Imagine a man tens of thousands of years ago, at the entrance of a cave at dusk. Something moves in the tall grass. It could be a lion. It could be just the wind. Before he can be sure, his heart is already racing, his breath has become short, his muscles have tensed to run. Those who reacted too quickly were sometimes embarrassed. Those who reacted too slowly, sometimes, never returned.
Today, there's almost never a lion. But there's the message that arrives with a "we need to talk," the call from an unknown number, the notification from your boss at 10 p.m., the wait for a test result, the expectation that someone will disapprove of us. And the body, often, reacts as if the grass had rustled.
Summary: The human mind can anticipate scenarios, and the body responds to these anticipations. This is useful in the face of real risks but can cause suffering when the mental image of a future threat begins to command our attention, decisions, and avoidance in the present.
What is a mental image?
A mental image is the ability to internally represent something that is not in front of us: a scene, a face, a conversation that is yet to happen. Research in cognitive psychology shows that imagining a situation activates some of the same systems used to perceive and react to the world. That's why mentally rehearsing a difficult conversation can leave your mouth dry and your hands cold.
This does not mean that the brain always confuses imagination and reality. Most of the time, we know the difference. The point is something else: knowing that something is merely possible doesn't always stop the body from preparing as if it were probable.
Real Risk and Imagined Anticipation: What's the Difference?
- Real risk is a present threat or one with concrete signs: a car coming toward you, a bill due today, a person being aggressive with you right now. It calls for action.
- Imagined anticipation is a construction of what might happen: "he's going to break up with me," "I'm going to get fired," "everyone will realize I don't know what I'm doing." It may or may not be based in reality. It calls, above all, for verification.
The difficulty is that both produce similar sensations. Anxiety, for the most part, is precisely this preparatory response to future and uncertain threats—unlike fear, which is more connected to an immediate danger.
What Happens in the Body
When faced with a perceived threat, the body mobilizes the stress system: increased heart rate, muscle tension, faster breathing, changes in digestion. It's an ancient and efficient response for short-term situations. The problem arises when it's triggered many times a day by scenarios that never materialize, keeping the person in a state of continuous readiness—exhausted without having run.
What Happens to Attention and Decisions
When a threat occupies the imagination, our attention narrows. We look for signs that confirm the fear and fail to see those that contradict it. This gives rise to well-known patterns:
- Avoidance: Not opening the message, postponing the call, skipping the meeting. It provides relief in the moment and reinforces the idea that the situation was dangerous.
- Repetitive checking: Looking at your phone every minute to see if the person has replied.
- Defensive decisions: Turning down an opportunity not because it's bad, but because the imagined scenario of failure weighs more heavily than the evidence.
Three Everyday Examples
1. The unanswered message. You send an important text and see that it's been read. No reply. Within minutes, your mind creates a complete story: the person is annoyed, they're going to pull away. The body reacts to the story, not the fact—which, so far, is just silence.
2. The "stop by my office." A short phrase from your manager and the entire afternoon becomes a rehearsal for getting fired. When the conversation happens, it was just about a schedule change. The wear and tear, however, has already been paid.
3. Tomorrow's presentation. Imagining your mind going blank, the laughter, the judgment. Part of this is useful—it leads to better preparation. Another part is paralyzing and makes the person avoid rehearsing the very thing that would help.
And What About Freud?
Freud didn't speak of "mental imagery" in the vocabulary of modern neuroscience, but the question of how internal representations mobilize affect runs through his work. In Inibição, sintoma e angústia (1926), he describes signal anxiety: a small dose of anxiety that the ego produces to warn of an anticipated danger, allowing for a defense before the traumatic situation occurs. It's a psychoanalytic hypothesis, not a laboratory finding—but it engages in an interesting dialogue with the contemporary idea of anxiety as anticipation.
Psychoanalysis adds a question that physiology doesn't answer: Why, for this particular person, does this specific scenario carry so much weight? Often, the imagined threat repeats old fears—of abandonment, of rejection, of not being good enough. This is the thread that the series follows in Topography of the Mind and in Id, Ego, and Superego.
An Important Caveat
It's incorrect to say that anxiety "was born with the smartphone." It is much older than any technology. What connected life changes is the frequency of small triggers of uncertainty: notifications, read receipts, after-hours demands. Freud, in fact, was already describing the discontent of life in society in 1930, long before any cell phone.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is imagining the worst always bad? No. Anticipating risks helps with planning. The problem is when anticipation replaces verification and starts to run your life.
Why do I feel my body react even when I know it's just my imagination? Because representing a threat mobilizes the body's preparatory systems. Rational knowledge doesn't immediately turn off the physical response.
When should I seek help? When anticipation takes up a large part of your day, harms your sleep, work, or relationships, or leads you to avoid important situations. A conversation with a mental health professional can help you understand what's behind it.
Key Takeaway
The lion, today, is rarely in the grass. It's in the story we tell ourselves about what hasn't happened yet. The question that remains is not "how do I stop imagining things?", but: whose voice is narrating the worst-case scenario—and how long have you been believing it?
Notes and References
- Freudian hypothesis: FREUD, S. Inibição, sintoma e angústia (1926).
- Contemporary evidence: GRUPE, D. W.; NITSCHKE, J. B. Uncertainty and anticipation in anxiety. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 14, 2013.
- Contemporary evidence: PEARSON, J. et al. Mental imagery: functional mechanisms and clinical applications. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 19(10), 2015.
- History: LANG, P. J. A bio-informational theory of emotional imagery. Psychophysiology, 16(6), 1979.
Educational text, part of the 'Freud in Real Life' series. Does not replace professional evaluation.