Name this emotion: a person’s heart is racing, their pupils are dilated, their perspiration is increased, and their digestion is stopped. Some of you might have named the emotion of anger. Some of you might have named the emotion of fear. Still others might have named the emotion of surprise.
Fascinatingly, every emotion we experience is based on the limited number of physiological responses listed above. In essence, emotions – whether “good” or “bad” – call our parasympathetic nervous system (our fight or flight response) into action. We have an extremely limited set of physiological responses for a wide array of emotional labels.
Emotions are, essentially, our subjective reaction to the physiological reactions of our pupils, heart rate, perspiration, and digestion. Then we add a twist of cognition.
We answer the question, “what do I think I am feeling?” For example, if we experience the symptoms listed above and see our friends shouting, “Happy Birthday” we generally call our primary emotion surprise and then add the emotion of happy. If we do not like such parties, we still might use the primary label of surprise, but add the emotion of anger.
In other words, we feel this limited set of biological events, we look around and appraise the situation, and then we apply the label. The label determines our subjective emotional experience. Based upon our interpretation of the surrounding events, we experience these physical events as pleasant or unpleasant. Interpreting emotions as pleasant, causes the body to return to homeostasis (back to its normal state) more quickly and, because we are not concerned with protecting ourselves from some threat (real or perceived), we use up fewer physiological resources.
What is even more interesting is that the label can be changed, and by changing the label, we have the power to change what we are experiencing.
This is extremely important when we consider how freely we use the words worry, anxiety, and fear. We use the words worry and anxiety when we are less sure of the reason of source of our concern; the concern is more amorphous. We use the word fear when there is a specific source. One psychologist, Todd Pressman, PhD, has suggested that all anxieties and worries can be categorized into five core fears: abandonment/aloneness, loss of identity, loss of meaning, loss of purpose, and fear of death.
What makes this interesting to me is the idea that if we label more things fear, rather than worry or anxiety, we actually increase the number of strategies we can use to resolve the situation. Let me stress again that all three labels are emotions and all three will, physiologically, result in the fight or flight response. But when we label the emotion as fear, we tend to either feel paralyzed (leaving the “field” emotionally) or we feel powerful and ready to “fight” this dreaded enemy. The focus on “fight” calls us to action and provides opportunities for successful resolution.
So, if we fear an exam, we can “take flight” by dropping the class or we can “fight” to succeed by reading, forming study groups, going for tutoring, etc. If we are anxious about our future if we fail an exam, we are paralyzed by the anticipation of all these potentially negative consequences. If we fear that if we fail this exam, our future will not be as good as we hoped, then we can make the preparations to guard ourselves from that outcome.
Each psychological perspective has a method for fighting our fears. Behaviorism advocates exposure therapy, which involves facing the fear. Once they face that fear, and once those fears are unsubstantiated, the person gains control over the fear. Psychoanalysis involves tracking the source of the fear to a childhood trauma, to a moment when our pursuit of pleasure/happiness was severely punished, an event that led one to fear similar abandonment in the present situation. Humanists examine fears through the lens of ideal/real self and use “should statements” as the clue to the discrepancy between those two parts of who we are. The fear, for them, is often that we will not be loved if show our true selves; we must always present the ideal – an impossible standard for anyone. We fear the conditions that must be met if we are to be loved by those important to us. Cognitive psychologists focus on the irrational aspects of our fears, pointing out to us that most of what we anticipate never happens. In fact, a study done by The University of Pennsylvania revealed that 95.1% of what the participants’ worried about/feared never happened.
That last fact is very powerful. I have encouraged many of my students and clients to write down their fears and to record if it actually happened. We then discuss whether the energy expended in the anticipation of the feared event was “worth it.”
Invariably, the answer is no. Ultimately, it helps them to recognize that the things we lump into worry/stress/fear reduce our resources. They keep our fight/flight system on alert for too long, depleting the ability for it to react when actually needed.
What they often find helpful is the idea that we can re-label those earlier emotions. We can be excited about the upcoming test/job interview/party. We can be joyful about the opportunity to demonstrate what we know. If/when things go wrong, then we can use any the techniques discussed above to fight our fear and resolve the situation.
I think we can sum it up by saying if we focus more on solutions than on the worry/anxiety/fear itself, we will gain control over it and use it to make our lives, and the lives of those we love, better.
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I have always been afraid of dogs but as of recently, I managed to convince and change the fight or flight response when approaching one. This explained my fear in a way since it started from a childhood memory. I have met so many people who have conquered their fears and they ended up thinking back to their past selves like they were being silly and that just goes with what the blog is about and how the things we fear most, usually never happen.
