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
Friend or foe? How quickly and how drastically can the definition of friend or foe change?
Christmas Eve, December 1914
World War 1 had raged for several months (and will go on for almost 4 more years after).
Along the French and Belgian borders, German and British soldiers got up and greeted each other with the daily pleasantries - bullets and grenades. But with no end to the war in sight, and with the first Chrismas of the war upcoming, both sides called for a temporary ceasefire, which would also allow men on both sides to collect and clear the bodies of the deceased in No Man's Zone.
And then something amazing happened. In certain areas, the men who had been trying to kill each other just hours before began to mingle. They helped each other as they cleared the bodies. And even though they spoke different languages, they started to exchange greetings and even the meagre food packs they each had. That night, they held joint burial ceremonies of their comrades killed by the men beside them, singing Christmas carols in different languages. By the next day, one of the most memorable images of the war emerged - the men from both sides were playing football with one another. Some even shared addresses, so that they could write or even visit each other after the war, provided they hadn't killed each other.
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This truce only ended because generals on both sides realised that part of their armies had become too friendly with one another, and cracked down on discipline to remind them that: hey fellas, you're in the very first world war, you're supposed to be killing each other. In 1915, there were fewer occurrences of ceasefires - leaders on both sides were wary of what happened in 1914. By 1916, soldiers no longer had any desire to mingle - the war had gotten increasingly bitter with devastating losses to both sides,
This is a very apt example of how our brain works.
We meet many people in life, and it would be very taxing to evaluate each person individually. To cope, we have developed as a species to quickly categorise people based on simple heuristics. The categories that we pick can be innocuous enough - male or female, young or old, Asian or Caucasian, creative or meticulous; but for each of us, depending on the people we have met and our impressions of them, different categories could carry underlying bias or judgement.
In particular, some categories carry an additional emotional element. An example of this is people who, in some way or form, violate the norms that we are comfortable with. Someone who has a different skin colour and practice different rituals, someone who has a different political ideology, someone from a different religion, someone who supports the rival sports team. These are people whom we consider not to be one of "us", they are one of "them".
What happens when we meet people who are one of "them"? Our amygdala - the region of the brain responsible for fear, anger, anxiety, and aggression lights up. Our insula cortex, responsible for moral disgust triggers. We view them more harshly and exaggerate their flaws (while we are more forgiving of the flaws of one of "us"). We are more anti-social and punitive against "them". We carry significantly less empathy or them. And we see examples of this in our daily lives. In partisan politics, where everyone on the other side is a moron. In religion, where some religions are terrorists and some are paedophiles. In sports, where fans from the other side are boorish or hooligans.
But as this example shows, the categorisation of who is "us" and "them" happens very quickly at the expense of accuracy. Why should this other person be a "them"? Once we consciously review our categorisation, we will realise that for many cases, we over-generalised. After getting to know friends from a different race, they are not the crazy backward folks we thought they were. Those who support a different political party just have a different set of concerns.
Even in this case, in the most brutal of circumstances, "them" can turn so quickly into "us", with the realisation that even while trying to kill each other, soldiers have a lot in common. They fight for the same cause - their country and their families. They have to follow orders. They risk their lives for what they believe. They are all dirty and tired. They are not so different.
"Us" vs "them" is prevalent across human history - whether it is nationalism, bipartisan politics, or racism. To reduce conflicts, we often appeal to a higher sense of morality and values - of equality and fairness and freedom of belief. Unsurprisingly, this hasn't worked.
Which is why this page constantly advocates for a better understanding of the human brain and human behaviour. Because it is only through a deeper understanding that we can effect change, that it is not through higher-order values that we change behaviour, but through the common and ordinary things we share with others.
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