You can show this with a lab rat. Rats, being nocturnal creatures, don’t like bright lights, are made anxious by them. Put a rat in a cage whose edges are dark, just the place a rat likes to hunker down. But the rat is really hungry and there’s some wonderful food in the middle of the cage, under a bright light. Massive anxiety—the rat starts toward the food, pulls back, again and again, frantically tries to figure ways to the food that avoid the light. This is anxiety, a disorganized attempt to cope, and this phase is dominated by catecholamines. If it goes on for too long, the animal gives
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