This article presents a novel theoretical framework suggesting that anxiety is a reprocessed form of fear. While fear originates as an immediate, survival-based reaction in the amygdala, it becomes significantly modified when it enters the neocortex. There, it is reconstructed through meaning-making, memory integration, and future-based predictions. In this model, anxiety emerges as the combination of three components: raw amygdala-generated fear, autobiographical memories, and anticipatory cognitive processing. The paper further argues that consciousness initially perceives experience without interpretation, but becomes trapped when it identifies with the neocortical reconstructions of fear.
