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
We filter out information
Take a look at this video (about 1 min long).
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Did you get the same answer?
You probably already know how this happens. He deliberately leaves the 7 of diamonds card just a little longer. But probably 99% of people who ever watch this video, regardless of race or age or gender all arrive at the same answer. What this shows is that parts of how our brains are wired exactly the same regardless of genes or social upbringing or culture. Most of all get the same answer.
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Here's another example.
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Photo Credit: Gary Varvel
We've all seen pictures or videos of the tragic events at 9/11.
The above is a cartoon representation. I have a question.You've seen pictures and videos of 9/11 many times.
Did the cartoonist get the image correct? Were there clouds in the sky on that day or not?
Do you remember? Almost certainly, you don't. Even though you have seen it many times, you missed ot on something obvious.
One more example.
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Most of us might again be familiar with the game where we count the number times people pass a basketball and miss out on the guy in an outrageous gorilla suit walking out in the midst of the passing. How can we miss something so obvious?
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But did you know there is a part 2 to the game? Check out this video below (about 1min 40s).​
Woah!
What did we notice? Well, we notice the guy in the gorilla suit this time. Once we've seen this game played before, we never miss out on the gorilla again. But notice how again, we miss out on other pieces of information, even when they are pretty obvious. There's always something that we miss out on.
What's happening here?
In our chapter of 5 things the brain does, the first 2 things we discussed are:
1) Sensation: your senses collect information of objective reality around you - light that hits the back of your eyes, sound waves from noises or what people say, and of course touch, taste, and smell.
2) Perception: but even though your senses collect information on what is around you, we only perceive some of this information. 9/11 above is a great example - even though we've seen photos so many times, we simply miss out on whether there were clouds.
Our brains tend to focus on certain parts of the information, a bit like spotlight focusing on only one point on stage. This is what we perceive and use to construct our own individual reality. As we have touched on earlier, this is by itself not a bad thing, allowing us to make quick and relatively accurate decisions.
Yet, each person has a slightly different reality, because everyone has a different spotlight of perception - there is always some part of the stage we are not paying attention. We all have had misunderstandings because we missed out on what someone was telling us. We have all jumped to conclusions before. And we've all be tricked by "magic.
We will continue to filter out information because our brains are wired to do so. But we should be wary that in the digital era we are in, it is also particularly easy for others to filter out information for us, whether it is biased news reporting, or our own echo chambers online, where algorithms feed us only information that we like to see. For the things that matter, we have to ask ourselves, have we perceived something incompletely.
You can read more at our chapter on "being accurate on the things that matter".
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