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
Why should we help others when we're stressed?
We should help others who need it, even when we face problems in our lives.
Ok. This sounds like the sort of comment that gets a lot of social media likes but come on, let's get real.
Very few of us are going to do this.
When we're stressed, we're the ones that need help. Our brains are marinated in stress hormones, making us more judgemental and less kind. We're not likely to be helping anyone.
​
But what if told you, let's forget the doing good and helping others bit. What if helping others when you're stressed is actually really good for you? And I don't mean this is some abstract way. I mean being better off tangibly.
You shouldn't need too much convincing about this, but generally, prolonged stress is bad for health. Of course, a certain level of stress is useful to keep us pushing harder. But the human body was never intended to handle prolonged periods of stress, which causes unfavourable biological consequences:
-
blood pressure goes up
-
our amygdala (the region of the brain responsible for fear, anger, anxiety, and aggression) becomes more active and even can even grow physically larger. We become more anxious, more conservative, with shorter tempers
-
our pre-frontal cortex (the region of the brain related to rational thought and decision) can become thinner). In fact, prolonged stress can literally (I'm using this correctly) shrink our brains.
-
our memories become poorer
-
stress hormones (glucocorticoids) interact with other hormones like insulin, causing us to store more body fat, which leads to further health issues.
​
Empirically, the ill-effects of excessive or long-term stress is well captured in literature. This study of almost 29,000 people showed that those who reported a lot of stress and felt that stress had indeed impacted their health were 43% more at risk of premature death.
(there is a caveat to the findings, which we explore here. But for our purposes here, it is broadly accurate that stress is bad for health)
​
We're stressed when we have a lot on our plate. We feel the pressure (whether this is real or created by ourselves or a combination) to do things better and faster. We fear the consequence of missing a certain goal. And in times like this, it feels natural to spend all our time worrying about ourselves.
​
But like many things in life, what we can do to help ourselves is counterintuitive.
​
This 2013 study by Michael Poulin et al examined 846 individuals, from age 34 to 93.
-
The experimenters first asked these individuals questions on how much stressed they have experienced in the past year.
-
They then asked, how much time participants had spent helping out friends, neighbours, and people in the community.
-
Finally, the dates of death were captured through public records.
​
And what were the results? ​
​
|| Major stressful life experience, like financial difficulties or family crisis, increased the risk of dying by 30%. This is consistent with what we went through above. But people who spent time caring or others showed absolutely zero increased incidence of premature stress-related deaths. That's right, Zero!
​
Just one study isn't completely convincing. But it becomes a far stronger case once we examine the underlying biology.
First a quick introduction to a hormone, oxytocin. Oxytocin has gained quite the reputation in recent years, most popularly portrayed as a "love hormone". When we experience positive (and especially physical) contact provided by friends and family, oxytocin gets pumped out in large quantities. Mothers holding their infants are marinating in oxytocin, making them feel really good and strengthening the bonds of love with their child. Similarly, when you get a hug from someone you love, this groovy love hormone is produced, you feel great about life, you're a winner.
​
But oxytocin also plays another role besides the good feelings of being loved (interestingly, there is also a darker side to oxytocin - nothing is ever so simple in neurobiology - but this falls outside the scope of this discussion)
​
Oxytocin is pumped out by our pituitary gland as part of our stress response. While more prominent stress hormones increase your attention to cope with incoming threats, Oxytocin drives us to seek support from others. It makes us crave the physical contact with people we love. Remarkably, it also makes us more empathetic. It makes us more inclined to help and support other people.
(Piglet and Winnie the Pooh in the picture above perfectly demonstrates the beauty of Oxytocin.)
But oxytocin doesn't just make us feel good. It offers protection to our bodies against stress. It's a natural anti-inflammatory. It keeps our blood vessels relaxed when we are tensed up. And most incredibly, there are oxytocin receptors in your heart that helps heart cells regenerate and heal from the damage caused by stress.
​
What an amazing evolutionary trait. Our biological stress response has an inbuilt mechanism to tell us, when we are feeling stressed, when life is difficult, don't keep it all within us. Find someone you trust to share how you feel, but also notice others who are struggling and help and support them. In an alternative but equally meaningful sense, Oxytocin lives up to its moniker as the "love hormone".
​
Or as Stanford professor and author of the "Upside of Stress" Kelly McGonigal puts it:
​
"So when you reach out to others under stress,
either to seek support or to help someone else,
you release more of Oxytocin.
Your stress response becomes healthier, and you actually recover faster from stress.
I find this amazing, that your stress response has a built-in mechanism for stress resilience,
and that mechanism is human connection."
​
​