Prolonged fear and anxiety often lead to chronic pain in your muscles for this reason. Fear even causes a metabolic response affects things such as glucose levels, which can increase your risk of heart disease, kidney disease, vision problems, and more. Therefore, prolonged stress on the body from fear and anxiety can cause many other physical symptoms and affect your long-term health.
The effects on your body can be severe if fear is extreme. In fact, it is possible to be scared to death, although rare. Mark Estes, a cardiologist and professor of medicine. Luckily, most fear is short-lived, but if you find yourself fearful regularly, it may be a good idea to reflect and seek help to move forward and avoid negative health effects.
Fear can completely paralyze you and can be harmful to your health when prolonged or extreme, but it also has a lot of benefits. For example, fear heightens your sense of awareness and can sharpen your thinking. If used correctly, this can be helpful to overcoming obstacles in everyday life. The hippocampus and prefrontal cortex help the brain interpret the perceived threat.
They are involved in a higher-level processing of context, which helps a person know whether a perceived threat is real. For instance, seeing a lion in the wild can trigger a strong fear reaction, but the response to a view of the same lion at a zoo is more of curiosity and thinking that the lion is cute. This is because the hippocampus and the frontal cortex process contextual information, and inhibitory pathways dampen the amygdala fear response and its downstream results.
Similar to other animals, we very often learn fear through personal experiences, such as being attacked by an aggressive dog, or observing other humans being attacked by an aggressive dog.
However, an evolutionarily unique and fascinating way of learning in humans is through instruction — we learn from the spoken words or written notes! If a sign says the dog is dangerous, proximity to the dog will trigger a fear response.
We learn safety in a similar fashion: experiencing a domesticated dog, observing other people safely interact with that dog or reading a sign that the dog is friendly. Fear creates distraction, which can be a positive experience. When something scary happens, in that moment, we are on high alert and not preoccupied with other things that might be on our mind getting in trouble at work, worrying about a big test the next day , which brings us to the here and now.
In this Spotlight feature, we will explain the biology of fear: why it has evolved, what happens in our bodies when we are scared, and why it sometimes gets out of control. Scroll down…if you dare. People generally consider fear as an unpleasant emotion, but some go out of their way to trigger it — such as by jumping out of planes or watching scary movies.
Fear is justifiable; for instance, hearing footsteps inside your house when you know that you are the only one home is a valid reason to be terrified. Fear can also be inappropriate; for example, we might experience a rush of terror while watching a slasher movie, even though we know the monster is an actor in makeup and that the blood is not real.
Many individuals consider phobias as the most inappropriate manifestation of fear. As far as evolution is concerned, fear is ancient and, to a certain extent, we can thank fear for our success as a species. People often refer to the physiological changes that occur when experiencing fear as the fight-or-flight response. Overall, as the name suggests, the changes prepare the animal to either fight or run.
Breathing rate increases, heart rate follows suit, peripheral blood vessels in the skin, for instance constrict, central blood vessels around vital organs dilate to flood them with oxygen and nutrients, and muscles are pumped with blood, ready to react.
Muscles — including those at the base of each hair — also become tighter, causing piloerection, which is colloquially called goosebumps. Metabolically, levels of glucose in the blood spike, providing a ready store of energy if the need for action arises.
Similarly, levels of calcium and white blood cells in the bloodstream see an increase. The fight-or-flight response begins in the amygdala, which is an almond-shaped bundle of neurons that forms part of the limbic system. It plays an important role in the processing of emotions, including fear.
The amygdala is able to trigger activity in the hypothalamus, which activates the pituitary gland, which is where the nervous system meets the endocrine hormone system. At this time, the sympathetic nervous system — a division of the nervous system responsible for the fight-or-flight response — gives the adrenal gland a nudge, encouraging it to squirt a dose of epinephrine into the bloodstream. The body also releases cortisol in response to ACTH, which brings about the rise in blood pressure , blood sugar, and white blood cells.
Circulating cortisol turns fatty acids into energy, ready for the muscles to use, should the need arise. Catecholamine hormones, including epinephrine and norepinephrine, prepare muscles for violent action. She might feel terrible distress and fear when the sky turns cloudy. A guy with social phobia experiences intense fear of public speaking or interacting, and may be afraid to answer questions in class, give a report, or speak to classmates in the lunchroom. It can be exhausting and upsetting to feel the intense fear that goes with having a phobia.
It can be disappointing to miss out on opportunities because fear is holding you back. And it can be confusing and embarrassing to feel afraid of things that others seem to have no problem with. Sometimes, people get teased about their fears.
Even if the person doing the teasing doesn't mean to be unkind and unfair, teasing only makes the situation worse. Some phobias develop when someone has a scary experience with a particular thing or situation. A tiny brain structure called the amygdala pronounced: uh-MIG-duh-luh keeps track of experiences that trigger strong emotions. Once a certain thing or situation triggers a strong fear reaction, the amygdala warns the person by triggering a fear reaction every time he or she encounters or even thinks about that thing or situation.
Someone might develop a bee phobia after being stung during a particularly scary situation. For that person, looking at a photograph of a bee, seeing a bee from a distance, or even walking near flowers where there could be a bee can all trigger the phobia. Sometimes, though, there may be no single event that causes a particular phobia. Some people may be more sensitive to fears because of personality traits they are born with, certain genes they've inherited, or situations they've experienced.
People who have had strong childhood fears or anxiety may be more likely to have one or more phobias. Having a phobia isn't a sign of weakness or immaturity. It's a response the brain has learned in an attempt to protect the person. It's as if the brain's alert system triggers a false alarm, generating intense fear that is out of proportion to the situation. Because the fear signal is so intense, the person is convinced the danger is greater than it actually is.
People can learn to overcome phobias by gradually facing their fears. This is not easy at first. It takes willingness and bravery. Sometimes people need the help of a therapist to guide them through the process.
Overcoming a phobia usually starts with making a long list of the person's fears in least-to-worst order.
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