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
1. We automatically create stories to explain what is happening in our lives
This is the first of a 4-part series on "Stories"
In part 1, we examine how we automatically create stories to help us understand and explain what is happening in our lives.
In part 2, we explore how some of the stories we create are inaccurate
In part 3, we reflect on how it is very difficult to change the stories that we have created
In part 4, we look at how the stories we create go on to impact our lives
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I'm not a big fan of superheroes. And feeling satiated after finishing most of the popcorn, I promptly fell asleep for most of one of the Avengers movies. That was until I was awoken by the muffled sobbing of a couple of friends around me. Apparently, Ironman or Spiderman (or one of the Mans) died. I was pretty appalled by the audacity of these folks you know, sobbing and all. I was sleeping really blissfully! And here's the main thing: Ironman isn't real!
This is a great example of how much our brains are attuned to stories and how much stories impact our lives. Stories are the way we make sense of the world. We remember and convey the majority of information in story form. We explain our decisions and choices with stories. When we believe in a story, it can lead to heavy emotional investment. And these stories, in turn, shape how we then look at the world, and our place and our identity in it. On a bigger scale, shared stories are what allow large groups of humans to establish norms and function as societies, or even across nations. Think about the stories behind:
Religion: there is a heaven after death, and believing in something gets you there. People from different cultures and races can go to the same heaven if you believe the same religion. The story of religion is so powerful that we can live or die for a reward in our "next lives (if it happens, I'm atheist").
Science: Gravity was discovered because of the apple that fell on Newton (in fact, this is a great example of an inaccurate story. Newton knew about gravity why the apple fell; he just didn't know how gravity worked)
Money: Perhaps the most powerful story of them all, because everyone believes in money, even though they are mere pieces of paper or in this case digital figures. And we believe in money issued by other countries carried by people we never visited or never knew, trusting that piece of paper is really worth the number that is written on it.
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(Yuval Noah Harari's excellent book, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, provides more examples of humans and story-telling)
Try This!
Video is 1 min long
Let's try a very simple experiment. Take a look a the video above. What did you see in the video?
First, everyone notices a larger triangle, a smaller triangle, and a circle.
But then, something interesting happens. You gave the 3 objects a personality - weak, helpless, aggressive, mischievous... And... you formulated a story about the 3 objects based on these personalities. You might even have developed a small dose of emotions for the shapes.
Now let's say you are invited to explain what you've seen. You'll find that it is very difficult for you to describe it factually. You would explain it in the form of a story, with words like "escape", "hide", "attacked", "chased".
You're not alone. This video is an experiment that has been conducted since 1944. And for over 75 years, people from all walks of life across different generations formulated their own stories after seeing the 3 objects and explained it as such.
Let's take a look at another example:
Experiment: Who's better looking?
(Dr Moran Cerf, Northwestern University)
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The experiment:
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Participants were shown photos of 2 people and asked to pick the more physically attractive.
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Once they have selected, they were handed the photo they picked.
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They were then asked to explain why they chose this person.
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At random intervals, the examiner handed them the wrong photo, the opposite of what the participant picked.
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Most participants did not notice that they were handed the wrong photo.
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They went on to formulate a story of why they "picked" the photo, even when they didn't!​
What this means:​
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We create stories to help us explain why we acted or made the decisions that we did.
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Often, coming up with a story of explanation is as important as the decision or action itself. And as this experiment shows, regardless of which photo the participant picked, we are able to formulate a story to justify our choices.
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Another example.
- Same model in both pictures above
- Yet overwhelmingly, people thought that the picture on the right is more attractive.
- When asked to explain their choice, people always formulated a story to explain their choice: the one on the right has a brighter or more confident smile, or she has a more defined jawline.
- The only difference between the 2 pictures is that the one on the right has dilated pupils. Our brain is naturally wired to prefer pupil dilation. Even though we can't consciously tell if someone's pupils are dilated, our subconscious brain is able to and makes the decision for us without us noticing.
- In other words, we didn't know why we preferred the photo on the right. Yet when asked to explain, we just formulated a story out of nothing.
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Another example.. The graph below shows the consent rate of different countries for organ donation after death. You can see the rate of consent on the vertical axis, and the different countries examined on the horizontal axis.
Similar to the previous example, when asked why they decided to consent or not consent to donate their organs after death, people often came up with a story to explain their decision:
I do think it's important to donate my organs, but I am worried if the hospital will handle it properly; or
I think donating my organs is very important for medical purposes and I'm all for it.
Yet, as the graph shows, whether people consent to donate their organs is overwhelmingly due to one thing:
what is the default option?
If the default is opt-in (your organs will not be donated unless you choose to do so), you are significantly more likely to consent to donate your organs than if the default is opt-out (your organs will be donated unless you choose not to). But no one considered the reason for the decision to be the nature of the form, opt-in or opt-out. As humans, we are so used to coming up with a story to explain our decisions that sometimes, we formulate a story even if that's not why we actually made the decision.
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So story formulation comes very naturally to us. When we have to understand or explain something, we formulate stories. But even with just a picture or a few words, we can formulate our own stories. Take a look at the pictures below, of world leaders at the same G7 meeting. But notice how different countries chose different pictures of the meeting? And more importantly, how we develop a different story of who was in charge just based on which picture we see?
This segues into part 2, where we examine how we might sometimes formulate the wrong stories.
