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When a snake unexpectedly crosses our path, our body automatically responds. We spring backwards and out heart starts pounding. This is fear response. 

Fear response is a primitive physiological and emotional response to something perceived as immediately, dangerous, according to experts. 

Experts added that when something frightens us, the part of the brain called the amygdala triggers the physiological response we know as fear. 

"After the initial fear response, the neocortex, a more recently evolved part of the brain that's larger in humans than in other vertebrates, then evaluates the situation, drawing on the wisdom of the individual to determine whether there's really a danger."

Fear is an immediate response, whereas anxiety is the anticipation of danger. 

"Most of anxiety comes from some root fear," said Dr. Alan Podawiltz, chairman of psychiatry and behavioral health at the University of North Texas Health Science Center and John Peter Smith Health Network, in a press release. 

"It's preparing myself before I go into that arena," Podawiltz said. "It's like what teachers do before teaching a class and what the military does before an operation ... it doesn't take away anxiety, but it provides better coping mechanisms when the anxiety does occur."

Exercises like yoga and meditation help in the same ways, he added.