This article speak depth and truth. The things that we tell our mind and our body reacts. I am a science so I understand the biology behind what we think to our body. This is so true I think about my fears and problems more than the solution. I think it was more taught to us more than anything else. When we were children fear was instill in us from a young age by our family and environment and this is deep. I worry so much that it has become apart of me, so to not worry will not feel normal. This will be hard habit to loose but it can be unlearned.
The biology aspect of it with sending out these harmones within in our body then cause several sickness as we now see today. Fear, anxiety and worry put so much sickness that causes the body not be at ease and the organs to be over work. This is what cause so much dis-ease. Some can be explain and other not so much. I guess this is a way our body is expressing it’s stress. Which then put us in more stress mentally and it just become a circle. Unlearning these negative trait of worry and fear is very necessary for the sake of our health.
These fear we think may never come to fruition physically but because it is in our head mentally the brain cannot tell differently. I think it may be as real as it gets although it is not manifested physically. This comes back to we have to train our mind to think differently especially in this world that drives on fear and worry to survive through our interaction and the environment. It will take some time but it can be done for the health of our bodies.
This is a very insightful post. When I was younger, I used to be very afraid of snakes due to how big they could get. But as I got older, I changed my fight or flight response with enchantment towards them, because snakes have a hypnotic beauty to them. I learned to appreciate them instead of being frightened by them.
This is a fascinating piece of writing. I really like how you talked about how flight and fight can help people overcome their fears. I used to love dogs as a kid, but after being beaten by one, I despised them. Now I’m afraid of them for reasons I don’t understand. When it comes to dogs, I’ve been attempting to alter my fight-or-flight response. I’m still afraid of dogs and can’t seem to shake it. I know dogs are useful in our lives, but I’m not sure I can deal with them. I’ll try to overcome my fear of dogs.
Belal
This is a bit of a sidetrack from what the article becomes later on, but your beginning paragraphs reminded me of a situation I was in. My mother was a verbally abusive woman. For the majority of my life, despite deeply loving her, I lived in fear of her. So when she suddenly died of a heart attack, it’s safe to say I felt incredibly conflicted and ashamed. I thought there was no possible way for me to both be upset and glad that she was gone, to be both happy and sad, to hate someone and also love them. It was a feeling that I felt deeply ashamed of and didn’t even speak about. When she was alive and she would berate me for hours calling me fat and worthless, I would wish that she would just get out of my life- even if that meant her dying. Now that she was dead, there was a part of me that just wanted to hug my mother, the woman who would spend hours listening to my favorite bands and watching my favorite shows with me, back.
I guess, in a way, I can tie it back to the bottom half of the article. In a sense, I faced my fears. I mainly didn’t want to open up about it because she was such a well-loved woman. She was an active PTA sports mom who helped anybody and everybody in town, my dad was a cop who worked the nights and slept through the days, and she treated my brother how a mother should. I didn’t even think it was natural for someone to think such horrid things, for someone to think so ill of their own dead mother. Somehow the idea got engrained in me that, because she was dead, that meant I was never allowed to speak anything negative about her- I was convinced people would think I was a terrible person. I ran from this, I went into full flight mode. I shut myself off and wouldn’t talk to those who I cared about.
One day, randomly, my friend showed me a song called “Requiem” by a musical called Dear Evan Hansen. I broke down into tears immediately, as it was a song where a girl named Zoe was singing about her dead abusive brother Connor. It was almost exactly what I was going through. After that, I broke down. I faced my fears and destroyed those anxiety-ridden walls of shame and self-hate. I started to tell those I loved about my experiences and it helped me come to terms with how I felt about my mom. To this day, my feelings still flip flop between love and hate. Some days I can’t even look at a picture of her as it makes me so angry, and other days I’ll stalk her Facebook page for hours just to remember the good parts of her. These feelings, though, no longer drag me down to such a dark place anymore because I confronted my fear of being terrible for having them, for being hated for having them. I enjoyed your post, it, clearly, spoke great truth.
I found this piece of writing quite engaging. I enjoyed how you described and broke down fear, anxiety and worry. One of my greatest fears is water due to me being a non swimmer. I use to enjoy water activities until I fell off a jetski. Years later my fear is still there and just seems to not be going anywhere. Even when I have a life jacket on, I’m still scared to get into deep water. I realized I needed to do something about it on my trip to hawaii. I was all excited about my snorkeling excursion. I put on the life jacket and snorkel gear then out of nowhere my fight or flight senses kicked in and I froze up on the boat and never made it to the water.
