One of the mind’s functions is to alert us to potential or actual problems and threats. In principle, this has a beneficial role - to direct our attention to the problem, so that we become aware of it and then solve it, to resume a normal course of life.
However, in practice, there is an inherent flaw in how the mind operates, as explained here:
In nature, an animal’s fight-or-flight-or-freeze mechanism (FFF) is activated when facing potential immediate physical danger, where the animal needs adrenaline, blood pumped into the muscles, and other physiological changes, to allow it to fight an attacker or to run away from it.
Importantly, this situation is resolved within at most a few minutes (either the animal fights and wins, or runs away and gets away from the predator, or it freezes and thus successfully deceives its predator to not notice it, or it is eaten and that’s the end of it). So the FFF mechanism is active for at most a few minutes, and then the animal returns to a safe situation, where it can (literally) physically shake off the stress, and resume its mostly calm life.
This is possible for animals because they have very little, if any, sense of the future and past, and hence they can calm down quickly even after a life-threatening situation. They never get stressed about a potential future threat because they simply don’t think about it (and even if they did think about it, they have absolutely nothing they can do to avoid it, so there’s no point in it).
The human mind alerts us about a potential problem sometimes not by using a mere thought, but by activating the FFF mechanism, and emotions like fear and stress, which are felt physiologically.
Theoretically, this is useful to make us pay attention to a potential problem. However, in practice, in the modern world, it is extremely rare that we actually encounter an immediate life-threatening situation where the FFF mechanism could be useful (e.g. a firefighter going into a burning building, or a soldier at war, or confronting an armed robber).
Nevertheless, the mind might still activate the FFF mechanism when we face a problem, even though this activation is counterproductive, and often extremely destructive.
For example, when we are taking a university exam, or giving a talk in front of an audience, the thought that there is a threat (our performance might not be “good enough”) causes the mind to activate the FFF mechanism. It is completely irrelevant to pour adrenaline to the bloodstream and pump blood into our muscles in these situations - we do not need to physically fight anything or run away from anyone.
The activation of the FFF mechanism in normal daily situation is not merely irrelevant - it is harmful, and sometimes disastrous.
The mind’s activation of the FFF mechanism makes us feel stressed in the very occasions when we need to feel calm and focused. This severe bug of the mind that causes emotional distress damages our performance, sometimes dramatically to the point that we forget what we learned and prepared.
It may even cause a complete “shut down” in a full blown anxiety attack or panic attack (which are horrendous nightmarish experiences).
And it’s not just about a problem that is occurring now in the present. Unlike in animals, the human mind has the ability to visualize a potential future threat. This visualization causes the mind to activate the FFF mechanism - even thought it’s completely irrelevant because there is no immediate life-threatening situation.
If the problem can be easily resolved within a few minutes, then not much harm is caused. But life inherently has many problems and threats that cannot be solved, or are extremely difficult to solve, and they may persist over a long period of time, or with a low probability that we could succeed in avoiding them.
Faced with such problems, the default behavior of the mind is to keep focusing on the problem, in an attempt to resolve it. Essentially, it gets stuck on the problem, and keeps adding fuel to the FFF mechanism. The mind becomes trapped in a cycle of heightened alertness, which causes stress, and then anxiety, as the mind continuously signals alarms about challenges that we have no immediate or feasible solutions for.
The FFF mechanism was never “designed” or intended to be used for more than a few minutes. When it is active for longer periods of time, especially if it lasts over days or more, there are disastrous physiological and psychological consequences, potentially life-threatening! So ironically, the very mechanism that was supposed to help us survive by usefully addressing life-threatening situation causes severe damage to our lives!