We all know what it's like to feel afraid. Everyone's been afraid of something at least once in their life. Fear is a basic human emotion and is just as important as other emotions like happiness, sadness, and anger. Our ability to experience fear is very important. In fact, without the ability to experience fear we'd be in big trouble! Fear is an emotional and physical response common in all animals. Our ability to experience fear has developed over millions of years and helps animals (like us) survive real threats in the real world. The intense physical response you'd experience while standing in front of the bear is called fear. One type of fear response is called the fight or flight response. The fight or flight response is designed to get you to fight the grizzly bear as hard as possibly can, or to run away from it as fast as your legs can travel. The only purpose of this fear response is to protect your body from danger. The physical sensations of increased heart rate, depth of breathing, sweating, flushing, shaking, restlessness, and agitation, edginess or jumpiness, are all part of a response mechanism designed to help you survive situations that are dangerous or life-threatening. Increased heart rate, breathing, and sweating prepare your muscles for action. Flushing, shaking, restlessness, and agitation are the result of changes in blood flow, and the release of chemicals like adrenaline prepare your body for making a maximum effort in a short period of time. As you can well imagine, there are many situations in which our ability to experience fear protects us. In fact, a moderate level of fear and anxiety are very good. People do better at things like working, studying, and sports when they are experiencing a moderate level of excitement. For example, if you have a test at school or a big meeting at work, you€™ll be more likely to prepare yourself and perform better if you€™re a little bit anxious (or aroused). If the thought of the test or meeting didn€™t get you aroused, you might not care enough to prepare and do well. Similarly, if you€™ve ever tried to play a sport or a board game with somebody who couldn€™t give you a good game, you may have found that you had trouble getting into it. In this situation, even if you didn€™t have a worthy opponent, you may make silly mistakes and actually lose the game. Fear, anxiety, and arousal by themselves are not bad. In fact, a moderate level of fear, anxiety, and arousal leads to better performance. The Panic Program is designed to help you recognize your fear response, and to help you realize that your fear is a normal body function. What we€™d like you to work on is recognizing how your fear response works in relation to your panic attacks. Brenna, Bilingual Health Educator