THE WEIGHT OF FEAR

I was a fear-prone kid. I don't know why and how. Maybe I was born or made that way. I was scared of everything from going to a photographer and hairstylist to many other people and situations. I often ran to my mother for comfort or protection. The memories of the stories that were told to me from that time were sparked by the old black and white photograph of my brother and me. He was six and I was three years old. I was frightened, inclined to declare a photographer with an antique standing camera and a black cloak an intruder, ready for evil deeds, hence running I had to do, no matter what. But there was my brother who consoled and soothed me. The photo was taken, and now a three-year-old witness is looking at me with wide-open eyes, a worried expression, and barely wiped away tears on his face. There is a brother by my side, who protects me with his closeness and arm stretched over my shoulder as an additional "seat belt."

Adults close to me wholeheartedly participated in this fear-driven existence. They told me that the gypsies would kidnap me, or the hunchback, ugly, toothless witch would jump from the darkness and take me to her lair. That the world is a dangerous place. All of that so I wouldn’t misbehave or allow my curiosity to lead the way. When I think about it now, I realize that induction of fear has been used as an effective method of control and manipulation, not only in children but also in adults. There were other fears to wrestle with. The big one was the fear of beatings. That was a time when corporal punishment was generously practiced at home and at school. My father was a ready enforcer, and I was adept at hiding behind my mother's skirt with a fearful scream and promise that I would never do it again, in order to appease the "punitive expedition" led by my father.

As can be deduced from this description, fear really has its weight, the burden to bear, because of the programs embedded in the matrix of the nervous system with which it came from. Furthermore, there is a willingness to learn rapidly about situations that are dangerous or painful. Living in fear is a subjectively very unpleasant condition and anyone who experiences it wants to get rid of it at all costs. It is a sign of great danger and the bodily reaction it provokes is potent, because, my God, life is on the line. Anticipation of bad things to happen is the anxious mind chitchat. The machinery of the thinking brain is in high gear because trust is not in the cards of the game of life when danger lurks everywhere. "What if" questions don’t offer solid grounds. I became the “holder of the torch” for this mind's activity. A person with an active mind, and grateful for it, even though it continued its work in the silence of the night unable to shut off in spite of the need for rest.

Body of fear

The arousal of the body is enormous because of the maximum physiological mobilization. Let’s see, here we have the brain activation of the amygdala which has a tendency to hijack the rest of the brain and keep it in its grip. Then there are the pituitary gland’s signaling hormones that command the adrenal glands that sit on the top of the kidneys to awaken and inject the adrenalin and cortisol into the blood in huge quantities. Finally, we have an alarm going off in the part of the brain inherited from reptiles that direct us towards attack or escape because of the threat that is in front of us and from which we must save ourselves. One needs to have developed muscles, fast legs, a strong heart, big lungs, and wide-open eyes. Everything is speeded up and focused on one thing: removing the threat. Fear is the primary emotion, the motivating force, maintained and sustained by the evolutionary law of survival, the struggle for life to go.

Now let's give a name to this event. It's called, it's called…. a panic attack. That's right. An innate mechanism that leads the stimulus directly from the eye or ear, and through the thalamus to the above-mentioned amygdala. This almond-shaped structure does not think or argue about what needs to be done, instead, it shouts: “Save yourself!” It is as if an epileptic seizure is occurring in the brain that dominates and inhibits all the other parts that can protest and say: wait, think, control yourself, you can do it slowly. No, no, this voice is not needed in times of great danger.

And when the threat is removed, peace restored, life goes on as if nothing had happened. An image of the animal world where, "zebras don't get ulcers," as the title of a popular book claims, is an illustration of that point. (1) These animals and others just shake off all that fear, the body tension, and then keep grazing the grass allowing the other part of the nervous system, the one in charge of “the rest and digest”, to take over and restore the disturbed balance caused by the threat.

It is therefore clear that "normal fear" is a way of protecting ourselves against threats. It is either unconditional, innate, or conditioned, learned, and implanted into the hippocampus where it creates a memory that is readily activated, if necessary. But from the "normal fear" that comes and protects us, then leaves us alone, things can become complicated, so that the threat experience doubles, triples, quadruples, and then our "normal fear" turns into "anxiousness", as in me, my younger self, at the beginning of this text.

