Why Do You Always Feel Anxious? Is It Inherited?

You live in the African countryside, or bush. You've been working all day down in one of the fields. It's only about a quarter of a mile from the house. The Sun sinks lower and lower - quickly in Africa. So, you call it a day. Up to the house you go, but suddenly remember you've left a pair of cutters down on the tractor.

You must have those, so the only thing for it is to go down again and bring them back. The tractor's parked beneath a rain tree, a whacking great thing, and all's fine until you actually reach for your cutters.

Then you hear it.

The low, menacing cough of a leopard.

It's close - too darn close, but you can't pinpoint it. It's pitch dark and no moon.

Scenarios spin through your mind at lightning speed. You know that the most likely action from the leopard is to leap on you from a tree, in this case almost certainly the rain tree.

Your mind's shut down, but you know you either reach for your cutters and walk back, or simply stay where you are all night. So your hand snakes out, you grip your cutters, turn, and as though mesmerized, walk back up the road to the house - where you either burst into tears or have an enormous Scotch!

All right, but you're a pretty steady sort of chap and under normal circumstances, even if you are under a bit of stress or threat, you react coolley and calmly.

But supposing you're the opposite. As they used to say years ago; "I suffer from my nerves."

You worry. Constantly. Indeed, sometimes quite literally over nothing at all. This could become very old very quickly and take all the joy out of your life.

Now, jump into my time machine and we'll go back 20,000 years. Yes, you ask, but why does it happen to us these days? We're light years from our ancestors of 20,000 years ago.

Ah, but you see, we aren't any different. We're nothing like as strong, and we don't have cell phones, but apart from that, we're exactly the same as we were all those years ago. What has changed, radically, are the predators. Traumas, that last from one day to the next, horrible bosses, stimulants, 95% of which we don't need, bad food, or rather wrong food. A work load that'd kill a horse and why is that?

Sorry, chaps, but it's greed.

With all these electronics that, if you know how to use them, can make you money with three clicks of a mouse, well, my word, let's try another three clicks and double what we made originally, and before you know it, money's controlling you. Then the bottom drops out of the market, and terrible worry sets into your mind.

So you haven't changed one bit, but your predators have.