The Psychology of Fear

Even if fear and anxiety aren't everyone's cup of tea, they play an important role in keeping us safe. If the dog down the street bites you, you'll be less likely to get bitten again if you're afraid of the dog when you see it again.

But what if the reaction goes too far? As a result, if you develop a fear of dogs in general, rather than just the one that bit you, that fear could have a negative impact on your life, not a positive one.

Shmuel Lissek, Ph.D., associate professor of psychology at the College of Liberal Arts, is fascinated by this phenomenon: how fear alters our behavior even when there is no immediate threat. Anxiety Neuroscience Grounded in Cross-Species Translation (ANGST) is led by Lissek and focuses on the brain and body's reactions to learning, remembering, and making decisions that are triggered by fear. To better understand how anxiety disorders like post-traumatic stress disorder might be treated, his team's research can offer light on where psychological states like fear and anxiety take place in our brains (PTSD).

As a graduate student, Lissek developed an interest in the neural underpinnings of psychological states, particularly dread and anxiety. Many of those studies were done on animals, and I wanted to see if they might be applied to humans as well."

Pavlovian conditioning is a process by which we might "learn" new sources of fear and anxiety by repeatedly experiencing negative or damaging outcomes. It is common for people to alter their behavior to avoid the cause of fear, which is an adaptive activity that reduces future harm.

That fear can become a problem if it is generalized too widely, resulting in people avoiding non-threatening stimuli (an object that creates fear) and altering their lives in an effort to avoid circumstances that represent no real danger.

Were humans designed to be afraid of some things?

There have been many deaths caused by some animals throughout human history, such as snakes and spiders. As a result, some researchers suggest that men and women may have developed to have an intrinsic tendency to shun such organisms since they would provide a survival benefit. Snakes and spiders are simpler to make people afraid of than dogs or other "friendly" critters, according to some research. Researchers have shown that the fear of snakes is shared by other primates and may have fueled the evolution of primate intelligence, as humans and other primates developed to avoid the dangers provided by snakes and other snakelike creatures.

What is the Difference between Fear and Danger?

“Danger is the conclusion or the possibility of impending doom (an extremity) while Fear is the perception of the consequence of danger, presence of an unforeseen uncertainty”.

An important thing to recognize, however, is which fears to actually listen to – the ones that will serve us well and protect us from real danger, and all the others – the ones that will keep us from taking action.

Fear is a story we make up in our heads, and when we dwell on it, we feed the stories, which in turn prevent us from beginning new endeavors or achieving our goals. You can probably guess what happens in the story about the person who is "terrified of flying" because she has created an entire story in her head about everything that could go wrong the moment she stepped onto an airplane. Her fear of flying could become so real to her as a result of reading this story.

Our fears are just stories that we tell ourselves, and we can begin to see ourselves as the authors of these stories once we realize this. Understanding that we write our own stories allows us to take control of our narratives, which in turn allows us to face our fears head-on. We now have complete control over how we see the world.

We will be able to conquer our fears if we change the way we write these stories. We'll have a lifetime of memories to reflect on if we can overcome our fear and reach our ultimate goal.

The Fear of Change

One of my best mentors, SamQurashi once said:

“Have you thought about why people fear change? We constantly link it to stress, when it’s the very thing we embrace to escape the pain. Every distraction we create for ourselves is a change. Every book we read, every movie we watch, every song we listen to. The only difference is that it’s a change that we create, instead of a change that happens to us”.

Man is a social animal, he dwells in the external world but when it comes to his internal associations, he some way or the other, escape. But why?

We escape ourselves and unconsciously create a fear. What changes us when we look at the mirror and see things not as they used to. We are not ready to accept the difference, and this resistance creates a void, a void of space and time between past and present. To escape this fear of change, we create a distraction conflict (involving in some activities in order to escape another) and create a secondary change to cover that void, instead of filling it.

The Fear of Unknown

Why does uncertainty make us feel so uneasy? Where does our fear of the unknown come from?

“It is possible that it’s not the change that we fear but the unknown that lies beyond it. What if the unknown was nothing more than a misunderstood resource?

Everything we’ve ever learned and everything we’ve ever achieved was once an unknown. Whatever we cannot control we automatically consider a threat. But when we perceive the unknown as a threat because we think we can’t control it, we instantly make a decision to stop moving towards it. The irony here is that we avoid the unknown to avoid losing control when in fact it is the unknown that has the power to grant us the control we seek”.

- SamQurashi

The way we handle uncertainty may have made sense as we evolved. The brain is always trying to figure out what will happen next. This lets it get the body and mind ready in the best way possible. When things aren't clear, it's much harder to plan, and if you're facing a predator or a human enemy, the wrong move could kill you. So, it might be best to err on the side of caution, either by avoiding the uncertainty altogether or by getting the brain and body ready to react to a change in the situation.

Neuroscientists are beginning to study the brain activity that underlies this type of flawed decision-making. Results so far reveal some clues about how our brains react when faced with uncertainty. A "hypervigilance" or "heightened vigilance" in the amygdala, for example, may reflect an increased awareness of dangers.

One study found that when people are worried about what the future holds, their brains activate an area called the anterior insula, which helps them assess how damaging a particular event will be.

A matter of perspective

Despite the fact that our fears of the unknown are rooted in our shared evolutionary history, people's perceptions of uncertainty can differ greatly, which can have a significant impact on their health and well-being.

People who have a low tolerance for uncertainty are more likely to experience stress when confronted with uncertainty. Intriguingly, once they feel safe, they have a hard time "unlearning" their fears. Participants in electric shock experiments, for example, may learn to link the sensation of pain to a cue, such as a specific image or sound. The researchers, on the other hand, eventually stop administering the shocks.

Most people will eventually stop showing signs of stress when they see the cue. Higher levels of uncertainty intolerance necessitate a greater amount of exposure to the now-harmless cue than lower levels of uncertainty intolerance.

Even if you don't have a mental illness, it's worth remembering that predicting the future is often pointless. Tanovic explains that when we worry, we're trying to mentally prepare for the worst-case scenario. Worrying, on the other hand, does nothing to alleviate our sense of unease, if anything, it serves to heighten it. Accepting that we have no power to change the situation is better, as the ancient Stoics taught.

There are times in our lives when it is difficult to know what will happen, and by learning to accept this fact, we may be better able to deal with the uncertainty that comes with it.