tba
Key points:
1. Fear is a physical feeling (a chemical reaction) and only that. It signifies that a believed danger is spotted. The chemical causes a bit of discomfort (because we are not in balance chemically), but is not necessarily “bad”. The feeling simply passes.
2. Fear is our most essential emotion, a protective gift from evolution, an onboard security alarm system that detects threats It is our best friend.
3. Anxiety is cognitive. It is a device to protect you from potential dangers. It is experienced as free floating dread.
4. Worry is a selected action erroneously thought to protect oneself against a future threat, but it is anything but productive. If one can see its lack of value, it is then true that one can choose to stop doing it.
5. Stress is our body’s response to excessive demands, mental or physical.
Actual threat looks like this:
“See” --> match to threat per memory --> ready body for action --> act (then chemicals dissipate)
You jump back from ongoing car and are saved. Your heart is pumping hard...and then it all slows down. No harm, no foul, but a great benefit: saved life.
The “associative” fears, where we create something that we associate (tie) with a fear, look like this:
We “think” about something that could happen, generating a picture --> brain matches --> starts the process above --> no action to take (chemicals accumulate)
THE FEAR BRAIN: PRIMITIVE BUT HIGHLY BENEFICIAL
The fear brain is primitive, raw, low in detail, ultracautious (like a touchy car alarm), self-preserving, fast (12 milliseconds). The cortex (higher brain) takes 30 to 40 milliseconds, with more detail and a clearer picture. It can send an “all clear” signal to the amygdala. No harm, no harm, no foul - unless we keep pressing the button over and over or sustain it.
We MUST have many false alarms, as the overcaution can keep us alive if there is real danger. We can’t fail to react to a real danger. BUT note that we do not need to generate fear ourselves, as our systems are more than adequate to do so. I REPEAT: we do not need to generate fear ourselves! It is all handled for us!
However, we fail to see this point, this truth. So we use inappropriate, ineffective strategies that will tend to produce no benefit and indeed cause harm if overused. We are the ones causing excess anxiety, needless worry, and stress - and it is we who can choose otherwise. But we must know this truth, be absolutely clear on it, or we’ll keep doing the “stupid” stuff.
Notice that the fear brain is so fast that we cannot in the moment intervene before it has caused something in the moment. We can however intervene through “pre-training” that we engage in on purpose. We have a choose to create a “cool” brain reaction, by deconstructing the false “hot” matches and by also, 20 to 30 milliseconds later thinking a cooling response (which we have to have adequately rehearsed, programmed, implanted ahead of time or we won’t be able to cut the emergency response down so quickly.). If we get really good at this, it will be almost as if we had no experience of threat at all .
The Dalai Lama has “threat thoughts” but he immediately applies what he has learned over and over and over in meditation: “oh, there is a thought”, to which he has attached the truth that “thoughts are just thoughts and are not real and cannot harm me.” The latter would seem obvious, but few people really seem to buy into it - some who say it is true do not adequately implement it, letting it go by as if it were something trivial and not really powerful. So, it is necessary to know, although you’ve heard this before, that it is extremely powerful and it can produce an extreme positive impact on one’s life.
The immediate cooling might not happen as quickly as specified above, as the neural connections from the amygdala to the cortex are far more than the connection from the cortex to the amygdala. This information helps emphasize the reason why our “cortex” seems shut down. Indeed, it is not necessary if we just need to save ourselves in a split second that will make the difference.
Note that the only time that a “split second” will make the difference is when there is an actual physical threat not one “made up” in the brain. And the amygdala response system already can handle those. Our job is to program it a lot better on which things are not actual threats, setting up a system that screens the “stupid” made-ups.
At The Option Institute, a life training organization in Massachusetts, they contend that “all fears are rational”, meaning that there is a “reason”. But the key to reducing fear reactions is always to screen out the “reasons”, using rational thought and facts. Most stimuli to our fear mechanism are incorrect and when one looks at it even more clearly many are absurdly preposterous - and should be identified as so, so one has really programmed it into the brain with emphasis that imprints the idea of absurdity more strongly, more deeply.
However, there are some fears that are programmed in very strongly, from a trauma (actual or just made up in the brain) that added the extra energy to imprint the association into the brain.
We know in our cortex that most snakes are not necessarily a danger, but if our amygdala doesn’t quite get it, the rational part will not rule. The rational part can be reinforced to limit (and sometimes overcome) the irrational response, by programming a bit at a time into the amygdala brain. But the amygdala brain learns best through experiential proof that says “see there is no danger - you did it and nothing happened.”
