The next paragraph of Unwinding Anxiety: New Science Shows How to Break the Cycles of Worry and Fear to Heal Your Mind. It gives an example of the process of negative reinforcement. Here’s the first sentence:
For example, if we step out into a busy street, turn our head, and see a car coming right at us, we instinctively jump back onto the safety of the sidewalk.
“For example,” means that it’s an example of an idea. I think that idea is negative reinforcement. I talk about negative reinforcement in my last reply above.
It seems there’s a lot of actions involved in the quote above. The first thing we do is step out into a busy street, then we turn our head, and then we see a car coming right us. After that we instinctively jump back to the side walk. I think each action has a purpose.
“instinctively” ? I wonder if that’s right that we instinctively jump if we get in front of dangerous traffic. Are cats all instinctive? Cuz I see them literally just bolt forward into the traffic “instinctively” and they put themselves into more danger. I don’t think it matters if the action is instinctive maybe? cuz there’s still some fear and an action happening to avoid the traffic.
I think if we, “step out into a busy street,” we had the idea that we can walk through traffic successfully or without getting harmed. We turn our head cuz for some reason? We might hear the car coming. We then see the car coming right at us. That’s like danger that we perceive. And us jumping out of the way is like our way of avoiding getting hit.