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
Teen attempts suicide after being kicked out of a Whatsapp group he started. More broadly, teenage suicide rates have spiked around the world.
Unbelievable. Surely, teens today are soft and silly? But what if I told you there is nothing surprising about this?
A teacher friend recently shared with me a case he had to attend to. A teen had been kicked out of a WhatsApp group he had started. Although he was gloomy for a few days, it still came as a massive shock to his parents when they found him attempting suicide with pills a few days later. They didn't know it bothered him that much.
Inevitably, most folks would have formulated an opinion on this by now. Perhaps it is shock - how can such a trivial matter snowball to almost a life-ending tragedy. Or perhaps condemnation, that kids today are too soft. Or judgement, that teenagers are just wildly emotional.
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More broadly, teenage suicide is an increasingly serious problem all around the world. According to the National Center for Health Statistics in the US here and here, suicide is the second-leading cause of death among adolescents and young adults aged 15-24. Results from the 2019 Youth Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System show that in 2018, 18.8% of high school students seriously considered attempting suicide and 8.9% attempted suicide.
When I am at, in Singapore, suicide is the leading cause of death for those aged 10-29. The number of suicides have been steadily rising; 2019 saw a record high for 10-29 suicides.
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So what's happening? Is it true that this generation has gotten softer. And has this led to higher rates of suicides?
Here is where we can see the value of neuroscience. If we take the time to objectively understand the teenage brain, we will see that there is nothing unexpected about this.
Almost everything with regards to teenage behaviour can be traced to 1 feature:
|| In our teenage years, our brain is not fully developed. The most rational part of our brain, the frontal cortex, is only about half-formed. (You can see this in the top left corner of the picture above). What does the frontal cortex do? Rational thinking. Long-term strategy. Gratification postponement. Emotional regulation. These are more challenging for teens as their frontal cortex develops.
Additionally, at this age, the emotional regions and neurochemical systems in our brains are already running at full steam. (In some instances, more active than they will ever be at any other point in life).
When a teenager gets a bad grade for a test, the immediate emotional impulse is that they might think "I'm not smart, I'm not as good as everyone else." With the maturation of the frontal cortex, we are able to reappraise the situation to appreciate context - "It's not that I am dumb, but I did not study as hard as others" or "I need to change my study methods to have more practice and less theory." A mature frontal cortex has a higher chance to reframe the issue to be less absolute and more nuanced (as most issues are), taking into account variables and context, as something that can be changed rather than an innate, fixed condition.
(Two small caveats: 1) rationality doesn't mean smarts; in our teens, we are eminently able to solve complex logic puzzles. Some of the best chess players emerge in their teens; 2) being driven by emotions are not necessarily a bad thing. In our older years, our rational regions might in-fact over-regulate, making us stick to what we are familiar with and be less creative).
A half-baked frontal cortex and a fully functioning (in fact, super-functioning) emotional and hormonal systems is the main explanation for everything unique about teenagers. It explains why teens are so creative and yet destructive, selfish and yet selfless, needy and yet impulsive, impossible to deal with at times and yet world-changing.
And, as we shall see below, it also explains why teenagers are much more sensitive to peer approval and social inclusion, to feel like they belong and are accepted.
Consider these 2 questions:
"What do you think others think of you?"
"What do you think of yourself?"
For most of us, the answers overlap, but only to some extent. There are major differences between how we see ourselves and how we think others see us. We know that there are parts of us that others simply don't see, don't understand, or misunderstand. Moreover, while we do take into account what others think, we don't necessarily agree with all of their views.
This is corroborated by neuroimaging studies: when asked the 2 questions, 2 different circuits (involving the rational frontal cortex and the emotional limbic system) activate in the adult brain. The 2 circuits have some overlap - certain groups of neurons are activated in both. But there's also difference - certain neural networks are unique and activate for only one of the 2 questions. Exactly as we would expect.
But what about teenagers? When asked the 2 questions, the circuits that activate in the brain are the same. Teens have tremendous sensitivity to what peers think of them. With a still-developing frontal cortex, our identity as teenagers is shaped a lot by the views of others.
Check out the 2 papers below for more information: Amanda Guyer et al at the National Institute of Mental Health; and Bregtje Gunther Moor et al from Universities of Amsterdam and Leiden.