The latter effect is why “extinction” processes work, where the fear extinguishes itself by experiencing the “threat” a number of times and noting that “nothing happens.” Ironically, the fear is extinguished by doing the thing that triggers the fear. (it is best to do this process with guidance, so you’re not slipping up and reinforcing the fear and so you are instead reinforcing the “look nothing happened” realization, so there is nothing to fear.) Interestingly, there is a chemical which speeds up the learning process about 4 times as fast: d-cycloserine.
If we did not have a learning capability and a memory ability, we would have gone extinct a long time ago. The fear system must have those in order to do a quick, though rough, match in order to act fast to tell the difference between a threat and a non-threat, though it falsely identifies too many as threats, just to “be sure.”
What evolved was a memory system that “differentiated” between what is more important and what is not, as we would not have room to remember everything, including what we had for lunch last Friday. So it evolved that adrenaline helps imprint memories strongly - and since fear causes adrenaline all fear related experiences will create stronger memories that are more accessible. To offset those, we have to be patient and to work a bit harder than doing something once - but it is doable if you so choose to do it.
The fear-memories are imprinted deeply and readily available, to protect us, to save our lives! That’s good!
Other “high importance” events also get a clear imprinting that lasts. We remember forever where we were when we heard of a super tragedy: Kennedy being shot, 9/11.
Note that the amygdala (and the hippocampus, with its pictures) is very imprecise in that it will “generalize”, including anything similar as being something to fear. So it is inaccurate and wrong many times. However, this generalization saved us from getting killed, as we reacted to things that we did not yet have the time to learn about (to know that they were threats). An example is the rat aversion created in Little Albert, which generalized to all furry things.
In any case where we experience any of the extremes in emotion, we have chosen to engage in an "awful feedback loop" - where a small trigger reminds us of a "big" memory and then we entertain that memory through looping from it to an "ain't it awful" and "bad stuff will happen" (or something like that) and we visualize it on the screen of our mind so that we get to experience it again - thereby imprinting it even deeper, even validating it in a sense. Not a good idea. Never continue a sequence that you know doesn't work for a good result! "I know thinking of this does not create a good result and that it is harmful. There is no benefit in it, so I will switch to something else that will get me somewhere or at least feel better." Stopping as early as possible is a key skill to develop.
Fear, or a thought about it, largely happens outside of our control, but how we relate to it is within our control.
Fear is never the problem. How we relate to it and deal with it is.
Legitimate fear happens, we act, it dissipates. Maybe not pleasant, but not really so bad. After all, the experience we have in a horror flick is a fear response - but we know it is not real because we know we are watching a movie that is not real. However, in life, people don’t seem to realize that they created a movie in their minds and that it is not real. Note that most people convert the “fear” chemical feeling into a feeling of excitement. But how can that be???? Because it is actually an “exciting of chemicals”, stimulating the body, and not necessarily unpleasant unless we think them to be so. and we arousing emotionally aroused; stirred. Physics Being at an energy level higher than the ground state
It the initial fear is no big deal and something that can only be aroused at a high level when there is a strongly believed threat it should be rare and no big deal, with alot more benefit (saving our lives) than harm ( a few tightening on muscles and some chemical toxins aht can be cleared out) - unless we make it happen over and over and over and don’t finish off the toxins and tensions. We create massive stress - but with no value and lots of harm.
And, let’s be clear, WE create that stress. Virtually all the circumstances and people’s actions are neutral if we don’t add anything to them. We know they do not have meanings attached to them physically because different people choose to react differently to identical circumstances and/or people’s actions.
It will never be extinguished as a mechanism, as we cannot change the wired in system, the amygdalae.
Fear can be trusted for our survival. It is a blunt psychological tool that goes into play immediately, faster than we can think, with a cascade of motivating chemicals that cause the body to save us.
THE FEAR MECHANISM
The mechanism is well known:
- Adrenaline surges, charging the muscles with energy for immediate action. But first you become a statue.
- Surface-level blood vessels constrict (leaving the skin pale and slightly numb) so we are less prone to bleeding.
- The pupils dilate for broader vision, eyes wide open to get more visual information.
- Senses go razor sharp.
- The body tends to jettison extra weight (urine and bowels).
- Breathing and heart rates speed up, to get more oxygen, but first the breath is held, to go completely silent.
- The primitive brain decides what to do - fight, flight, or freeze.
It is interesting to note that if there is a way to cut the effect of a trauma, by administering the drug propranolol, which blocks the action of adrenaline - which is what fuels the fear system in the first place. Remember that it is adrenaline which causes the creation of a deeper, longer lasting memory record.
Notice that our fears are not our destiny. We do not have to obey "the whims of the amygdala." "We can get over any fear if we approach it the right way."
Surely, we must stop trying to handle our fears in such unwise ways.
