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
"This is the best thing since sliced bread"
We often hear this expression, "This is the best thing since sliced bread."
Except, of course, people didn't necessarily think that sliced bread was all that good at the start. Like almost everything else, they had to be convinced to try it.
Sliced bread is a surprisingly new invention. The first loaf of bread sliced by machine to be sold only came on July 6, 1928. By then, we were already using refrigerators and driving cars, and we had fought a world war with fighter jets.
But no sliced bread until Otto Rohwedder introduced the "power-driven, multi-bladed" bread slices at his friend Frank Bench's Chilicothe Baking Company, in Missouri USA.
As sliced bread was made available, an advertisement(above) was bought for the local newspaper - The Chillicothe Constitution-Tribune. Interestingly, the advertisements mentioned that:
"While some people might find sliced bread “startling,” the typical housewife could expect “a thrill of pleasure when she first sees a loaf of this bread with each slice the exact counterpart of its fellows. So neat and precise are the slices, and so definitely better than anyone could possibly slice by hand with a bread knife that one realizes instantly that here is a refinement that will receive a hearty and permanent welcome.”
There are some interesting implications from this little story of sliced bread
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Functional Fixedness. Even for something "as great as sliced bread", we needed to be assured that it would work. Note the line in the advertisement - "that some people might find sliced bread startling" - in introducing the bread-slicer, Rohwedder had also faced much scepticism from fellow bakers, who thought it wouldn't work.
A big reason why it is always difficult to introduce something new, even when it seems like a very good idea, is functional fixedness. Once something is presented to us in a certain form, we find it very difficult to imagine how it can be used or designed in another way.
There are some incredible examples of this. Read more about The Candle Problem. Or how wheels on luggage was only introduced in 1970 - after we made it to the moon! You can think of other examples of this in your current life. I just saw a presentation about how people are damaging their ears using cotton swabs to remove ear wax. The cotton swab is intrinsically terrible for ear wax removal but has remained unchanged for a century. But my favourite example is a quote commonly attributed to Henry Ford, "If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” There is no evidence that Henry Ford ever said the exact words in the quote, but it was nonetheless a point he regularly made in his interviews - that customers can easily describe a problem they're having - they need something faster, more convenient, cheaper, more portable. But they can only see solutions as incremental improvements to the current model, and not how the solution itself could take a different form.
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Even the obvious things need advertising. We shouldn't be too surprised by this. Think of the biggest brands in the world - Coca Cola, Facebook, Apple, Amazon, etc. All of these brands still do a significant amount of advertising. This even applies to non-corporates. Take governments for example: you would imagine that because governments formulate and carry out policies that affect everyone's lives, there would be no need to advertise. But think back on your own local politicians and election campaigns - it is essentially advertising. So it's mostly untrue that if the product is good, there is no need for advertising. No matter how good a product is, people almost always need to be reminded. You'll never expect that we had to be convinced to used electricity as well!