I then decided to attempt swim classes. I tried my hardest but couldn’t bring myself to putting my head under water. I believe knowing what can happen causes the worry and fear. I eventually completed the class and felt a bit better about the water. I decided to give jetskis a try again on my last vacation and froze up once again. I really thought the classes were going to help. I just can’t seem to get over the fear. I’m always thinking of what can possibly happen if I fall into the water.
I really enjoyed how one emotion can be used to describe several other emotions. Feeling surprised can be positive or negative depending on what kind of surprise it was and what it meant to the person on the receiving end. Almost like several emotions have several sub-emotions which can also be triggered during certain situations. Not everyone reacts to the same situation in the same way. Interestingly enough, our flight or fight responses are also triggered by different emotions and it is our bodies’ way of getting us through a tough situation.
In my experience, I am having my second child soon and I am scared. However, when I talk to mothers who have already gone through a second birth they all say “it’s much easier the second time around” Does that necessarily make it less scary? No. I was in labor for 12 hours my first time and it was NOT fun. When the reality of having to give birth shines through after the excitement of becoming pregnant, your fight or flight response kicks in and my body helps me fight. Especially when I feel like fleeing would be easier, the motherly instinct kicks in and helps me push through.
This article is so insightful. However it is true that we either respond to our fears by fight or flight. Personally I’ve always had a fear from failing an exam, that I thought that if I failed an exam I would loose my confidence and I may just leave the college. It was so hard to accept that a fail would happen and is not the end of the story. although I’ve noticed that it’s known that without a fail a person would not succeed but this didn’t solve my problem, it was real thing for me. I hope I’ll be able to solve this problem and I’ll make sure to work on it and instead of leaving i’ll make sure to stay and fight.
It’s Interesting how you pointed out that different emotions have common physiological responses. When you first stated the feelings of “a person’s heart is racing, their pupils are dilated, their perspiration is increased, and their digestion is stopped.” I originally related it to a negative emotion such as fear. However, when I read that it could also be a positive emotion such as a feeling of surprise after someone yells “Happy Birthday!” I was surprised myself. I never thought much into the fact that our physiological responses are limited and our emotions have to share them.
I have a lot of anxiety when it comes to school and tests. I found it interesting how you wrote about fear and related it to other feelings such as anxiety and worry. I agree that a fear of failing a course can cause someone to not take it or drop out of it. I never related this to the flight or fight response until you mentioned it. Another idea you mentioned is how we can’t use the words fear and anxiety interchangeably because they cause different reactions among people. Fear of failing a test can cause someone to prepare to work hard and study, but overwhelming anxiety might cause someone to just give up. I agree with this idea and I am going to try it out myself.
Thanks. Enjoyed your article as well. Good luck with your work!
I agree that most of what we fear to happen does not happen. Many people I know, including myself are over thinkers, fearing a situation’s outcome to be that of something negative and playing multiple situations over and over in their minds. One of the biggest things I worry and fear to happen is not doing well on a test, I was never a great test taker and I would work myself up so much regarding the test, saying to myself that I think I’m going to fail or I didn’t study enough or general anxiety around the test itself. When I would go to take the test, palms all sweaty from anxiety, my brain couldn’t actually focus on the test, rather my anxieties around it. Sometimes we work ourselves up so much that we do in fact have the outcome we feared. 9/10 I would get the test back and it would be a decent grade and I would not fail it, but I prevented myself from achieving a grade I was capable of because of my emotions around the test. In high school, some of my friends would simply not show up to class that day so they could take the test the next day, their flight instincts kicking in. I know a lot of women as well who fear their partner cheating on them, causing a rift of distrust in the relationship and thinking up situations that would never actually happen, because of a past relationship or a previous incident with that person.
socially we display ourselves in a way that seems appealing to others, hiding portions of ourselves or our true behavior or goofiness so that we don’t come across as “too much” or so people will like us, showing ourselves in this manner 100% comes out of fear that people will not like you, that you will be looked at from an unflattering angle, and socially that’s not necessarily acceptable.
As for our fears coming from childhood I would have to agree, many of them do since during our formative years we are a sponge for knowledge and trauma. our past traumas play into our adulthood especially relationships, for instance if you had an abusive relationship with your father you could either fear men growing up, and feel untrusting of them in your adulthood, or have an unhealthy relationship with men going forward. It could be less serious, like a fear of spiders, I used to have a reoccurring dream of giant spiders attacking me and for years if someone even talked about a spider I would feel my skin crawl and my heart race, fear kicking in to play.