When you are afraid, you start going into fight or flight mode. Your body starts prioritising what is needed for immediate survival - screw routine body functions, if you don't make it past the next few moments there won't be a routine to return to. You stop digesting food. Cell repair slows or stops. You stop producing saliva, which is why your mouth goes dry when you're nervous just before making a speech or going into a difficult conversation. Your heart rate and breathing increase to ensure better blood flow. A cocktail of hormones like epinephrine and oxytocin are cued up and produced, which amplifies your body's ability to act (and remarkably, in the case of oxytocin, reminds you to seek help).
Don't be mistaken about what happens when you feel fear. Your body is readying itself to help you face what you fear in the way it knows how.
What causes us to feel fear?
1) Fear occurs to us unconsciously. Do you pause to think, hey, very angry looking snake! Maybe I should be scared. Of course not, it would be too late! Fear becomes much clearer when we examine what happens inside your brain. When you are afraid, the fear/anger/aggression/anxiety centre of your brain - the amygdalas (get used to this name, it's gonna keep popping up) lights up. And we've covered all the changes that happen in your body: your blood pressure, your hormones, your heart-rate. But remember how amygdala is like a train interchange with direct routes to different parts of your brain? There is a direct neural link between our amygdala and your pre-frontal cortex, the rational thinking part of your brain. And if we look closely enough or we think things through, sometimes we realise, argh! it's not an angry snake, it's just a prank toy that your annoying friend had thrown at you. Or if you've handled angry snakes enough times, your amygdala does not light as much. Your blood pressure and your heart rate do not increase as much, you realise what you need to do is to stay calm and slowly back away.
Finally, notice how fear, anger, aggression, and anxiety are processed by the same part of the brain, the amygdala. This is no coincidence. These 4 emotions are closely tied to one another; aggression maybe triggered because one is nervous, angry, or fearful. Being fearful may cause one to react angrily, as a self-defense mechanism. Fear, like all our emotions, happens to us. Mostly, we can't control how it originates. But we can control how it develops by understanding what exactly is causing fear and by choosing the response that dispels it
2) We fear what we are unconfident or uncertain about. Think back on your ancestors doing something they weren't confident or certain off - hunting a massive animal without a weapon, or eating a berry they've never seen before. Doing so would mean a very high chance of seriously harming themselves. Today, after many cycles of evolution, we have been wired based on these experiences.
Think about it. Are you ever fearful of something you've done before, and are good? Brushing your teeth, putting on your clothes, indulging in your favourite hobby (whatever it is)? Of course not. You know you can perform these functions easily. You are confident.
But many of us would have felt fearful and anxious the first time we ventured into something new: using a pair of chopsticks, riding a bicycle, swimming, going on a first date. We were uncertain about these functions, and we were not confident about performing them. However, once we have demonstrated to ourselves that we are able to perform these tasks, we are no longer afraid. The same applies to more challenging tasks. Some of us struggle with: public speaking, starting a business, having a very difficult conversation with the CEO... You are uncertain and unconfident if you can succeed. But once you have proven to yourself you are able to do it, even for the more challenging tasks, you are no longer afraid. People might start off feeling scared about public speaking, but after speech 3797, you're pro The catch, of course, is that sometimes, we are too scared to start.
Even if we were certain of something OR confident about something, many of us will still feel some amount of fear. We might be theoretically certain how we should use a pair of chopsticks, but if we have never succeeded in using them properly, we remain unconfident and will still feel nervous if we had to use them, especially when others are observing. You might also be confident about
3) we fear what is painful. Boxer. climbing 100 flights of stairs or doing 100 burpees. But pain is not just physical but mental. Failure is painful. Being judged is painful.
This is why you procrastinate. You either fear what you have to do bevause you don't know how to do it (you don't fear brushing your teeth for example), or you fear doing something becaue you know it will be effortful
4) we fear what we cannot control
Learn more about your amygdala, the amygdala hijack, the thalamus, the pre-frontal cortex, and how your brain works here.
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Summary:
- Fear and anxiety (and anger + aggression) are always
If you feel like a superhero, would you act like one?
At the risk of offending some folks who have generously spared their time editing this site, I must confess I have no love for superheroes. Just about the only positive I can think of, is that superhero movies are when I get my best naps, a rarity for an insomniac like myself.
And and and... ok before I ramble off, let's get back on topic.
If you could feel like a superhero, would you act like one?
Experimenters from Stanford aimed to find out (read more here):
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30 males and 30 females were invited as participants
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One at a time, they entered a Virtual Human Interaction simulator and put on special VR goggles. In this set-up, participants were transported into a digital cityscape. A voice that gave them a mission: a diabetic child is stranded somewhere in the city, and the participant must find him to deliver an insulin injection.
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Half of the participants had the experience of completing the mission as Superman. They could fly around with arm motions. Speakers gave the impression of wind whistling by, while the floor provided vibrations.
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The other half of the participants had the experience of completing the mission while being flown around in a helicopter. Again, there were sound and vibration effects, making the experience realistic.
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The experiment was set so that within a couple of minutes, both sets of participants will definitely find the sick child. So everyone literally "saved a life" after through the simulation.
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After this experience, each participant was then invited to answer a few questions with an experimenter. During the interview, the experimenter would "accidentally" knock over a cup filled with 15 pens. She would wait five seconds to see if the subject would help her pick them up, and then begin collecting the pens, one pen per second, to give the person another opportunity to come to her aid.
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This pen experiment is a standard test used to gauge empathy.
And the results?
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The participants who flew about as Superman were quick to lend a hand, beginning to pick up the pens within three seconds.
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The participants who experienced the session in the helicopter, however, picked up the first pen, on average, after six seconds. In other words, they started picking up the pens only after the experimenter, who starts picking after 5 secs had done so.
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Overall, the superhero group picked 15% more pens than the helicopter group.
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And while every participant in the Superman grouped helped, 6 participants from the helicopter group offered no help at all.
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So having gone through a superhero experience, even though in a virtual setting, translates to a tangible increase in altruistic behaviour in the real world.
This is also another example of how our behaviour is constantly being shaped by our experiences, some of which we would never imagine having a causal effect on how and what we choose to act on.