Our hunter-gatherer ancestors from over 10,000 years ago had the exact same stress response system we have today.
Our stress response system lives in the lowest, most basic part of our brain: our reptilian brain. This controls our autonomic nervous system, where everything is unconscious and automatic. These are our unconscious and automatic survival systems. When triggered, these systems give us the choice of two responses, fear or anger, and from the moment we choose, we have no control.
We trigger a stress response when we feel threatened on any level: physical, emotional, social or psychological. Our reasons for triggering these responses are subjective; different for all of us, however. What is common to all of us is that we trigger these responses 100% of the time, while we only need them 10% of the time. Thus, 90% of the time they contribute to all our physical and psychological illnesses, which we ourselves are causing.
Why do I say this? Because when we trigger fear or anger, we release stress hormones that put our bodies and minds on full alert or in attack mode. These hormones also cause inflammation. Inflammation is at the root of most physical illnesses, and stress hormones are the cause of all mental illnesses.
Our fear response warns us of danger, while our anger response gets us out of danger. In his book, The Confidence Gap (2011), Dr Russ Harris tells us: “Fear has many names; lack, panic, anxiety, self-doubt, fear of failure, insecurity, nerves, feeling nervous, cold feet, stressing out, tense, stressors, wired, a crisis of confidence and social withdrawal, are just a few.”
“If your only tool is a hammer, every problem is a nail”
Anxiety is brought on by a chronic fear response. Anxiety disorders can be triggered by identifiable and unidentifiable stressful events. While the focus of anxiety is often specific experiences or objects, it can also be activated by unidentifiable objects or situations. At its core, anxiety involves the fear of physical harm and the belief that something will harm us, physically or psychologically. It’s all about fear: worrying, hopelessness, sadness, depression, unhappiness and gloom. It activates a variety of physiological stress responses, such as a rapid heartbeat, high blood pressure, nausea, breathing difficulties, sleep disturbances, and the release of high levels of the chronic stress hormone cortisol, which over long periods inflames our organs and suppresses our immune system. This is how our stress response links to physical illness.
Basically, anxiety is a chronic fear response overload; the candle burns, pumping stress hormones until the anxiety is brought under control.
Fear can be rational or irrational; it’s irrational when it’s out of proportion, like fearing we’ll say the wrong thing or being afraid to fly because we think the plane will crash. Fear can provoke intense, terrifying thoughts and massive overreactions that generally create more fear and anxiety.
With anxiety, we can be afraid of just about anything. It’s all about our thoughts and feelings that provoke and control the constant rational or irrational fears.
For instance, we’ve experienced a pandemic in which rational and irrational fears played a massive role. The fear of getting sick or, worse, dying, from a brand-new virus humanity has never experienced before is a rational fear, a survival instinct. However, three years later, the pandemic is over, but the same fear response prompts some of us to still wear masks, be on alert and continue to protect ourselves; is this rational fear?
The psychological consequences the pandemic still has on the fragile psychological state of a percentage of our society are staggering, to the point of fearing very real ‘monsters’ and creating very real monstrous fear-based scenarios.
Remember: fear freezes us; anger releases us. Constructive anger, determination focused on breaking fear cycles, is always better than being stuck in fear. Anger motivates us, gives us the strength and courage to break out of our fear prisons.
We choose rational or irrational fears, and in doing so, we decide to use or abuse these tools. When we abuse them, we create our own physical and psychological illnesses. With a little knowledge, we can learn to use these tools properly by recognising the fears that keep us frozen and focusing on breaking fear cycles.
The good news is, when we explore the ‘when’, ‘how ’, and ‘where’ the anxiety began and the intensity of the anxiety, we can pinpoint the fearful experience to a specific place at a precise time. Re-living the experience and being supported through the re-living can eliminate current anxiety and dramatically reduce future anxiety, and the stress response causing the fear.
Fear is an emotion and a state of mind. Like all other states of mind, it can be conquered. Fear triggers hormones that keep us locked in fear. When we understand this, we can unlock the fear by triggering different hormones that will create a more manageable mindset, where we can break the cycle by visualising our own safe world. This will trigger ‘safe hormones’ long enough to create enough mind space to organise thoughts and rationalise thinking.
Joan Maycock, MSc Health Psychologist specialised in stress and burnout education, designs, sets up, and presents Stress and Burnout Educational Retreats, Workshops, and 1-on-1 Sessions for private and corporate groups in Ireland. Email: [email protected]