eli5: Why do we shake when we’re terrified?
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Your body enters fight or flight mode when scared. Adrenaline is pumped through your body. It tells your muscles to be ready to fight or run for your life, which can cause them to become twitchy. They’re responding more strongly and quickly than they normally would.
Adrenaline dump. You’ve probably heard of the “fight or flight” response. It’s the release of adrenaline which is a short-term, but considerable boost of energy for when you feel you’re in extreme danger. But when you’re not fighting or fleeing, your muscles still want to make use of that energy, so it manifests in trembling.
Nervous system activated fight of flight mechanism which dumps adrenal fluid into your body. Fast twitch muscle immediately respond and create a warm up mechanism. The body’s engine is warmed up, muscles have blood, the stomach actually drains itself of blood in order to have more oxygenated blood in the extremities. The body no longer is focused on digesting foods, but rather preparing itself to take action.
TLDR : Brain tell Body it may need to go fast, and to keep the engine running while it dumps some adrenaline into your system.
When we’re scared our brain and body act instinctively. We enter a state commonly known as “fight or flight”. When something happens that scares you, your brain goes “oh shit we need to either kill it or run away”. Then it gives you a huge surge of adrenaline to help you do that, even if that’s not actually what you need to do. The adrenaline is left with nowhere to go, so it results in a raised pulse, breathing fast and shaking (among other things)
When you get scared, you wany to run right? Your body understands this and starts building up extra energy to help you do this. However, until you move your body is just full of all that energy and it has to use some of it. This causes your muscles to twitch a lot which causes you to shake.
As others have stated, this response to you shaking when terrified is part of a survival response known as “Fight or Flight”. The shaking part is part of the “Flight side, where in you are preparing to “take flight” or to run away from whatever is making you feel scared. The “Fight” side also makes you twitch and shake too. But in that case it your body building energy to avoid being hurt while being ready to hit back.
Through certain trainings and mental preparedness you can control this response up to an extent. This is more towards those who have anxiety trouble and have over active “fight/flight” responses. These get know as anxiety attacks where their body freezes up and can even cause unintentional self hard depending on their environment.
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