More than 2000 years ago, Confucius said "the desire for food and sex is human nature." From an evolutionary point of view, food and sex are not just human nature, but the nature of every animals. In a general sense, survival and reproduction are the driving force of all living organisms.
What, then, distinguish human from other animals and living organisms? In a word, prefrontal cortex (PFC). PFC is the anterior part of frontal lobe, and it is responsible for planning, decision making, and moderating social behavior. The prefrontal cortex makes up far larger percentage of the brain compared to other animals.
Having a prefrontal cortex is a blessing and a curse. This reminds me of these words from Spider Man: with great power, comes great responsibility. It is a blessing because it enables human to think, to plan, to reason, to imagine, to visualize, to discover and resolve conflicts. With this ability, human start to have dominion over the earth. The prefrontal cortex, however, is also a curse because concomitant with the ability to think and plan is the potential to worry and be anxious about the future. Of course, without the motivating feeling of being worried about the future, the prefrontal cortex would be of no use because people may simply not to use it. But the feeling of worry and anxiety, however, at the same time put stress on human mind and body, and when the feeling is too strong and last too long, it does harm to human both mentally and physically. So the prefrontal cortex develops this ability of self-deception to reduce cognitive dissonance and make human feel better, preventing the harm done by anxiety. It reminds me the tragic ending in Shutter Island where Teddy has to be lobotomized to get rid of his self-deception and illusive imagination.
Interestingly, when people are nervous and anxious, they activate the alarm system built in their brain, which prompted a complex change in brain chemicals that inhibit the functioning of the prefrontal cortex. They temporarily shut down their prefrontal cortex, which is like they have a temporary lobotomy! Believe it or not, this is an advantage in a life-or-death situation. The shutting down of people's profrontal cortex rid off their ability of thinking, and they instead depend more on their instinct, getting ready in an impulsive fight-or-flight state. Consider back in the Pleistocene, you are hunting your dinner somewhere in the savanna and suddenly you spot a tiger eyeing you. What do you do? I don't know what you think, but your brain think it's better to make sure you act quickly with every ounce of energy you have. Your brain think it's better not to let you think. This fight-or-flight response wants is an energy-management instinct, direct you to spend your limited physical and mental energy in an efficient way.
The problem is this once advantageous design back in the hunter-gatherer society is not adaptable to modern society, as there are few life-and-death situations. When we under pressure, we feel nervous, and our instinct mistakenly takes current situations like taking an exam or giving a public speech as life threatening, shuts down our thinking and reasoning ability, and get us ready to engage in a fight or a flight. There are also physiological changes corresponding to this feeling of stress, which consume much more energy much more quickly than common situations. Constant stress, as we can easily see here, gives you a feeling of burning down. It is actually true, because your body burns a lot of energy. This condition if lasting long will be detrimental to your health.
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