Learning to fear

And then what happens? Remember Pavlov and his dogs, or better yet little Albert, a one-year-old child with whom the father of behaviorism, John Watson, experimented with conditioning fear. Let me remind you. Little boy Albert, a hero of the story, was shown rats and other animals. The boy displayed no fear, he played with and caressed the rat. After this, Watson made an unpleasant noise by striking the hammer each time Albert approached the rat. The child reacted to the sound by crying. Since then, Albert has demonstrated a fear of rats even without any sound, as well as other things reminiscent of the rat (white rabbit, dog, white fur hat, cotton wool, and Watson's gray hair). This is a classic example that proves that fear is quickly learned and spread (generalized). (2)

This is how all phobias are created - unrealistic, exaggerated, increased fears of situations, objects, places, and activities - that have a similar origin as described in the experiment with little Albert. The conditioned stimulus can become any perceived and memorized situation that is associated with danger. For instance, it could be frightening reactions from people around us, our mental state of stress, the pain inflicted, etc. And then, it spreads and spreads. Let me give an example of that. If you experience a panic level of fear eating food in a specific Chinese restaurant, that fear easily spreads to all Chinese restaurants, and then to all other restaurants, and maybe even to eating a certain type of food, and so on. As I said, our brains are always ready to learn how to react with fear to perceived danger, even if in many cases this is just an imaginary thing due to the creativity of our minds. Speaking of creativity, fear, with its inventiveness, can rise and hijack our mind so that thoughts, sensations, and emotions are "filtered" through the watchful and enlarged "eyes" of the amygdala that reigns and determines our reactions. Amygdale is like a king who governs with the arm of the dictator who does not permit freedom of expression with multiple voices and choices. Dum and gloom become a recurrent theme overheating the brain, going in a circle around and around. There's no way out, no place to go except to keep looking for danger because "it is out there, somewhere."

Traumatic fear

Let me return to my younger self again. I was a sickly child. Going to the clinic was a regular occurrence with the ritual of getting penicillin injected into the muscle of my butt accompanied by my crying. Traumatic, right? But the biggest trauma was related to taking the blood sample. Namely, on one occasion, the doctor tried to draw blood from my vein. I cried and cried, and he pricked and pricked without ever finding a vein. And so on indefinitely, until he finally gave up. This event left me with a traumatic memory that was with me for years and that made me very afraid every time I had to draw blood.

Although the trauma I described is minuscule compared to the trauma experienced by people diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, it still resulted in sleepless nights and avoiding giving a blood sample. But has not led to a permanently threatening state with physical and mental changes that leave the individual in a constant state of arousal characterized by insomnia, nightmares, startle response with a violent reaction, memory problems, negative emotions, isolation, and many other symptoms. Imagine living as if your heart wants to jump out of your chest, constant dizziness, fear of your own shadow, the conviction that you would die if you went to sleep and experiencing frightening flashes of images and noises from the past as if they are happening now.

Avoidance

But let us leave this almost unbearable state of being so that we can turn to avoidance, a behavioral response to the perceived threat. It is a gut reaction to flee the situation that is saturated with fear, as salvation, at least for a moment. The reward is there, palpable, a sigh of relief. The explosion is diverted. No panic attack for me today. Sadly, this behavior is the worst strategy in the long run, because in this way fear and anxiety are established, maintained, and lead to a vicious cycle, the so-called positive feedback. In this case, what it means is that a certain situation causes avoidance, which is rewarded by diminishing fear and anxiety, resulting in more situations to be avoided due to the natural tendency to repeat behaviors that lead to pleasure and avoid behaviors that are accompanied by pain. When one avoids a threatening situation, one loses the awareness of the situation that it may not be as dangerous as the perception conditioned by fear dictates. Of course, this behavior is counterproductive and leads to a narrowing of life activities, depression, alcoholism, physical illness, and disability. I wrote about it in this way:

The more we run, the greater the fear becomes and the less our self-confidence and courage to resist it. If we understand fear as a warning signal, rather than as an alarm that we are exposed to a life-threatening situation, then we can approach it with fortitude and curiosity rather than with avoidance, justification, and procrastination. In this way, we do not allow fear to build into our existence. The more we avoid instead of investigate, the more convinced we are that there is something dangerous to avoid. This feedback loop led by fear and avoidance progressively encloses us in our inner prison and its guard of fear becomes the only reality that we recognize. (3)

