Jul 14, 2025
From Alert to Alarm: The Spectrum of Vigilance, Anxiety, and Fear
INTRODUCTION
Untangling Anxiety and Fear
How is fear different from anxiety?
There are so many words to describe what seems like the same thing! But even though they’re often used interchangeably, understanding their differences can help you manage your emotional responses more effectively.
key takeaways
- Vigilance, Anxiety, and Fear Serve Different Roles: Vigilance is the brain’s initial alert system, anxiety arises from uncertainty, and fear is a focused response to an identified threat.
- Anxiety and Fear Can Overlap or Shift: Anxiety often precedes fear, but fear can emerge instantly when a threat is clear. Both exist to support self-preservation but can become overwhelming if left unchecked.
- Using Anxiety Well: When managed effectively, anxiety can help us engage with uncertainty, foster understanding, and create order rather than overwhelm.
UNDERSTANDING PROTECTIVE EXPERIENCES
How Vigilance, Anxiety, and Fear Develop
Psychologist Arnold Gesell, head of the Child Development Clinic at Yale (1911-1948), conducted studies that help illustrate how these different reactions develop.
Using video recordings, he observed how infants reacted when placed alone in a small pen. What he found was:
Before 5 months: Infants showed no observable signs of distress.
At 5 months: They displayed persistent head-turning, a sign of vigilance and mild anxiety.
By 8 months: The same scenario triggered vigorous crying — indicating that the anxiety had become fear. At this stage, the brain had developed enough to identify a source of distress and mobilize a response (crying, which attracts a caregiver for protection).
What we can gather from this is:
- Vigilance is our initial orienting response in uncertain situations.
- Vigilance collapses into anxiety when we can’t identify the source of our concern.
- Fear emerges once we can identify the source of distress.
Because of this, we consider anxiety to be an “undifferentiated” defense reaction — "I can’t differentiate where the source of my distress is coming from, but I feel it."
You don't need to go through one experience to get to another.
While this progression is based on stages of brain development, once we have the capacity to experience each, we don’t need to go through one to get to the other. You can be immediately faced with a tiger, for instance, and go straight to fear first!
✶ By the way! To understand more why anxiety can be so persistent, see Why You Worry So Much: Understanding & Breaking the Cycle.
COMMON OCCURRENCES
Experiencing All Three in Everyday Life
A great example of how vigilance, anxiety, and fear can all play out together comes from watching horror films. Directors know how to lead an audience through each experience to maintain their full attention:
Vigilance: The music starts to change as the camera shifts your focus — your mind now more alert. “Something’s different and I’m trying to get my bearings.”
Anxiety: As the tension builds without revealing a threat, vigilance collapses into a vague and unspecific unease. “I don’t know what’s going to happen, but I feel uneasy.”
Fear: The monster finally appears, triggering an immediate, automatic reaction. “There is a threat and it’s happening right now!”
If the experience is controlled, like in a movie, it can be thrilling! But when these emotions arise in real-life situations where safety is uncertain, they can become overwhelming.
WHAT SETS THEM APART
Breaking Down the Differences
To better understand how these responses function, let's break them down further.
Vigilance
Description: Orienting and increasing alertness to detect potential changes in the environment.
Focus: Initial alertness
Key Phrase: "Something's different, and I'm trying to get my bearings."
Anxiety
Description: Vague and future-focused, arising from uncertainty about potential threats or outcomes, making it hard to pinpoint the actual source of concern.
Focus: Future-focused, potential threat
Key Phrase: "I don't know what's going to happen, and I'm trying to figure things out or brace for impact."
Fear
Description: Specific and present-focused response to an identifiable and immediate threat.
Focus: Present-focused, specific threat
Key Phrase: "I've identified and located a source of threat, or I'm certain it will happen."
While they can follow this order, each is not specifically required to do so.
Fear can follow anxiety when uncertainty gives way to a clear threat. But they can also exist together:
► Anxiety: “I don’t know what’s going to happen.” (Uncertainty about the future)
► Fear: “I see the danger right now.” (A specific, identifiable threat)
► Both Together: “I don’t know what’s going to happen (anxiety), but I’m concerned because this particular thing is already happening (fear).”
MAKING SPACE FOR THE DISCOMFORT
How to Use Anxiety Effectively
If you can engage with uncertainty and bring structure to it, anxiety can be important for prompting problem-solving and preparedness.
Anxiety becomes overwhelming when it remains abstract, vague, or unmanageable.
Ways to engage with anxiety productively:
Acknowledge the uncertainty. Name what you’re experiencing rather than trying to suppress it.
Seek information. What do you know about the situation? What remains unclear?
Break it down. Instead of treating uncertainty as one big unknown, break the situation and its requirements down into smaller, manageable pieces.
Prepare for possible outcomes. Rather than passively worrying, take action where possible to build your confidence that you’ll be able to handle whatever happens.
Practice acceptance. Recognize that it’s okay not to have all the answers right now. Uncertainty doesn’t need to be resolved for you to move forward. Instead of trying to control the future through worry, trust that you’ll handle whatever comes when the time arrives.
By working with anxiety rather than becoming overwhelmed by it, you take steps to create order out of a situation that feels chaotic. This builds confidence and improves tolerance of discomfort without forcing uncertainty to be eliminated.
✦ Deep Dive: You can learn more about the usefulness of anxiety in The Hidden Value of Anxiety - Even When it Feels Meaningless.
RESPONDING TO WHAT LIFE BRINGS
Finding Balance in Emotional Responses
Rather than seeing vigilance, anxiety, and fear as problems to eliminate, you can recognize them as essential tools for navigating life. Each serves a purpose:
Vigilance keeps us alert to changes in our surroundings.
Anxiety helps us engage with uncertainty and prepare for challenges.
Fear mobilizes us to take immediate action in the face of real danger.
Anxiety and fear only become disruptive when they spiral beyond our ability to manage them. By learning to interpret and respond to these feelings effectively, you’ll be able to appreciate them for their strengths rather than become overwhelmed by them.
Rather than fearing these experiences, you can learn to work with them — to move through your life with greater awareness, resilience, and confidence.
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Jason Peruchini, LMFT
Jason Peruchini is a licensed psychotherapist and anxiety treatment professional who helps people address issues in mental health to live better lives.
