Why Anxiety Feels So Convincing

And how your emotional brain plays tricks that you can learn to outwit

Still life paintings are well understood as meditations on mortality, but they can also be seen as odes to moments of tranquility (and to the presence required to fully inhabit such moments). Today, we feature the still life work of Swedish artist Brita Granstrom.

“We imagine the full impact of what might go wrong, but don’t imagine our own resilience.” - Howard Hertz

It’s not so often that I read an essay that gives me multiple new ways of understanding something as familiar as anxiety. But this one did!

Today I’m so happy to share with you this piece by Substacker Howard Hertz, on the evolutionary roots of anxiety. Hertz’s essay is chockfull of useful insights (some of which I’ve bolded and annotated for you — see below). Even if you’re already familiar with the idea that the humans who survived and passed their genes on to us are the ones who reacted with greater alertness to real and imagined threats, I guarantee you’ll find other important gems - including insights that will help you outwit unwarranted anxiety.

Read on!