[gallopingcomp]

Psychologists might call it controlled exposure to fear, under conditions where you know (or will soon know) that things will more or less be all right / have a safe space to retreat to. (Which is a bit subjective, but most people seem to have a few things in common that they value for their security.)

When it feels like everything is slipping away from you, it’s easier to become desperate. This could be the result of losing your sense of scale, or it could be the result of a genuine, significant threat (or anything in between).

EDIT: also think of people in general as lying along orthogonal spectrums of (1) psychological vulnerability, and (2) material and social precarity. People high on either scale suffer disproportionately; and tougher times means a wider spectrum of people that are likely to break (whether just to survive or letting the stress get to them, or more commonly both).