Fear not the feeling of fright

We certainly have all experienced fear at one point in our lives, from something as simple as our reflex to a falling object, to the sight of a scary image. However, for some people, it can also be something as serious as trauma triggers or phobias, which may affect the way they live their lives. Thus, it is imperative to further understand just what causes fear, and how to overcome it.

Fear from the movie Inside Out. Source: https://www.wallpaperflare.com

Fear as an instinctive response

Even without much thinking about the various dimensional models of emotion classification, one would immediately consider fear as one of the most basic human emotions, along with happiness, sadness, and anger. Fear, as we know it, is the emotion we feel when we are faced with situations that may put us into harm or threat, whether it be in physical or psychological forms. Despite fear appearing to have a negative connotation attached to it, this emotion actually plays a vital role in the survival of an individual. As a matter of fact, the body would immediately respond in various ways as soon as it detects the presence of danger. The most obvious physical manifestations would be perspiration, paling, flushing, or shaking. Besides these, various processes also occur inside our bodies as to prepare us for the reaction we would make in response to dangerous situations: the blood vessels constrict, the metabolic energy sources get used, and the glands release hormones. All of these happen as the result of a larger process regulated by the nervous system better known by most people as the fight-or-flight response.

The fight-or-flight response begins when our sensory organs perceive a seemingly harmful stimulus. With this, the thalamus in the brain relays this information both to the amygdala and to the hypothalamus. With the amygdala being closely associated with the prefrontal cortex, it supervises whatever could have elicited the frightened reaction, and assess how we would respond to it. The amygdala would then release various neurotransmitters into the body. One of these neurotransmitters is glutamate, which is responsible for producing behavior such as screaming, jerking, or shivering when frightened. Simultaneously, the hypothalamus, which also receives this signal, is responsible for the control of various body conditioning activities, such as increased heart rate, increased blood pressure, and heavy breathing. These signals are then further sent down into the adrenal glands, which release the hormones cortisol and adrenaline. Adrenaline helps with expanding air passages to provide oxygen to the muscles while cortisol maximizes the use of our blood glucose levels to help us act quickly, both needed especially in life-threatening circumstances.

Fear as a decision making process

Aside from the many other hormones produced by the body when we are frightened, one particular hormone to note is the neurotransmitter dopamine. As known in popular culture, dopamine is known to be associated with reward and pleasure, causing it to be known as the “feel-good” hormone. This would make us think then: do we actually like the feeling of being scared? For example, some people actually do like watching horror movies or going into horror houses just for entertainment. There are also even daredevils and thrill seekers who risk their lives climbing into very tall buildings, walking into tightropes, and the like, despite the imminent danger. However, unlike when fear occurs instantaneously, the threat here is already known by the individual and thus fear is already preconceived; it is because the feeling of fear is already overcome that the mind may harness and enhance itself in order to interpret dangerous situations.

Hence, current stances in pharmacology present that, rather than its effect of pleasure and reward as known by popular media, dopamine may be more deeply associated with motivational salience when it comes to fear. Motivational salience is defined to be a cognitive process which facilitates the achievement of a goal, encompassing the time, energy, and risk that an individual is willing to expend, exert and accept to attain such goal. Simply put, dopamine in fear processing regulates the direction at which an individual would act and behave towards situations, whether they decide to go head-on or ultimately stray away from that particular fear-inducing object, event, or outcome. Fortunately for some, fear is easily overcome but not all people are capable of doing so, given their circumstances.

Fear as a learned social behavior

Fear is purely subjective. Things that one finds to be frightening may not be scary at all for others. Some might get severe levels of fright when put in certain situations, while it could just be a minor threat for another. Humans, as social beings, do not go through the same situations, and may not be equipped with the same resources to act accordingly with apparent threat as others might. We react to things differently as we grow up due to being exposed to different situations in life. Hence, just like any other emotion, fear is something that we learn through social interaction. As we go about our daily lives, we are unconsciously getting to know what is something we fear and up to what extent we can handle it.

Fear is learned by the mind both through instruction and experience. Through instruction, we accept what we are told to do so by a higher authority, whether it be done oral or written. For example, when young children are told by their parents that if they do not behave as a good kid then monsters would come to punish them, children end up fearing these so-called monsters, even if they do not exist. When a road signage warns pedestrians to be careful when crossing the road, as it is an accident prone area, they fear being hit by a moving vehicle as they actually cross the road. This fear related to instruction may however be easily overthrown when we have experienced no actual danger after facing such situations. On the other hand, fear through experience is somewhat harder to overcome. When you have experienced harm in past threatening situations, the mind immediately retains that memory, and associates it with your present and future should you ever encounter that same thing again, causing it to recognize that situation as dangerous. Because it is something that you have experienced firsthand, it tends to bear a psychological effect, especially when the harm done is serious. People experiencing trauma would find it hard to remove and unlink memories related to their painful experiences, resulting in them possibly suffering from mental, emotional, and psychological disorders. Hence, there is a need for them to undergo appropriate, personalized medical attention, this being made possible by the extensive conduct of research up to this date to better understand the mechanism of fear in humans.

As we try to create avenues to discuss our feelings and be open to the fact that we as humans are vulnerable to danger, we are helping those people in need to overcome their fears and understand that they are not alone, that fear is something that they can overcome. By understanding how fear is developed within individuals, we aid in bringing light to such matters to society.

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References

Kozlowska K., Walker P., McLean L., & Carrive P. (2015). Fear and the defense cascade: Clinical implications and management. Harv Rev Psychiatry, 23(4), 263-287. doi:10.1097/HRP.0000000000000065

Olsson, A., & Phelps, E. (2007). Social learning of fear. Nat Neurosci 10, 1095–1102. https://doi.org/10.1038/nn1968

Puglisi-Allegra S., & Ventura R. (2012). "Prefrontal/accumbal catecholamine system processes high motivational salience". Front. Behav. Neurosci. 6(31). doi:10.3389/fnbeh.2012.00031