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.
​
Summary:
- Fear and anxiety (and anger + aggression) are always
Are you able to sense fear?
We sweat in different circumstances. When we exercise (obviously)! But also, when our fight or flight reaction is triggered, for example when we feel fear, one response our body produces automatically is cold sweat.
​
But is there really a difference between the two types of sweat? And even if there is, surely we can't easily tell the difference, can we?
Dr Lilianne Mujica-Parodi at Stony Brook University in New York State worked with the US Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency to find out. Dr Mujica-Parodi's team:
-
taped absorbent pads to the armpits of 20 volunteers, who did their first tandem skydive. As these volunteers did their virgin skydive, the absorbent pads collected sweat from these volunteers throughout the jump.
-
the same 20 volunteers were then asked to run on a treadmill with a fresh set of the same type of absorbent pads taped in the same way to their armpits. To ensure fairness, the volunteers for the same period of time as their entire skydive experience, at the same time of the day.
-
The two types of sweat pads were then processed through a nebuliser (that changes liquid to vapour, i.e. sweat to smell).
-
A new set of volunteers were then asked to breathe in the vapourised sweat. (What! isn't that gross?! Well, 1) Sweat by itself is actually odourless; 2) there's really no other way to do this; and 3) well the participants were not told what they were breathing in).
-
The volunteers breathed in the 2 types of vapourised sweat wearing a brain scanner.
-
Their brain scans were then observed.
​
What were the results?
From the brain scanner:
-
When the volunteers breathed in the sweat from skydivers, there was significant activation of the amygdala and hypothalamus - the parts of the brain that triggers in association with fear.
-
There was minimal activation when volunteers breathed in the sweat from the gym-goers.
​
From volunteers' verbal description:
-
Volunteers couldn't distinguish the two types of sweat. Actually, they could barely make out any scent at all, they described both types of sweat as mild and non-aversive.
​
So what this mean?
​
Our brains process a lot of information subconsciously, without us even knowing. This is extremely common - the chair you are sitting in, the amount of pupil dilation, body language, small amounts of hormones fed to a particular person, the subliminal messaging in advertisements, the sticker of a pair of eyes at the bus-stop (this list goes on and on*) - things which you are not even aware of can cause you to behave differently, to make different decisions.
The activation of your amygdala and hypothalamus causes you to become more conservative in your subsequent actions. You become more risk-averse. You're more likely to conform. You are more likely to be harsher to people who disagree or who are different from you in obvious ways.
​
And all this happens without you knowing that it is happening. Like the volunteers who don't even realise that their amygdalas and hypothalamus have been triggered - they just think they are making their decisions on their own accord.
​
Now we make many decisions every day. It's impossible for us to have complete control over every single decision. But for the important decisions, you can come up with a routine to help you minimise errors.
Read more about:
-
How Charlie Munger (Warren's Buffett's partner at Berkshire Hathaway) recommends making decisions