Fear, Worry, and Anxiety Fear can serve as a helpful reaction to acute threats, but because we live in a world in which many of our decisions are made for future goals, many of us experience anxiety, a prolonged and future-oriented version of fear. Anxiety often involves rumination over the far future, but can range from worry about meeting deadlines to the intense fear of hair (Chaetophobia). Anxiety exists as a kind of alarm to let us know to avoid threats to our genes, but more often than not, it ends up resulting in useless false positives.29
