40 Fun Facts About Anxiety

In Pixar's Inside Out 2, which colour is Anxiety, the frazzled new emotion voiced by Maya Hawke?

Orange Anxiety catastrophizes every situation in 13-year-old Riley's head, all with the stated aim of saving her from bad outcomes.

A tongue-in-cheek Canadian medical paper diagnosed which Winnie-the-Pooh character with generalized anxiety disorder?

Piglet, the doctors joked, could have been spared his heffalump-trapping trauma had he been given an antipanic medicine when young.

Which Peanuts character popularised the term security blanket by clutching one through Charles M. Schulz's comic strip?

Linus made the phrase famous in the 1950s, although children were soothing themselves with comfort blankets long before Peanuts.

Tiny handmade worry dolls, tucked under a pillow to carry off a child's fears overnight, come from which country?

Guatemala's highland legend says a Maya princess, Ixmucane, received a gift from the sun god that let her solve any human problem.

Stanford biologist Robert Sapolsky's popular book on stress explains why which African animals do not get ulcers?

Zebras face stress in short bursts, such as running from a lion, while humans keep the same alarm ringing for months over things like losing a job.

Patient S.M., dubbed the woman with no fear, lost which part of her brain to the rare Urbach–Wiethe disease?

Amygdala damage left her merely curious when handling snakes or touring a haunted sanatorium, yet breathing carbon dioxide could still make her panic.

White coat syndrome, brought on by nerves in a doctor's office, gives a falsely high reading of which measurement?

Blood pressure that is normal at home can climb in the clinic, so doctors often check with a monitor the patient wears or uses at home.

Which insects give their name to the fluttery stomach feeling caused when nerves divert blood away from the gut?

Butterflies first fluttered in print in a 1908 novel by Florence Converse, whose nervous character felt as if he had one in his stomach.

The word yips, for a nervous twitch that ruins fine movements, was reportedly popularised by a player of which sport?

Golf professional Tommy Armour is said to have popularised the word to explain the troubles that made him give up tournament play.

Which tranquilliser, launched by Roche in 1963, was America's best-selling medicine for more than a decade?

Valium sold more than two billion tablets in 1978 alone, having been devised by chemist Leo Sternbach as an improved version of Librium.

Which hormone, known in the United States as epinephrine, surges after a sudden fright to speed up the heart?

Adrenaline also widens the pupils, raises blood sugar and sends extra blood to the muscles, so the body is primed to move at once.

Which hormone, often called the stress hormone, naturally surges in the first 45 minutes after waking each morning?

Cortisol can jump by 38 to 75 percent soon after the eyes open, a daily spike that researchers call the awakening response.

Which three-word phrase did American physiologist Walter Cannon coin to describe an animal's response to threats?

Fight or flight first appeared in Cannon's 1915 book on bodily changes in pain, hunger, fear and rage; he also developed the theory of homeostasis.

Benzodiazepines, prescribed for anxiety since the 1960s, work by enhancing which calming neurotransmitter?

GABA is the chief inhibitory messenger of the central nervous system, which is why these medicines also relax muscles and stop seizures.

SSRI antidepressants, widely prescribed for anxiety, work by blocking the reabsorption of which brain chemical?

Serotonin is mostly made far from the brain: about 90 percent of the body's supply comes from the gut, where it regulates intestinal movements.

Which stimulant blocks the brain's adenosine receptors and, above about 400 mg, raises the odds of panic attacks?

Caffeine even has its own entry in the DSM-5, where caffeine-induced anxiety disorder is listed among the anxiety disorders.

Chest pain during a bout of sudden panic often sends people to hospital convinced they are having which other emergency?

A heart attack has to be ruled out, but panic itself is not physically dangerous and usually peaks within about ten minutes.

People who hyperventilate during panic were long told to breathe into which household item, advice doctors now reject?

A paper bag makes you rebreathe carbon dioxide, a trick devised by New York physician Alexander Winter that can do harm if the real cause is asthma.

Which anti-anxiety pill, developed at Upjohn and approved in 1981, is among America's most prescribed benzodiazepines?

Xanax is a brand of alprazolam, which Upjohn chemist Jackson Hester Jr. had patented a full decade before it reached pharmacies.

The word anxious descends from the Latin verb angere, which carried which violent physical meaning?

To strangle, pain or distress is the sense dictionaries give for angere, so the tight throat of worry is built into the word itself.

