Air Travel Fears Despite Record Safety
About 25 million people in the U.S. experience some form of anxiety when it comes to flying, yet commercial aviation remains incredibly safe. According to the International Air Transport Association (IATA), in 2022 there were only 5 fatal accidents out of 32.2 million flights. This means your statistical chance of being in a plane crash is roughly one in six million flights.
When there are life-threatening events, Johnson said the brain uses survival techniques, like the “fight or flight” response, to protect from impending danger. Even though the body might be responding correctly to the recent tragedies, Johnson said it isn’t taking into account the facts surrounding airline travel safety. You might know that your fear is irrational – statistics show that air travel has the lowest death rates among other forms of transportation – but you can’t reason your way out of the anxiety.
Social Media Comments and Online Reactions
That nervous flutter you get when someone doesn’t immediately like your Instagram post or when you see heated debates in comment sections rarely indicates real social danger. Factors contributing to this increase include academic pressures, social media influence, and concerns about global issues such as climate change and pandemics. The fear of online judgment triggers our ancient tribal survival instincts, making us believe social rejection equals life-threatening exile.
Most online interactions are fleeting and forgotten within hours by other users. Number two: everyone’s looking at me. No, they aren’t. Shift your attention outward. Your brain amplifies the importance of digital reactions because it can’t distinguish between real social threats and virtual ones.
Public Speaking and Presentation Anxiety
A person with social anxiety disorder feels symptoms of anxiety or fear in situations where they may be scrutinized, evaluated, or judged by others, such as speaking in public, meeting new people, dating, being on a job interview, answering a question in class, asking for help, or having to talk to a cashier in a store. This fear often feels overwhelming despite the minimal actual danger involved. Your racing heart and sweaty palms respond as if facing a predator, not a room full of people who genuinely want to hear what you have to say.
Most audiences are understanding and forgiving of minor mistakes. Number three: even if your biggest fears came true – you did say something dumb or someone else was judging you harshly – it wouldn’t be the end of the world. The cognitive distortion, the faulty thinking here is, “It would be catastrophic if I messed up. The reality is that everyone has experienced embarrassing moments, and yours will likely be forgotten much faster than you imagine.
Elevator Rides and Enclosed Spaces
“Yet considering that elevators are used millions of times every day, the number of things going wrong is extremely low,” she notes. Getting stuck in an elevator is one common fear, yet entrapment (as it is known in the business) is highly unlikely, and even in emergencies, passengers can get help immediately. Modern elevators have multiple safety systems and regular maintenance protocols that make them extraordinarily reliable.
Common anxieties, such as fears of enclosed spaces, heights or those related to vertical mobility, can all contribute to making someone uncomfortable about taking an elevator. For some people, social anxiety can also make elevator rides uncomfortable. The fear stems more from feeling trapped or losing control than from any actual mechanical danger, which is statistically minimal.
Overthinking Past Social Interactions
This is called post-event rumination. It’s a nasty little cycle that makes your social anxiety worse. That conversation from three days ago that you keep replaying likely wasn’t as catastrophic as your mind makes it seem. Even if you don’t have a diagnosed anxiety disorder, being very anxious about social situations can cause you to obsess afterward. A common symptom is replaying conversations repeatedly and judging your every action.
Most people barely remember the specific details of casual interactions. These distortions, and especially rumination, are all attempts to protect yourself, to avoid feeling real and vulnerable. You ruminate and obsess in a vain attempt to control what you can’t control: other people’s opinions. Your brain creates elaborate scenarios about what others might think, but these mental movies rarely reflect reality.
Health Symptoms and Medical Anxiety
A health diagnosis that’s upsetting or difficult, such as cancer or a chronic illness, may cause or worsen symptoms of anxiety. This is a powerful trigger because of the immediate and personal feelings it produces. However, many health worries stem from normal body sensations that our anxiety amplifies into catastrophic thinking. That headache probably isn’t a brain tumor, and chest tightness during stress usually isn’t a heart attack.
Stimulus hypersensitivity: In clinical states, fear is elicited by a wider range of stimuli or situations of relatively mild intensity that would be innocuous to a person who does not have clinical anxiety. Dysfunctional cognition and cognitive symptoms: Thinking characterized by overestimation of threat or danger appraisal of a situation that is not confirmed in any way. Our bodies constantly produce minor aches and sensations that anxiety transforms into medical emergencies in our minds.
Job Performance and Career Worries
Workplace stress continued to be a major contributor to anxiety in 2025. The World Economic Forum reported that nearly 60% of employees experienced significant stress at work. Factors such as high job demands, lack of control, and inadequate support contributed to this stress, leading to increased anxiety levels among employees. Yet most workplace “disasters” people imagined rarely materialized or had far less severe consequences than anticipated.
Making mistakes at work feels threatening because of job security fears, but most errors are correctable learning opportunities. This type of anxiety involves persistent and excessive worry. If you have generalized anxiety disorder, you may have an uneasy feeling about most everything. This worry feels difficult to control and interferes with your daily life. Your mind creates worst-case scenarios about getting fired or ruining your career, but these catastrophic outcomes rarely occur from single mistakes.
Financial Security and Money Fears
Anxiety about money often exceeds the actual financial threat we face. Work-related stress, financial instability, and personal relationships are significant contributors to adult anxiety levels. While financial planning is important, the constant worry about theoretical future poverty or economic collapse creates more suffering than the situations themselves warrant. Our brains evolved when scarcity was life-threatening, so they overreact to modern financial uncertainties.
You may overthink plans and solutions to worst-case scenarios. Or you may anticipate disaster and be overly concerned about money, health, family, work and other life events. Most financial worries involve scenarios that haven’t happened yet and may never occur, yet they consume enormous mental energy and create real physical stress responses.
Meeting New People and Social Situations
Events that require you to make small talk or interact with people you don’t know can trigger feelings of anxiety, which could be a symptom of social anxiety disorder. When possible, bring along a companion to help ease your worries or unease. The fear of saying something wrong or being judged harshly in social settings triggers fight-or-flight responses despite the minimal actual social danger involved.
People with social anxiety disorder may worry about engaging in social situations for weeks before they happen. Sometimes, they end up avoiding places or events that cause distress or generate feelings of embarrassment. Most people in social settings are focused on themselves rather than scrutinizing your every word, and social mistakes are usually forgotten quickly by others.
News and World Events
Constant exposure to negative news creates anxiety about dangers that are statistically unlikely to affect us personally. The COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 has had a lasting impact on mental health, significantly contributing to the rise in anxiety disorders. Ongoing concerns about health, economic uncertainty, and social isolation continue to fuel anxiety. Media coverage emphasizes dramatic events precisely because they’re unusual, creating a distorted perception of how dangerous the world actually is.
Grant also provided a simple solution to alleviate aviation anxieties: “Put the phone down.” He recommends reading the news from reliable sources — but not scrolling endlessly online, looking at countless stories on the topic. Your brain treats every negative headline as a personal threat, even though most global events have little direct impact on your daily safety and wellbeing.