Your flat out and your to do list is grown by the minute, but unfortunately, so is your headache. And now you've gone from flat out to flattened. Luckily, Panadal extra film coated tablets are boosted by caffeine and they get to work in as little as ten minutes for powerful relief. That's more than just paracetamol. That's one for Panadal speed based on absorption data contains paracetamol.
Always read the label or leaflet.
Do you know what real power is? It's knowing you're on the same rate for energy all day, every day with a smart all day plan from board Gosh Energy, save up to eight hundred and eighty euro on dual fuel plus get a two hundred and thirty five eure O welcome bonus switch today at Boardgosh Energy dot I e Board Gosh Energy.
Know your power estimating on your a bill of twenty six hundred and twenty nine your own new customers only thirst percentis kent off smart all day electricity unit rates in twenty nine percent of gas unitrates Seedportcush Energy dot E for fulltiesncies.
Oh hey, it's your weird old dog hiding behind the couch because I ate from the garbage. Hey w Ally Ward right here? Oh man? Okay, So this week and next week's episode originally aired in April twenty eighteen. It's a listener favorite. It's one episode people go back to for re listen when times are tough and they need a pep talk and a life coach and a brain
scientist all in one for free. Also, this week, Time magazine named Ology is one of their top fifty podcasts, which freaked me out in the best way and also made me google how many podcasts are there? And there's seven hundred thousand out there, so this honor is not lost on me. Thank you Time Magazine. They shouted out this two part episode in particular is a great intro, and I decided for that reason to rerun it so
new folks could easily find it. And also it's smack dab in the thick of the holidays this week, so if you've already listened, listen again. Also, do you want to hear something bananas that is forcing me to take a two week break to get ahead on January's episode? Okay, I'll tell you this is like the secret the end of the episode that's coming at the beginning. So my podcast network that I work with, I'm contracted for fifty episodes a year, and so they didn't have any slated
for this week or next week. They were like, oh, you're putting out episodes and I'm like, yeah, I'm working on them, and they were like, we didn't think you were having them anyway. So there was some sort of administrative error where I'm not supposed to have episodes up this week. So the ones I was working on for this week are going to start airing January seventh, and so for this week and next week. That's another reason why I'm putting up this encore is because it's a
great episode. Time Magazine just shouted it out and I'm not supposed to be running episodes this week. Woops. So make sure you're subscribed now so you get those and then come back next week to hear part two of this episode. Honestly, there's no better way to start the new year than having a refresher course on kicking your fears in the dick metaphorically. Okay, so fear, when was the last time you felt it? There might be a slim percentage of tough boys being like when I was
five and we all know that you're lying. We're scared constantly. Someone almost spills a slurpee on your new shirt. No one in the group chat responds to your meme. Or your credit score went down because you messed up auto pay. Maybe you have to buy a gift for your sister. She might not like it. We're scared all the time, and as it turns out, for kind of weird reasons. But we can do something about it. Before we get into it really quick, I want to say thank you
Ologies listeners, You're all great. Thank you to patrons on patreon dot com slash ologies for making it happen every week and submitting your questions for theologists. We'll hear those in part two. Thank you to the listeners for every tweet, everygram, every friend or foe you tell about the show, and of course for everyone who rates and subscribes and reviews. You know each week I read all of your reviews like a creep so that I can pick a fresh one.
And this one is staymy hot. It's from December twenty n eighteen from Stepha Paluza, who says, I feel so smart now every time I listen to an ology sep My brain grows three sizes like a grin chart. Thank you so much for that. Stepha Paluza also timely reference. I dig it. Okay, fear ology. You're like, really, is this a real word? Wouldn't this be phobiology because phobias are just fears, right, No, phobias are technically irrational fears or obsessive fears. So the word fear comes from a
root meaning danger. So phobias are maybe a little ott well over the top, little specific, but fear is a response to everyday danger. And I looked it up and ferology is in fact a real word, and it's been used in books about fear, for example Philosophy of Fearism, a First East West Dialogue, and then a few other experts in stress and fear and anxiety. I think this is a critical field of study. I am throwing my weight behind making farology an even realer, more commonly used word.
So let's talk about it. So I came across this ologist work and I was immediately I must speak to her, I must know her. Then I sent her a fangirl email and I found out she lived a mile away from me. What thrilled. So we had a time set to do the interview, and about ten minutes before she emailed me to say she was on her way by I was eating toast at a coffee shop, having fully forgotten that we were recording. I don't know what was
wrong with me. So I saw the email. I abandoned my friend and my toast at the coffee shop, and I sped walked home like a weird lady getting exercise at a mall, and I arrived just as she walked up. I was very sweaty. My apartment was littered with tax paperwork. I was mortified. I was stressed out, I was afraid of being judged. I was damp in many places. It
was perfect. So we recorded for about two hours. So this episode is broken into part one this week, which covers a lot of ground, and then part two, which answers your questions and gives even more insight on how super successful folks address their fears. And there were parts where I was so shaken I couldn't make words and I just grunted in response. So come back next week for the follow up episode. Because they're both honestly real life fixers, trust Time Magazine on this. So she is
an instructor at San Jose State University. She is a ted X speaker and my ever anxiety guru, whether she likes it or not. So please breathe deep and make room for epiphanies with the woman, the legend, ferologist Mary Poffin Roth. So now this is your mic. I'm I'm still sweating. I'm sorry. This is the swettiest interview I've ever done.
