Threat Detection

In the armed forces, radars are employed for detecting threats, and detecting friends.  Imagine this data being fed through a computer that is used to analyze for potential threats.  If the programming is set to be too sensitive, it’s possible that even birds might be flagged as threats.  If the system does not have a provision for detecting friends, all signals will be labeled as threats.  In this case, the system needs to be tuned to appropriately detect friends, irrelevant objects such as birds, and to more appropriately identify threats.

Many people have trouble with trusting.  Oftentimes, there was a very good reason that this pattern developed because of something that was done to the person in the past.  However, life experiences sometimes make our internal threat detecting radar overly sensitive and we begin to identify all types of things and people as threatening. Whereas the system for detecting threats worked perfectly well in the past, it may not be tuned appropriately to the current life situation.  Also, with the problem of anxiety, many things are identified as threatening that are not truly threatening.  Psychotherapy and homework assignments can serve to tune the threat detector.