If anxious, stressed, people often believe that the situation is dangerous, difficult and painful and that they lack the resources to cope, then it becomes important to understand how we assess risks.

In a previous section, I talked about the two parts of our brain that register and present to us, the concept of threat. And yes, there are the two red bits in the diagram of the brain there - our amygdalae - that look for physical threat and there's the grey crinkly cortex, the thinking part of our brain that also registers dangers.

We often have a greater choice in how we identify danger than we realise.