Part 1
“Living without Fear is a physiologic impossibility, and that’s a good thing…to a point.”
— Ronn Lehmann
You’re suddenly wide awake. You glance over at the clock. The red numerals read 3:15 AM. Your heart is racing, the sheets are soaked with sweat and your muscles are tense. “It’s the money,” you think to yourself. “How am I going to pay the bills? I’m losing the house. I’ll be homeless and I’ll die in the street.”
You look around. It is dark, but you can make out the familiar outlines of your bedroom. Your spouse is sound asleep. There seems to be no immediate threat to your life and limb. Yet you feel that your body wants to run, run as fast as it can, as far as it can.
Welcome to the world of Human Fear.
Fear may be the most pervasive, most common, and most misunderstood feeling. As humans, we all experience Fear, sometimes on a daily basis. And much of this Fear is irrational in nature. In other words, there is no real, impending physical threat to us.
And yet, these irrational Fears can control our lives, blocking us from getting what we want, preventing us from living the lives we want, and feeling the way we want.
”Yikes!” is a series of articles taking a look at Fear: How we humans are hard-wired for Fear, how Fear can hold us back, and how we can handle it to get better results in our lives.
I want to be very clear right from the outset: This is not about phobias or fear-based psychoses. It is about the normal, everyday Fear that all of us experience.
I also want to draw a clear distinction between Rational and Irrational Fears. Rational Fears are those that are fact-based. For example, if you are standing in the middle of the street and you see a large SUV bearing down on you at high speed, the Fear you feel is Real and Rational. If you ignore it, your life is definitely in real danger.
But if you are sitting quietly in your kitchen when the thought of a giant meteorite hurtling through your roof and crushing you to smithereens causes your pulse rate to quicken and your palms to sweat, you are experiencing an Irrational Fear. One that — although possible — is extremely unlikely. And at the very least, poses no immediate threat to your life. It is not real…or rational.
Irrational Fears are the ones that cause most of our problems. The fear of things that have not occurred (and in many cases, may never occur) can consume our thoughts and energy; energy we need to accomplish more positive things.
One more thought before we dive in: It’s important to know that Fear is not something that can be eliminated. Living without Fear is a physiologic impossibility, and that’s a good thing…to a point. But by understanding and managing Fear, we can enjoy significant improvements in our lives.
In the next article, I’ll give a brief overview of the Physiology of Fear.
Don’t let that scare you….
Part 1: The Physiology of Fear
The human brain is an astonishing thing. Not just yours, or mine, or Einstein’s…but everybody’s. Why? Because the three-pound gizmo that resides in our head has the amazing ability to combine time, space, motion, as well as electrical and chemical energy to create what science folks call “reality.”
This clever little bugger is the most complex thing in the known Universe. It’s made up of 100 billion cells called neurons, and 100 trillion neural connections, and can manage 20 trillion bits of information per second.
The brain has lots of different parts, but to examine how Fear works, let’s look at two important systems:
- The Reactive part is a stimulus-response system that operates out of instinct, and its primary job is ensuring your survival. The key player here is the Amygdala, the Threat Center.
The important thing to know about the Amygdala is this: It considers everything a threat until further notice.
- The Reasoning part is where rational thinking and decision-making resides. The key player here is the Neo-Cortex.
As this part of our brain developed, we went from foraging for existence to exploring space; from covering ourselves with twigs for shelter to constructing amazing structures.
So we’ve got an Emotional system and an Analytical system. When we sense something (through sight, hearing, smelling, and/or feeling), these two systems are activated. But not at the same time.
The Reactive part gets the message much faster than the Rational part. As a result, the Amygdala goes into action in about 12 milliseconds, sending messages to all parts of the body to react to the “threat.” This shows up as increased heartbeat and blood pressure, a diminished capacity to feel pain, a tensing of muscles, and an exaggerated startle reflex.
Oh, and the emotion of Fear.
In short, the Amygdala is preparing the body for Fight or Flight. And all of this occurs before the Reasoning system has even received the news. About 20 times faster, in fact.
Finally, after about 250 milliseconds, the Neo-Cortex gets going. It begins reasoning through the situation, and sends signals to other regions of the brain to determine meaning and decide on an appropriate response.
Now, until the Neo-Cortex gets involved, we don’t know what is really going on. But thanks to how quickly the Amygdala got the message, our bodies have already begun to react as if our very existence is threatened.
But our hard-working Amygdala isn’t finished yet. It also sends out chemical messengers that suppress activity in areas of the Rational system concerned with short-term memory, concentration, inhibition, and rational thought — just in case that pesky Neo-Cortex had other ideas.
At this point, there is a battle for control between the Reactive and Reasoning systems. If analysis of the situation determines that there’s no threat, the Neo-Cortex sends a message to the Amygdala to stand down. But at the same time, the Amygdala is screaming “Danger! Danger” to the Neo-Cortex. And because there are far more cell circuits leading from the Amygdala to the Neo-Cortex than from the Neo-Cortex back to the Amygdala, emotions can often get the upper hand over reasoning.
Admittedly, that’s a highly simplified description of these systems, but the upshot is that we are hard-wired for Fear. And that’s not a bad thing; without it, we wouldn’t last long. However, we expend a lot of energy responding to things that may not be a real threat…or at least, not a real threat to our physical well-being.
That’s because the Amygdala makes no distinction between an Emotional and a Physical threat. As far as it’s concerned, a threat is a threat.
In his book Thinking Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman described these two systems as two brains:
- A Fast Brain which is Automatic, Reactive, Habitual, and Energy-efficient. In the Fast Brain, operations happen outside of conscious awareness and are governed by habit. As a result, they are difficult to control or modify.
- A Slow Brain which is Analytical, Logical, Reflective, and Energy-intensive. In the Slow Brain, operations are more likely to be consciously monitored, deliberately controlled, and relatively flexible.
Kahneman says this is good news…and bad news.
The good news is that the Fast Brain allows us to react quickly to a threat, either to fight or to flee from it. The bad news is that it also hinders the ability of the Slow Brain to more accurately determine the nature of the threat and reason a conscious response.
Once our Fast Brain has equated a particular phenomenon with safety or with survival, it will continue to carry out that program. And it will do so as long as we are not dead, because it really doesn’t care about our quality of life; it only cares about our survival.
In Part 2 of “Yikes!”, we’ll examine how this system developed, and the benefits and costs of Fear.
Ronn Lehmann advises organizations and leaders on the human factors that determine their culture. Lehmann developed the Cultural Audit Process, which is designed to provide an outside perspective of an organization’s culture: what’s important, what’s rewarded and punished, what the rules are, and how people “show up.”
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