not to delete anxiety, but to remind it of its purpose. Your alarm learns, again, that not every sound means danger.

The Modern World’s Problem

Our environment is now engineered to keep alarms ringing: news alerts, deadlines, constant visibility.

We were built for short bursts of threat followed by long rest.

Now it’s constant low-level threat with no off switch.

So when your system feels “too sensitive,” remember — it’s responding to a world that’s always on fire.

You don’t need to toughen up; you need to recover balance.

What’s it purpose?