So teenagers are especially bothered by what others think of them. What happens when they feel that others do not think much of them, when they feel snubbed or excluded?
Here we turn to the Cyberball paradigm, a simple yet effective experiment developed by Naomi Eisenberger of UCLA. Cyberball is an online game which involves 3 "players". They each have a character in the game which is simple enough - they would toss a virtual ball among themselves. The players get to pick whom to toss the ball to next. Ostensibly, there are 3 human players, but in reality, there is only 1 human - the participant; the other 2 players are a computer program run by the experimenter.
The participant is hooked up to a brain scanner so that his/her neural patterns can be observed. At first, the game takes place fairly normally. All 3 players are involved, and the ball is thrown to each player roughly the same number of times.
After a while, the experiment really starts - the 2 players represented by the computer program stop passing the ball to the human player altogether. The participant is made to feel excluded.
When we look at adult brain scans, 2 things happen:
1) Initially, there is activation of the Periaqueductal Gray, Amygdala, Insular Cortex, and Anterior Cingulate, - these are the regions that regulate pain, anger, disgust, and perception respectively. The participant is hurt by the exclusion.
2) But soon, the prefrontal cortex activates, and modulates the brain regions above. The more the prefrontal cortex activates, the less subjects are likely to be upset, and the more they would think: "Why get angry? It's just a game with strangers! It doesn't mean anything! I have my own group of friends. There is no reason for me to feel hurt."
The prefrontal cortex helps to make sense of the initial emotions by adding a layer of perspective, meaning, and regulation.
But as we should be familiar by now, the teenager has a half-baked prefrontal cortex. And their results are unsurprisingly different.
A small number do show similar neuroimaging patterns, similar to adults. Initial activation of the areas of pain and anger, but then subsequently regulated by the activation of the prefrontal cortex. These are the teenagers who are least susceptible to rejection; they are able to cope.
But for the majority of teenagers, when social exclusion happens, even in such a trivial and seemingly meaningless game, the prefrontal cortex doesn't activate much. They feel terrible, hurt and upset that they have been excluded, cast aside in a game. Without the prefrontal cortex's perspective and rationalisation, they are unable to move away from the pain from the initial emotions.
Read more about Eisenberger's research here:
This is a good point to segue back to our original story - a teen booted out of his own WhatsApp chat reacts by attempting suicide. On top of this, teenage suicide rates worldwide has been increasing.
We might judge teenagers to be overly sensitive or lacking resilience.
But what does objective truth tell us? The teenage brain is different from the adult brain. All of us have a prefrontal cortex that is still developing when we are in our teens. The consequence is that teenagers are impulsive, take more risks, and are more emotional. Crucially, they weigh the opinions of others more. While all of us are social animals, teenagers particularly value social inclusion & peer acceptability - because how others think of them is how they see themselves.
Conversely, what happens when teenagers feel excluded or think that others judge them poorly? With their stronger need to fit in, rejection hurts them more.
These effects are biological. It is happening to the teenager without him/her really being aware of it. No teen walks around saying please don't judge me, I might act a bit different because my prefrontal cortex is still developing. But the impact is real. Would you judge a person who has a half leg for walking differently? Would you blame an older person for having a poorer memory? Or a person with post-traumatic stress disorder for being overly-anxious? If not, should we blame teenagers for being emotional?
One last question. If teenage brains have always been this way, why are suicide rates rising? Shouldn't teenage suicide rates always be high? We only need to look at the environment we are in compared to the past. With social media and group chat applications like WhatsApp, it's much easier for us to communicate with people all around the world. But this also means it's much easier for people to feel rejected or left out, when they are not part of all these groups which are visible to them.
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Social media also impacts how identities are shaped. Images and lives on social media are curated, appearing much better in comparison to our own lives. Someone overly affected by these comparisons feel that they lead lesser lives with a smaller identity.
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With a better understanding of how we really tick, we avoid subjective opinions and examine objective evidence - how can we help people in a manner that truly addresses their problems.
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It is only with a good understanding that we can understand what is it that really bother teenagers -to realise that the opinions of others weigh heavier on them. That exclusion hurts them more. That where we can most meaningfully help them is in finding and building their identities, beyond what others think of them. And to help them find areas of interest and way of accountability where they can build their confidence and become more resilient.
In an upcoming piece, we will discuss specific steps that we can take to help teenagers.
In the meantime, check out: