Question: why do people get anxiety?

Rebecca Dewey answered on 16 Jun 2015:

This relates a bit to the answer I gave to your other question – about what emotions look like in the body (as opposed to in the brain). When someone experiences an emotional event, or anticipates an emotional event, or thinks about something that has happened in the past, the body will respond to this just as much as the brain does. If the event is one that is making the person anxious, then their body might respond by increasing its heart rate, breathing rate, blood pressure, sweat production, etc. This is because the person associates that thing that they’re thinking about with a negative emotion. This varies from person to person and it’s perfectly ok and normal that everyone has different levels of response to negative emotional stimuli. It is possible to re-train the brain to think about emotions differently, using techniques such as cognitive behavioural therapy or psychotherapy, and some recent research shows that this might be possible to change using certain drugs too.