Which Norwegian artist said a walk under a blood-red sunset inspired his 1893 image of modern humanity's anxiety?

Edvard Munch first exhibited The Scream under a German title meaning the scream of nature, and both painted versions have since been stolen and recovered.

Which Danish philosopher published The Concept of Anxiety in 1844 under a pen name meaning the watchman of Copenhagen?

Søren Kierkegaard held that people, unlike animals led by instinct, find their own freedom of choice both appealing and terrifying.

Which poet won a Pulitzer Prize for The Age of Anxiety, a long poem set in a wartime New York bar?

W. H. Auden's poem moved Leonard Bernstein to compose his Symphony No. 2, which carries the same title.

Which comedy filmmaker directed and starred in High Anxiety, a spoof of Alfred Hitchcock's suspense thrillers?

Mel Brooks screened the film privately for Hitchcock, who left without a word, then sent over a case of wine days later to show his approval.

Which Oscar-winning actress has described having panic attacks from the age of seven?

Emma Stone later talked her parents into a move to California with a PowerPoint presentation she called Project Hollywood.

Which NBA champion with the 2016 Cleveland Cavaliers revealed that a panic attack during a game led him to therapy?

Kevin Love went public in March 2018 after DeMar DeRozan spoke about his depression, and set up a fund for emotional well-being the same year.

Sigmund Freud's 1909 case study of Little Hans analysed a five-year-old Viennese boy's fear of which animals?

Horses scared the boy, Herbert Graf, so badly that he dreaded going into the street; he grew up to produce opera at New York's Metropolitan Opera.

In the 1920 Little Albert experiment, John B. Watson taught a baby to fear which animal using a loud noise?

A white rat was paired with the clang of a hammer on a steel bar each time the baby touched it; critics now call the famous results uninterpretable.

Which tranquilliser, launched in 1955, became America's first blockbuster psychiatric drug?

Miltown was plugged so heavily by comedian Milton Berle on his television show that he took to calling himself Uncle Miltown.

Which medicines, used by orchestra musicians against stage fright, cost a pistol shooter two 2008 Olympic medals?

Beta blockers slow the pulse and calm tremors, and a 1987 survey found 27 percent of players in the largest US orchestras had used them.

Which inventor built a hug machine, modelled on a cattle squeeze chute, partly to ease her own anxiety?

Temple Grandin saw her college psychologists try to confiscate the prototype, but her science teacher urged her to work out why it calmed her.

Evolutionary psychiatrists explain anxiety's false alarms by likening it to which over-sensitive household device?

A smoke detector is built to go off too readily, and the theory says anxiety is tuned the same way because overreacting costs less than missing a danger.

Taijin kyofusho, a social anxiety built on the fear of offending other people, is a syndrome specific to which country?

Japan's standard treatment for it is Morita therapy, which psychiatrist Shoma Morita developed in the 1910s.

Which anxiety disorder leaves children who talk freely elsewhere unable to speak in settings such as school?

Selective mutism was once called elective mutism, a name that wrongly implied the children were choosing silence when they often wish to speak.

Which 1908 law of psychology says performance improves with arousal up to a point, then falls as nerves take over?

The Yerkes–Dodson law bends by task: extra arousal keeps helping on simple, well-learned jobs but soon hurts on complex or unfamiliar ones.

Brain scans show that dreading which school subject triggers the same brain area that registers bodily harm?

Mathematics has had its own named fear since the 1950s, when Mary Fides Gough introduced the term mathemaphobia.

Nomophobia, a word coined for a 2008 UK Post Office study, is the fear of being without which everyday object?

A mobile phone that was lost, out of battery or out of signal made about 53 percent of the 2,000 users surveyed feel anxious.

Which word did the British press pick up in 2001 for health anxiety fuelled by excessive use of medical websites?

Cyberchondria bolts cyber onto hypochondria, a word whose Greek root simply names the region below the breastbone's cartilage.

Aaron Beck is regarded as the father of which talking therapy, which teaches people to question anxious thoughts?

CBT, or cognitive behavioural therapy, grew out of Beck's psychoanalytic free-association sessions, where he identified what he called automatic thoughts.

Which South African psychiatrist devised systematic desensitization, which eases a fear one small step at a time?

Joseph Wolpe began with laboratory cats, using eating to inhibit their anxiety, a method he named reciprocal inhibition.