I mean, sweating is part of the stress response. So it's it's good that you came all like ready to go.
You're like, it's good. You're a literal hot mess right now? Have I ever been a lot of rest? And now? Okay? I emailed you and I was like, is there? I knew that you studied fear? Yeah, and I was like is that? And for a second, I was like, is it possible that you study pairs and this is a typo? Or you study feet or something and is a type of because there's no way that you just study fear. That's too awesome. So how did you get into the study of fear? Like why where do you even start?
I was raised by someone that was afraid of everything, so, you know, like all good parents, my mom did a really awesome job of fucking me up, because I think that's what parents do, right. She was a loving mom and had a great childhood, but like all parents, that's your job to you know, pass on your dysfunctions to your children. And you know, she never had a passport, she never left the country.
You know, she was very much and only went to high school.
I didn't come from an educated family. I was the only one in my entire family to go to college, and so it's it's one of those things that she passed on a lot of her fears onto me, and as she got older then it just kind of escalated. And it was not until like, you know, my late twenties and I realized I haven't left the country either.
Mary was the youngest of five siblings and the only one to graduate from high school. So she ended up earning one master's in science having studied ecology and evolution and population biology, and another ms in science communication, which are two really high up limbs to go out on, if you ask me, and thus very brave and cool.
And I became a university lecturer in biology at age twenty seven and was doing well in my career but felt like, okay, there's all these like explorers that I see in ecological biology that I find are my heroes, and they're doing all this cool stuff, and I'm still in the same town that I've lived for my whole life.
What is going on?
So I started to kind of examine where that was coming from, and that's really when I started to get super excited about the study of fear. My personal research background, my first job was at NASA AMES in the Bay Area looking at the impact of hypergravity on the Mamlian system, which sounds super fancy for putting rats in a really big centrifuge and spinning them around for months.
Oh my god, have you ever been in a centrifuge? No?
Yeah, no, they don't let us go in there, but like the walls were so thick. We had like we're in a bunker in case things went wrong with the centrifuge because it.
Could like spin out of control.
And that's where I first started to get some of the physiology experience of the impact of stress. What we were looking at in the hypergravitational study was basically it was it was a preface of can we send humans into a long term journey where their bodies are going to be under hypergravitational stress. So we were looking at stress and you know, can can they pee, can make when they eat, well, they still fornicate, well, they do all the things, and you know, under long periods of stress.
And that was really when I started to examine the body's response to stress and stress. Is that funny word when we think about fear, Like no one uses.
The word fear in common language. Yea for the most part.
And that's another interesting side note of actually what portion of the demographic in Western society uses the word fear. We can, we can come back to that, But stress and fear basically the same when we think about I'm sorry ahead, No, I just.
Was grunting because I was like, oh true, yeah, so true, especially right right now we're surrounded by my tax paperwork and I had like a full on stress smell down being like I'm doing the forms wrong and I was scared.
Yeah yeah, So think about like what we call the stress response. You are going to have like tightness in your neck and your lower back. That's your body getting ready to fight with your arms and getting blood and energy to like your legs so you can run away. Getting the shortness of breath and like the tightness in your chest and getting sweaty, and you know your pupils dilating and you're body is shutting down non essential systems like digestion. This is why, you know, depend on what
kind of nerves. We use that word a lot too, that you're feeling. You get like butterflies in your stomach or maybe like a little something more serious. I need to excuse yourself. So all of that is the stress and response is the fear response.
So having a slightly more gravitational force on you is a type of physical stress. And so Mary was studying what would happen to other mammals i e. Humans exploring space under these conditions. And you know what, for some people, just being around a bunch of rats on what amounts to a very expensive carnival ride would be a major source of stress on its own. But I like to think that the rats just loved it, that they just stumbled out, wanting a corn dog and more tokens to
go on again. But aside from rats just having a summer, what kind of data were they gathering?
But we were looking at can they do the logical basic functions under stress? But we were just looking at like the renal system. Can they eat, can they drink? Can they process urine? Right?
There are things coming in and going out? Did you find that, just because I have to get this question answered in hyper gravity?
Were they able to pee and pooh? Yeah, okay, they just had they had there was like a there's an uptick in like.
Holy shit's going on. Oh my god, we're a big interviews.
