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Chapter 1: What is the biological purpose of fear?
fear is one of the most deeply rooted biological mechanisms that has evolved over hundreds of millions of years in the brains and bodies of animals and humans with one key mission to increase our chance of survival fear is deeply woven into our biology culture politics and day-to-day life We sometimes don't even know what we're afraid of. What we know for sure is that we are afraid too often.
And that's why today's SYSK trending topic is understanding and controlling our fear. In my conversation with Dr. Arash Javanbat, a psychiatrist and neuroscientist who studies the biology and psychology of fear, he'll explain what's happening in your brain when fear takes over. why courage is more trainable than most people realize, and practical ways to become braver in everyday situations.
And we'll get to that right after this. I think it's safe to say that we live in a fearful culture.
Chapter 2: How does modern life trigger anxiety?
When you watch the news or read something online, it seems like there's a lot of things to be afraid of. And certainly we have all experienced moments of real fear in life. When you stop and think about it, fear is a good thing, because if we weren't afraid of anything, we'd probably all be dead.
You'll never know how many times your fear protected you because your fear prevented you from doing something that might have put you in danger. Fear keeps us alive. But a lot of fear seems irrational or overblown. So how do we better understand and get a handle on our own fear? Joining me to help with that is Dr. Arash Javanbacht.
He is a psychiatrist and neuroscientist who currently serves as the director of the Stress, Trauma, and Anxiety Research Clinic at Wayne State University. He's also author of a book called Afraid, Understanding the Purpose of Fear and Harnessing the Power of Anxiety. Hi, Arash. Welcome to Something You Should Know.
Chapter 3: What are practical ways to manage fear and anxiety?
Thanks for having me, Mike. So fear is something humans, and I guess every other creature has, we know what fear feels like, but what is it exactly?
Fear is a reaction to an obvious threat. So if there is a lion attacking me, if a rock is falling over my head, I'm using these examples because these are examples related to the context and environment fear evolved in and the system evolved in. So in these situations, I have an object or situation right in front of me that is perceived as a threat by myself. But then we have anxiety.
Anxiety is more wider sense of apprehension and worry about something that might happen to us. The example I use usually is that if someone is pointing a gun at you, the experience you have is fear. But if somebody tells you there is a gunman on the loose in your neighborhood, the feeling you have is anxiety. You don't know exactly what you're afraid of. The object of fear is not right there.
but there is constant alertness and being on watch and looking for what might happen. A lot of people who have anxiety or anxiety disorders are dealing with this. You're not necessarily worried about one specific thing. Here you worry about a lot of things that may go wrong.
So I think everybody gets the idea that fear serves a purpose. If we didn't have fear, you know, we'd all be driving our cars off a cliff or, you know, running in front of a train. It wouldn't bother us. So fear keeps us alive. But so when is it a problem and why is it a problem?
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Chapter 4: How can understanding fear help us in daily life?
Absolutely. Excellent point. If we were not capable of experiencing fear, we would not exist as a species. We would all have been killed by the nature or by other species or by our own competitors. So we do need fear. But the challenge is that this system evolved. over a very long time to deal with the situations of its environment.
And our fear circuitry has evolved to basically prepare us to the conditions of fight and flight. Back in the time 50,000 years ago, the threats were natural disasters, falling rocks, predators, and other humans who were there to kill us. But the confusion here is within the modern life environment, because basically I say the software has evolved extremely fast and the hardware has not.
So we react to situations of perceived threat in the modern life the way we would react to these situations 50,000 years ago. Example, let's say I am giving a public speech, and I'm scared, and I'm worried I may be judged, and my heart is pounding in my throat, and I'm short of breath, and my hands are sweating, and it is not helping me.
It sounds stupid that the system which has evolved to help us and serve us is now working against us. But if you put it in the evolutionary perspective and context, it's less confusing. So 50,000 years ago, if I'm among my tribe mates and they don't like me, chances are high in a matter of minutes, one of us are dead or I'm exiled or seriously injured.
So I need that fight and flight system to work. And that's the feeling we feel inside of our chest and inside of our guts and stomach.
Well, it does seem, I think anybody who would look back at the things that they have been afraid of or felt fear about or anxiety about in the last six months probably was unnecessary. Whatever it was never happened. It wasn't a threat.
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Chapter 5: What is the difference between fear and anxiety?
It was just a perceived threat in your head.
That's true that fear and anxiety, mostly anticipatory anxiety, is worse than what it really is. And a lot of us overshoot, especially more anxious people, overshoot for threat detection. We have a tendency to catastrophize. Like right before this, I was talking to a friend who has a company with... like 30, 40 employees. And he's talking about some of the challenges, some challenges at work.
