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Panic Attacks as a vital part of human evolution

Evolution is the theory of natural selection. It is often referred to as survival of the fittest, but in truth it is the survival of those that are most adapted to their environment. On the great plains of Africa, for example, giraffes have evolved long necks in order to get first choice of the delicious leaves that are high up away from the other animals. Evolution occurs because in every species there is a degree of variation and over time the variants that are most suited to the environment are more likely to survive to the point that they can pass on their genes to the next generation. If we go back to our example then, in a family of giraffes two children will have slightly different length necks. If we say that the giraffe with the smaller neck has an 80% chance of surviving to the point where it can have children of its own then the giraffe with the slightly longer neck might have an 81% chance due to its slight advantage at reaching food in its environment. Then the children of that giraffe will have neck lengths that are a natural variation of the genes that were passed on. Over millions of years, this means that the giraffe’s neck would get longer and longer as a species. If the environment were to change then so would the course of the giraffe’s evolution.

So what were humans doing during this period? The earliest humans were carnivorous hunter-gatherers. The problem was that much of what we ate was very dangerous to catch. We had to survive in a harsh environment in which what we hunted also wanted to make us the hunted. There are various ways in which we evolved to adapt to this challenge. Some creatures evolved their own defences, such as spikes, claws or razor-sharp teeth. What we did instead was to become social beings. We hunted in packs and evolved ever more complex forms of communication and tools that enabled us to defeat our opponents. As the first creatures to reach this point of evolution, we were then able to dominate the planet with our own form of technology and organisation. That explains how we successfully became hunters, but now how we successfully avoided being the hunted.

To do that we would have needed a body that had a super-fast reaction to a perceived threat that enabled us to remove ourselves from danger before being attacked. This is what is called the fight or flight response or, to us, a panic attack. Natural variation meant that some humans were born with a better fight or flight response than others. Those that couldn’t panic fast enough simply had a lower chance of surviving to the point of passing on their genes. This is why panic disorders often run in families and why doctors believe that anxiety is to a large extent hereditary.

Over time the panic response became faster, more efficient and better adapted to our environment with all its potential dangers. At the immediate onset of a perceived danger, the body would launch itself into its panic response by shooting up the heart rate so that the body could take immediate high energy action, focusing the mind so that the individual was fully alert to the danger and could take decisive action and pause all non-urgent bodily functions, such as the processing of food, so that the body is fully devoted to the task of avoiding the danger. The latter also explains why people feel nauseous during a panic attack. At the same time, the body is being flooded with a store of hormones, particularly epinephrine, which gives us adrenaline. An important point to note at this stage is that this process can not be continued for a sustained period of time and so all panic attacks must come to an end sooner or later.

Humans of today can thank their ancestors for inheriting that function that continues to keep them out of danger. Of course, natural variation still exists today. There are giraffes with all kinds of different necks and there are also humans with different functioning panic responses. There are some people whose panic attacks do not work to the extent that they should do and this can cause problems for them in their life if they are ever faced with a potential danger. If you are walking through the jungle and come face to face with a hungry lion, it does not matter how much you want to get away from the lion because if your panic response is not up to scratch your body may not be able to escape the situation without launching into that mode.

On the other side of the spectrum of natural variation is you and me. Our panic attacks are too frequent and too intense for what is required. In earlier times when we were developing this ability as a species we would have been the strongest who evolution would have favoured, but now they are not suited to our environment. As a result, we say that we “suffer” from panic attacks and that we want to “get rid of them” or “beat them”, but is this what we really want? A panic disorder is a bit like a faulty smoke alarm. It is there for a very good reason, which is to protect you from danger, but now it is activating when there is no danger. So what do we do about it? Rarely do we say that we need to smash the smoke alarm or get rid of it completely, because we still want it to go off when the house has caught fire or we’ve simply burnt the toast. The purpose of this book therefore is not to stop your body from ever having the ability to enter into this state.  It is instead to improve the functioning of your panic response, so that the only time that you do experience them you are very grateful that you did in that situation.

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