That's no ghost, it's just the Janitor

Or a brief foray into the psychology of fear

As it’s Halloween and I’m sitting here dressed up as a witch (purely for my own entertainment), I thought it an appropriate day to write something about fear.

Fear is one of the most powerful and primitive of our emotions. In my humble opinion it’s the most primitive, directly above anger on the emotional tree. At it’s core, it’s a hard core survival mechanism. We see a threat and our entire nervous system kicks into overdrive in an effort to keep us safe.

When we were hunter gathering in the savannahs, being eaten by large animals and painting crude pictures of ancient aliens on cave walls, we endured real existential threats. Let’s be honest, human beings are not particularly hardy when compared to something like a big cat or a wolf. We have no claws, our teeth are average, and we’re not actually that strong - you ever seen a chimpanzee? They are shredded and they don’t even lift bro.

What we do have that’s played to our advantage over the years is the capacity for complex thought and, as an extension of this, the ability to create tools and weapons. We were also very good at working in groups for the benefit of the collective whole, which is something I’ll get onto shortly.

Let’s fast forward 12,000 years (strap in) and take a look at how we live now in what I’m going to refer to as the “modern” age.

We’ve gone from community being the centre of our society to the cult of the individual. We no longer work close to home and have to commute, although the proliferation of remote working may hopefully change that dynamic in the future.

In the modern society, we live in a world where our fears are majoritively imagined rather than actual, and by this I mean that our fears are not about something that is a direct existential threat, like being killed by a bear. Will I be good enough? Will I succeed in my career? What about the unknown risks of this endeavour?

When we’re responding to these imagined threats, our nervous system responds in the same way as it would if we came face to face with a bear. In the wild, we’d either escape that bear or we’d be eaten by it. Either way, our fear response will stop.

In the modern age, our fears are more philosophical in nature, and far more persistent. Instead of our fear response subsiding after a short period of time, it remains engaged. Causing far more psychological and even physiological damage than we realise.

Long term stress, anxiety, PTSD, and a long list of phobias for anything and everything imaginable. I was surprised there’s a phobia for beards called pogonophobia. How can you dislike beards?

There’s a hormone called cortisol that floods our body when we’re stressed or anxious. Too much of this for too long, and we run the danger of adrenal fatigue or something called Cushing’s syndrome. We were never designed to run in this heightened state of fear and anxiety for as long as some of us do and, like all machines, if you run it too hot for too long something is going to fail.

So what can we do to limit or reduce or fears? If a lot of our fears are perceived or imagined, then we have to change our perspective around the source of these fears. Let’s say our anxiety comes from our work, then we need to reframe our ideas around it. Or, if we can’t do that and our health is at risk, remove ourselves from that environment.

This requires effort and self awareness and a significant amount of time. It’s not an easy task to retrain the way that we respond to something that causes us fear, and it’s likely that we’re going to need some help in doing that.

If you find yourself in this situation, slow down, exercise self-compassion, and prioritise your wellbeing. And if there’s anything you want to talk about around this in the comments below, I’m listening.

Much love
David

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