And then he goes, well, at worst I can have my own solo practice and work. Well, that was a big jump from going from 30 employees to, oh, I will be able to function as one person after losing all of these. So we do overshoot. And a lot of times I tell people, how about you look back and see on average in the past, every time you worried about something, how much you overshot.
compared to the reality of what you experienced. Then we can use our cognitive brain to basically readjust that next time we are in a situation that we are worrying about. The other thing that fear and anxiety do is that, which is amazing about us. So we as a species are capable of reflecting on the past and planning for the future.
But the problem is that even right now, our listeners are not 100% here. Part of the brain processing is in what happened earlier and in what's about to happen in a few minutes or a few hours or tomorrow, the meeting I have tomorrow, what I'm going to have for dinner, when I go home, what challenge I will have. All of these things are constantly here.
And if we were able to be exactly in here and now, we would be a lot less stressed and a lot less anxious. And if you wanted, we can at some point have a two-minute practice of just doing that.
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Chapter 6: How can mindfulness techniques help reduce anxiety?
Of just being in the here and now.
Yeah, I can guide a one-minute experiment between us and the audience if you want.
Go ahead.
Okay, so I want you all to pay close attention, just with the count of fingers, or just tell me or yourself how many sounds you're hearing at this very moment.
Two.
Two.
Two, how many colors, as many as they are, do you see around you in the room?
Many. Seven, eight.
Seven, eight. And you can count and focus more and more as much as possible because there are different shades even in the same object. Right. And then I want you to feel your shoes. Feel exactly every inch of the shoe. There are parts that the foot is touching the shoe. There are parts that are not touching. There are parts which are less comfortable. There are parts which are more comfortable.
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Chapter 7: What role does bravery play in overcoming fear?
So during this time, could I confidently say you were thinking less about past and the future?
Absolutely. I was thinking about what you told me to think about.
This is exactly mindfulness. I mean, to a lot of people, mindfulness is being with some candle and some weird music in the basement, but this is mindfulness. This is one of the ways we use and we can use, which is very against what's happening these days, because these days you're constantly not here.
You're on your phone, you're on Instagram, you're on Facebook, 200 different contradicting and different subjects in a matter of seconds, you're just scrolling down and up. But then with these experiences, we use our senses to come back to here and now, which is oftentimes the safest moment. And when we are not in there and then, which is just imaginations, life is a lot easier and less scary.
Is that beneficial, though, only for the few minutes I'm counting colors and feeling my shoes, or does that have any kind of residual effect?
Excellent question. So it's a practice. The same way we build muscles in the arms and in the body with going to the gym, this kind of practice basically gradually teaches us to be here and now. And the more and the longer we can, we will basically be able to do it longer and more and gradually. First of all, it's a respite.
If I can, that's a lot of activities we do that recharge our brains, right? I go to the gym and I do go to a boxing gym. I hit the bag, not the people.
doing that one hour then i'm hitting the bag i'm just right there because i cannot think about something else and it's very refreshing so mindfulness any mindful activity in that sense could basically be a reset for the mind basically takes us away for a second from all the worries and troubles and problems we are thinking about or we have made for ourselves in our minds
But then also when we do more and more and more and more and more of this in the midst of the anxious moments and difficult situations, it's easier for us to come back to here and now.
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Chapter 8: How can we effectively cope with fear in the moment?
So it's a practice that we do to basically reset the system and be able to come to here, which is the only real moment in our life.
We're talking about fear and anxiety in everyday life, and we'll be talking about bravery, too, in just a few moments. My guest is Dr. Arash Javanbacht. He is a psychiatrist and author of the book Afraid, Understanding the Purpose of Fear and Harnessing the Power of Anxiety.
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So Arash, you know, I've always been fascinated by this idea, and I understand why. But whenever there's something in the future that you're worried about, it's almost impossible to imagine it turning out well. You know, it's always in the negative. It's like, what if this goes wrong? Nobody ever sits around and thinks, what if this goes right? Right.
I get why, and we're wired that way, but wouldn't it be nice if we could say, this is going to be a piece of cake. This is going to be great. This is going to be the greatest thing that ever happened.
that will be very good and that will be even better if you were able to be have an objective assessment of the threat but like think about why do we worry even about like jinxing things right you're like oh don't say all those good things about it even if you're not superstitious you still have some worry in the back of your mind about it and there is this other part oh if i set myself for a lower level of expectations so if bad things happen
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