Whether we admit it to ourselves or not, fear is one of the key driving forces behind why we may have heightened tensions or even aggression at the moment, amid the Covid-19 pandemic.
Violence has increased not just in New Zealand, but around the world since the virus took off and the restrictions which followed.
Former police negotiator and WARN International's founder and CEO Lance Burdett told TVNZ's John Campbell it's fear which "causes people to explode".
"New Zealand's not alone in this, it's global, a global phenomena," he said.
"What we're seeing at the moment in Melbourne and even Norway where violence is, we can only restrict people for a certain time and there's a reaction to it and that's what's happening, and it just slowly builds up and builds up."
Burdett explained that people under pressure revert to a "fight or flight" mode.
"The thing about this is it's a mild fight or flight, we don't know that we're fearful," he said.
"It's fear that keeps us safe but it's also fear that causes us to explode.
"At the moment people are feeling isolated and that isolation is causing disconnection and so we feel even more fearful, in which the default is we see anger when we fear."
Burdett said the anger was in areas he'd never have expected.
"Every organisation that I have worked with, doesn't matter what sector, whether it's IT, whether it's the health industry, whether it's Government departments, are under pressure from people coming at them.
"It's not unique to any one organisation, it is exactly the same thing," he said.
"It is the robust discussions they're having, I'm being polite here, it is the anger, the aggression, the nastiness and in fact the violence that is being bestowed on people that shouldn't happen because those people largely that it's being bestowed on are those that are helping, those that we need to help.
"I'm seeing in organisations that I would never ever have thought - first responders as a great example, perhaps in the medical profession.
"Doctors and nurses have always been there, they are, in my opinion, they unsung heroes of what we're going through at the moment and they are receiving at the front end lots of hostility, lots of violence even and for me that's unacceptable."
But Burdett said, "the reason humans have survived as a species is we look after each other".
So how did we get so divided?
Burdett explained how it is "very hard to give a person information that is different from the first emotional connection that we came to".
An example of people latching on to what they see first was toilet paper hoarding.
Burdett told Campbell it was a case of seeing it overseas after it went out on social media.
"The first thing that we read or see is stuck in our head so people in New Zealand, where we manufacture it, saw that and thought 'toilet paper, I've got to go and get that'.
"And so it's important that the information that we give people and that we get is validated in some way has a backing to it, has a substance to it because the first thing we read or watch is stuck."
However, Burdett said that was when people form a bias and start looking for groups of like-minded people.
"The energy builds up in that group, very much, should I say, like radicalisation," he said.
"Gangs, RSAs, we all go to clubs where we know people, where we associate because that's what we are is we are community creatures, and so it forms these little groups."
Burdett said those groups amplify each other, then get angry at others when they are not listening.
He added that social media was terrible for hosting a proper debate and airing issues.
Watch Anger, Anxiety & Us from 7.30pm Sunday, December 12 on TVNZ1, 1news.co.nz, on TVNZ OnDemand, or on 1News’ Facebook page. Read more about the programme here.
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