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
Shocking uncertainty
What's worse? The pain from something bad happening, or the fear of whether and when it is going to happen?
Let's take a look at some examples.
First, let's start with this George Loewenstein’s study above (PDF of the study is attached at the end of this page). 30 undergraduates were asked how much they would pay to avoid a 120-volt electric shock if it was to be delivered in three hours, twenty-four hours, three days, a year, or ten years' time.
Take a look at the line labelled "shock" in the graph - participants saw no major difference with an unpleasant electric shock immediately, in 3 hours, 1 day, or 3 days' time; they would pay about the same amount to avoid shocks during this period. However, notice that the graph starts to spike upwards thereafter. Participants were willing to pay about 25% more to avoid the same shock in a year's time. They were willing to pay almost double to avoid the same electric shock in ten years.
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So the same unpleasant outcome, an electric shock, is costed differently over time. If it happens fairly soon, it's seen to be relatively less unpleasant. But if we had to wait a longer period of over a year, we start costing it much more. Since it is the same shock, it is the "wait" that makes the difference.
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For the second experiment, we turn to Gregory Berns at Emory University.
32 volunteers agreed to have electric shocks delivered to their feet (the undergraduate life is a life of peril, but hey, all for the sake of learning eh?). This occurred while they were placed in an fMRI brain scanner, where Berns and team were able to observe brain activity (a brain scanner reduces inaccurate reporting from participants).
In phase one of the experiment, 96 shocks were delivered, where the intensity of shocks and the waiting time between shocks were varied, i.e. volunteers did not know when or how bad the shock would be.
In phase two of the experiment, volunteers were given a choice to just wait for shocks to happen (like phase 1), or to get it over with sooner. Unsurprisingly, the vast majority of participants (84%) preferred to get the electric shocks over with quickly rather than endure the delays.
Even more interesting, 28% of subjects dreaded the delays so much that they were willing to endure stronger shocks simply to avoid the wait.
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The brain scans help us to understand more. Volunteers with the greatest dread - those who were the most eager to get it over and done with - not also showed the most significant activity in the regions of the brain processing pain, but also exhibited the most amount of attention.
The activation of pain is easy enough to understand: emotionally dreading a painful event is painful in and by itself. We probably all have some experience of this in our daily lives.
The second observation on attention is equally important - the more attention we pay to something, the more dread is felt, and this draws even more attention, which leads to even more dread. The dread of a negative outcome becomes a dread of the dreading of the negative outcome. The outcome itself hasn't changed, but constantly thinking about it causes more fear, stress, and unhappiness.
Berns and fellow researcher Tor Wager of Columbia University believes this can be an empowering finding. It shows that if we can find a way to distract ourselves, then we reduce the chance of us making ourselves feel more terrible. Take for an example having a dedicated plan to occupy patients before they go for an operation. This eases the stressful dread on the patient, even as the operation itself is the same.
Our third and final example comes from a group of scientists at the Univesity College of London. The full study covered a variety of areas relating to uncertainty, stress, and performance. But the finding in particular that relates is this: subjects who were told that they have a 50% chance of receiving an electric shock were far more stressed than those who were told they would definitely receive the same shock.
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Several points to conclude:
It's natural that we fear negative outcomes. They cause us pain - physically, emotionally, or cognitively.
But there's a second layer of fear/pain beyond the outcome itself. This comes from:
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Uncertainty: not knowing when a negative outcome will occur; and
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Dread: the wait for a certain negative outcome to occur, especially if it is a long wait.
The irony is that the pain/fear of uncertainty or dread is self-created, and could be larger than the actual negative outcome itself. Ultimately, we are the ones that decide how much pain/fear is generated in this second layer of uncertainty and dread. The more attention we place on this, the more fear/pain we feel.
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So what can we do to lessen our fears/pain?
For layer 2, the fear/pain of uncertainty and dread, we can remind ourselves that what we feel rarely makes any difference to the outcome. We can choose to distract ourselves, to occupy our own attention.
For layer 1: the fear of a negative outcome itself, which might make us hesitant to try new things or debilitated by possible failure, check out the pieces on:
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