Most children go through the dark test. Babies are afraid to fall asleep if a ray of light does not penetrate through the bedroom doors. They flinch when they hear the occasional squeak of a floorboard, the grinding of a door bolt, or other sudden noises. Every random knock can fill the night with all-encompassing horror.
Fear of the dark does not disappear with age
People never cease to be afraid of the dark, even when childhood experiences are far behind. No, we no longer experience this panic fear, but, walking quickly along the dark alley, we are still sensitively listening to extraneous noises. The darkness gives rise to hypertrophied images of night hooligans in the alley in our imagination. It's almost the same as in childhood. Only then, lying in bed, we covered our heads with a blanket in order to somehow protect ourselves from a terrible monster, which probably hid somewhere under the bed. And now we are afraid of unexpected meeting with strangers. As you can see, the principle of the emergence of fear remained, only the main characters, the villains, have changed.
This fear keeps us from recklessness
Anxiety, greedy listening to loud noises, and apprehension - all these feelings are generated by a self-defense mechanism. These fears place limits on reckless behavior. Imagine what would happen to a person if he went for a walk in the African savannah on a dark night? Giant predatory cats sneak up silently, while having a keen sense of smell and keen eyesight, allowing them to navigate in the dark. Not a single person (even if it was Usain Bolt himself) would have a single chance of salvation. It turns out that our nightly fears are justified from the point of view of evolution.
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Ancient people were not at the top of the food chain
In the early days of humanity, our ancestors were far from the top of the food chain. But they quickly learned that many predators prefer to hunt under cover of darkness. For a long time, this association was strengthened in the subconscious and finally formed into an axiom. Now a person is sure that he needs to stay away from the darkness, because somewhere nearby danger can lie in wait.
Premonition of anxiety
When someone suddenly turns off the light, your fear can manifest itself as an acute reaction: panic or a loud scream. However, according to a study by researchers at the University of Toronto, this emotion is mostly silent. For example, you may lose sleep and anxiously wait until the morning for a potential threat.
Any external stimuli form one or another model of responsive behavior. So, for example, the manifestation of anger gives emotional release, sadness and regret teach you to use your capabilities more fully, love helps to cope with stress. Anticipation of anxiety plays an important role in our behavioral responses.
Each emotion is formed according to a specific algorithm
Psychologists argue that each emotion can be viewed as a computer program designed to perform a specific task. For example, romantic courtship helps to achieve reciprocity on the love front. Expressions of anger are useful if the person is faced with betrayal. Disapproval from the people around you creates social anxiety. All these emotions in our soul, like instruments in an orchestra, must obey the conductor who is watching the process in the brain. Therefore, people do not show inconsistency in their emotional reactions and act strictly "according to instructions."
Why is worry useful?
Of all the body's responses, worry is the one that interests us most. This feeling is a response to many social and personal factors. It raises our awareness of situations that could harm us. In men, concern about income and social status contributes to family formation and procreation. In women, anxiety about their physical attractiveness helps to find a more profitable party for marriage. Worry is different from other negative emotions. This feeling makes us anticipate events, and anger and sadness are a direct response to what has already happened. We are accustomed to anticipating the future with anxiety, we always draw in our imagination the alleged event taking into account the most unfavorable outcomes.
Feelings of anxiety are directed towards future events
The brightest heads among our ancestors were very observant and, correctly responding to external signals, increased their chances of reproduction or survival. This is how they learned that feeling anxious is completely useless when it comes to past failures. This damage has already been done and nothing can be done about it. If the cavemen grieved for a long time over the spilled milk, they probably could have overlooked some important threat.
Spiders or nuclear war?
The signals that caused ancient people to develop a response to a potential danger still live in our subconscious. These include snakes, spiders, the cut of cat's eyes, and darkness (in which predators hide). And this reaction is the result of genetic information passed down from generation to generation. Curiously, today's children fear the dark, spiders and snakes more than modern threats - rushing cars at full speed, nuclear war or weapons.
If a small child is frightened by an unfamiliar object, and the mother calms him in response, the baby understands that there is no threat there. In the event that the parents are wary or frightened at the same time, the child's fears only increase. So the baby quickly learns about the potential danger around him.
This emotion has been forming for millennia
Human fear is a very subtle and complex emotion that has been honed through millennia of interaction with wildlife. This means that the fear of the unknown, which is embodied by darkness, will never disappear from our consciousness.
Inga Kaisina
