The Origins of Panic
Faced with a
threat,
your brain
activates a series
of primitive
neural networks
that control
when you
freeze—and when
you flee.
Fear: see also dread, panic, terror,
fright, trepidation, anxiety, worry, phobia,
disquietude, angst, foreboding, the creeps,
the jitters, the heebie-jeebies, freaking out.
Any halfway decent thesaurus will
provide a long list of synonyms for fear,
and yet they are not very good substitutes.
No one would confuse having the
creeps with being terrified. It is strange
that we have so many words for fear,
when fear is such a unitary, primal feeling.
Perhaps all those synonyms are just
linguistic in...
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