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
What makes a Queen?
Here's a little example that showcases how astounding Nature is, and the interplay between nature and nurture.
​
Take a look at the picture above.
Male bees (known as drones) are, as you might expect, genetically different from female bees(workers), and you see the difference in their appearance above. The physical difference translates to a difference in their functions - drones leave the hive in search of food, while workers largely stay in the hive, managing food conversion and storage (and also their functions and capabilities).
What’s really interesting is when we compare the female Queen Bee with the female Worker Bee.
Amazingly, the worker bee and queen bee are genetically IDENTICAL. Yet the worker bee is smaller, lives for weeks to months instead of the 3-4 years of a queen bee. Not to mention the difference in status and function - the queen is the matriarch and mother to future generations.
​
How is it possible that 2 genetically identical bees can end up so different?
​
The answer lies with epigenetics, environmental factors which cause genes to be expressed differently.
In the case of bees, this comes in the form of "royal" jelly. Yes, that gooey capsule thing you might buy at the beauty store. While all female larvae are fed royal jelly in the first few days after birth, some females are fed royal jelly exclusively thereafter, while the other females go on to a mixture of pollen and honey.
Which larvae are chosen to be fed just royal jelly? From our understanding at present, this seems to be completely random.
Eventually, the first of those fed royal jelly will hatch to become the queen. This first-to-hatch bee will systematically go about killing her yet-to-hatch competition.
So hearing this story, you might think royal jelly is that magical elixir that makes royalty, shaping the fortune of a bee from worker to queen. (No wonder royal jelly it has become a health supplement)
But this is an incorrect depiction. The bigger reason why those that are fed royal jelly become queens (or potential queens) is not due to the royal jelly itself. Instead, because they consume only royal jelly, they avoid consuming honey and especially pollen. It is the absence of pollen rather than the royal jelly per see that makes a female a queen.
So is royal jelly really a useful supplement? You can Google the answer, but what’s amusing is, I’m sure if the correct story had been portrayed (queen = absence of pollen, and not the presence of royal jelly), it will be far less popular.
This is a very useful example for us to understand nature vs nurture. Genes differentiate females and males in the world of bees. But it is diet (specifically what you don’t eat) that differentiates between all the genetically identical females.