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The Idea of the Week
Fear is a core emotion in the human experience. This primal emotion is a strong motivator of behaviors. Take, for instance, a fear of speaking in front of others. When you are standing on stage and you feel fear, the urge to run off the stage and hide away can feel incredibly overwhelming.
Fear is a natural, necessary, and protective response to danger. When the fear response is out of proportion to the actual threat, that’s when it becomes problematic. When we encounter fearful stimuli, the amygdala (the part of the brain that processes many emotions) activates the fear response. It’s not just actual danger that can alert the amygdala.
The amygdala can be alerted by any perceived threat when we believe we are in danger. For instance, people are naturally fearful of heights. If we were to go ziplining, we may believe that we are in danger because of the height, even if we know and trust the safety gear we are wearing.
Another example: if you have had a bad experience with a cat or dog, you may become fearful of cats or dogs. So, even if you meet a very gentle or subdued cat or dog, you may still perceive them to be threatening or dangerous, and the amygdala will activate the fear response.
This commonly happens in anxiety disorders as well. A symptom of social anxiety disorder is that the fear is out of proportion to the actual threat posed by the social situation and context.
Did you know there are 4 fear responses? You may have heard of fight, flight, and freeze, but there is a fourth response called fawn. All of these responses serve the same purpose: keep us alive (first) and safe (second). Here we will briefly define the four fear responses. You can read more about the fear responses in this 7-minute VeryWell Mind article.
Fight: Your body prepares to aggressively confront or stand up to the threat.
Flight: Your body prepares to escape and avoid the danger by removing you from the situation.
Freeze: Your body becomes immobile or sluggish. It becomes more difficult to act when faced with the threat.
Fawn: You try to please or appease the threat to avoid conflict or harm.
The Practice of the Week
Sometimes we get stuck in a fear response. We may operate every day out of this response; our nervous system becomes hypervigilant, constantly activated and scanning for the next threat. We may live out of fear without fully realizing it. Or in the moment, we become so lost to the fear that we can’t determine what the best decisions are that align with our goals and values.
If you find yourself stuck in the fear response, Emma McAdam from Therapy in a Nutshell offers a grounding exercise in this 3-minute video. To get the most out of this exercise, you may want to practice these grounding exercises when you are in a calm state, so it becomes more habitual when you practice them in stressful situations.
Grounding techniques are coping strategies that help us move our nervous system out of its activated, fearful state and into a restful, calm state. Visit our blog for more grounding exercises.
If you would like to take this learning further, sign up for our 5-day Nervous System Reset Course. Every day for 5 days, we’ll deliver proven techniques and guided EFT Tapping exercises to calm your body, focus your mind, and reset your nervous system.
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The Thought of the Week