Allow me to give you a couple more examples of the damaging consequence of avoidance. The first one is relatively mild. It is my wife’s fear of bees. She clearly remembers the traumatic event that started it. She was around 10 years of age. Her family was getting ready for a trip. A station wagon was a car that they all could comfortably fit, parents and five kids. In a hurry, my wife jumped on the back sit without looking where she sat. It was a bumblebee, victim of the weight of her body, crushed with the defense of last resort being the stinger. As a result of this unexpected event, she experienced instant pain followed by a sharp burning sensation at the sting site. She cried out with discomfort and panicked when she had swelling and redness around the affected area. Luckily, no anaphylactic shock. But her mind was imprinted. The scare she felt created a vivid memory and a heightened awareness of bees. She stands guard when she hears a buzzing sound in the distance. She runs into the house if we have a meal in our beautiful backyard and curious bee swirls around. The rational explanation that most bees are not aggressive except if they were under threat of harm, does not hold much water for my wife. But she is getting better. Time heals. The intention of befriending the bees is there. Remaining relaxed in the face of danger is not easy, but she has shown the signs of courage needed to reinterpret the situation that took place so many years ago.

Fear of dentists has more serious consequences when it leads to dodging appointments, which results in tooth decay, deterioration of health, social escapism due to bad breath, and insomnia caused by toothaches. My brother got caught up in this kind of phobia. There was a time when I tried to help him. He was experiencing unbearable pain because a few of his teeth had to be removed. I was a student of medicine and had contacts in dentistry school. It was the only place in town where teeth were extracted under general anesthesia. My brother and I went there because he was in such a condition of suffering that, for the time being, he was able to overcome the pull of his phobic avoidance. While we were waiting for his turn, he had a full-blown panic attack. He was prepared to run away in spite of the pain and suffering. I was the only safety he had at the moment. That's what I was counting on when I stepped into the action. “Look me in the eyes. Do what I do," I emphatically insisted. Luckily, he listened. I demonstrated a technique of slow and deep breathing. We did it together. His hyperventilation, which had intensified the panic, slowly abated. He calmed down enough to be able to proceed. Once the procedure was over, he was delighted. The spell was broken. He was liberated, at least then. He looked as light as a kite. I could literally see the effect of lifting the burden he had been carrying for such a long time. It was just a temporary relief, though. It took him an additional 20 years to completely overcome his fear and, with courage and determination, resolve his dental problems.

You get the picture, right? I realize it's not complete, but I think it's sufficient to illustrate the debilitating power of this type of behavior as a response to anticipated threats. Overuse of avoidance insulates from aversive thoughts or experiences to the detriment of restricted interpersonal and environmental interactions, deteriorating health, and narrowing life choices.

I often heard stories about a forgotten past when I avoided any unpleasant situation, and when I could not, I cried for my mother's comfort. My thoughts are now captured by an aspiration to better understand my method of avoidance to escape the big eyes of fear. Avoidance is related to the process of associative learning that occurs in the brain’s hippocampus and amygdala complex often referred to as the emotional parts of the brain. Avoidance operates on the principle of surviving and remembering dangerous situations. This learning is described as “associative” because neutral stimuli become associated with a feeling of fear. When this happens, the person begins to avoid the previously neutral stimuli because of an irrational need to prevent the activation of the conditioned panic response. When such a fear-bound association takes root, the root branches and entwines more and more situations, and thus avoidance is deployed more and more. The doors of free will close one after the other, and the weight of fear-induced coercion pulls down, prevents, and hinders every step forward.

Once avoidance behavior is well learned, it can become a habit, at which point it loses its connection with potentially harmful situations. This means that humans may use avoidance behavior when there is no threat present anymore. Avoidance has become a habit and like any habit, it is resistant to change. Our mind operates via prediction, always comparing incoming information to what it already knows, expects, or believes. The gravitational attraction of expectation is enormous and to get out of it, it takes effort and commitment, intention and curiosity, courage to learn and transform, and openness to novelty and risk. This a tall order for someone whose fear and anxiety have been the masters of day and night. The time has come to change. Are you with me?

1. Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers, by Robert M. Sapolsky, Holt Paperbacks, 2004

2. Classic Studies in Psychology, by Steven Schwartz, Mayfield Publishing, 1986

3. Reflections of a psychiatrist, by Zelko Leon, Independently published, 2022