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
Everything happens through a neuron
Goodness, this diagram reminds me of the most boring part of school. Do we really need to know about this?
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Yes. Every action we take, every decision we make, every thought we create, and every emotion we feel happens through a neuron. Neurons are so important we have almost a hundred billion of these in our brains. And each neuron is in turn connected (what we call a synapse) to a vast network of other neurons, numbering up to 10,000 - a quadrillion synapses in total. This is the most complicated network we know of, and it is wired right in our heads, and it is the reason why we are able to do what we do.
Neurobiology is not simple. And a large part of neurology is bloody boring. But don't worry - fortunately we get to cover the exciting bits. Let's get started.
The picture we have above is that of a typical neuron in our brains. There are only a few things we really need to know about the neuron.
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Dendrites (The Ears): First, at the top of the diagram, we see what is labelled dendrites. These resemble tree roots that lead into the cell body. Dendrites act as the ears of the neuron, listening to what other neurons are saying, and feeding this information into the cell body. Remember, each neuron could have thousands of dendrites, with thousands of other neurons feeding information to it.
Axon and Axon Terminals (The Mouth): Leading out of the cell body, the axon is a tube-like structure. At its end, tentacle-like axon terminals. These axon terminals are the mouth of the neuron, communicating messages to other neurons by forming a synapse with a dendrite of the other neurons.
Nucleus (The Switch): The nucleus is where information of each neuron is stored. This includes basic biological information (for example, each nucleus carries your entire DNA code), as well as new information which you have picked up over time. The main characteristic for us to note here is that the nucleus has a threshold before it is willing to talk. In other words, it needs to be stimulated sufficiently before it is willing to talk. Think about the new person in the group who has to be warmed up before he starts adding to the conversation. However, if it is not sufficiently stimulated enough to speak, the nucleus keeps quiet. It is an "all or nothing" situation.
Myelin (The Accelerator): While the nucleus is grey in colour - giving rise to the phrase "grey matter in your head", myelin is white. Scan a brain, and you will notice it is a combination of white and grey. This shows how much myelin there is, stretching from groups of neurons to another. Myelin is a fatty sheath that wraps around the axon, which causes the signal from a neuron to fire faster.
Synapse (The communications channel)
Ranvier Node (For our purposes, who cares?): What's the node of a Ranvier? Good news - not important for our purpose. Don't waste your valuable neurons on this.
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