And then when when everything just kind of like was on lockdown, and then we weren't studying for that, But if you were testing for that, then you could say that could have been like they were in the super fear response. And then when things kind of they got acclimated to Okay, we're just gonna keep spinning. That's okay, this is just how it is, then they would returned to their like normal daily activities of eating and drinking and going to the bottle and getting you know, some
some water. You know, humans under stress go to a different kind of bottle experience.
The most scared I've ever been in my life, It's funny. The only reason why I keep peppering you about this is, Yeah, most scared I've ever been is when I was in a centrifuge and at a testing facility for where they were testing and training Air Force powers.
Wow.
And I've been mugged at knife point and that was one of the scariest things. And being in a centrifugeal was one of the scariest. So I was like, how do they do? Like I remember the moment where they put me in the thing. I was I've never been so scared of anything, because, like, at least with mugging, it was like a surprise. I was like, whoa, but this I was getting in I just was shaking. I thought I thought I needed a diaper. I was like, I don't know what's going to come out with end.
So I'm like, I'm I feel like feeling for these rats. But so that was that was one study you did, and then you started to kind of that opened up your mind too. Okay, let's really get into the indy gritty of the stress, stress response, and fear and and you're right, we do call it stress when we mean fear. Yeah.
Yeah, we in Western society we have like this stress badge of courage when you ask someone how they are.
Oh my god, I'm so stressed. Yeah, and like, oh my god, me too. There's the kids, and there's the work, and there's all the things.
And so we we feel confident talking about stress because we can commiserate. But we don't feel confident talking about the F word because there's so much shame associated with fear in our society and we're never taught how to deal with fear in a healthy way.
I mean I never was. Yeah, that's not a subject in school.
Yeah, no, Yeah, it's one of the four basic human emotions that going to make.
All of the rainbow of colors of all of the other emotions. Wait one second, there are four basic human emotions? Just four. I thought there were approximately one billion, and then several thousand more if you include feelings that only the French have words for. But nope, just four, say researchers. There's happy, duh, sad also duh, and then two that not unlike many LA residents who are like actors and yoga teachers. The other are two emotions that are hybrids.
One is afraid slash surprised and angry slash disgusted. So right now, this information is either making you feel happy, sad, affrised or ngrusted.
And fear is not something we talk about in that way because the messaging we get is be fearless, which is hella dumb, because that's like saying just don't be thirsty, I know, or like you just be hungerless.
You did, Yeah, you're, I mean you're, we are, we are the product of you know, as I was talking to an evolutionary biology, I was like three point seven years of evolution. I meant three point seven billion, but whatever, And clearly the ones who could fight and run away were the ones who survived. So it would be crazy to be fearless because how would we have maybe this far?
Yeah, we would have.
Been dead if you were like, shit, go ahead and attack me. That's cool. Like no, So do you think that when when you first started studying stress and fear, what was the biggest question you had, Like what did you find that was lacking in either communication about fear or just data about fear. I would just like to point out that as we discussed fears and emergencies, there happened to be fire trucks and sirens screaming past my apartment, which was an unintended audio bonus, just to make sure
that our fear responses were working. So yeah, Yeah, it's work fine. It's a working fine. Thanks Frank, calm your tits.
Yeah, I think that for me, I initially started studying fear in just a more hobby way because I was interested in it, and as an academic for my entire professional career, it's been one of those things that I'm just a big nerd and like hmm, like I just you know, was absorbing all these things because it was
fascinating to me. And through that initial search, I was really finding either like clinical or pathological studies on fear that were about people that were more of the outline, that were dealing with mental health issues in a professional setting, that were having very extreme phobias or you know, really
extreme anxiety that was negatively impacting their life. And I was like, well, I don't fit in that category because I'm just it's everyday fears of how, you know, how do I not freak out about this presentation or you know, how do I go say what up to that Q guy? Like this is I don't need to go and have a clinical this is just normal stuff. And I didn't
really see a lot of research in that area. And then in terms of what was happening with people that were communicating because part of my degrees are in science, communication and biology, and the people that were communicating about fear were either people that were bringing a lot of like pseudoscience level of it to it or.
People that really did extreme stuff.
So like, yeah, bro, I call him Mount Everest and it was like super dope, and I'm here to like teach you how to like fight through the fear and also climb Mount Everest. I'm like, I'm never I hate the cold. I'm literally never going to climb Mount Everest or former Navy seals and fighter pilots and just being badasses. I'm like, that's cool. There's nothing that I can I
can use there not applicable. Yeah, exactly right. And one of the things that really got me interested in not only studying it but trying to create a framework that people could take the research that has been done and apply it to their daily lives is you have to make it simple. And that's kind of my my jam
with fears. I do original research, but I also am coming through the research and trying to create like strategies for people that are easy to remember, easy to use, that help them understand their own bodies and then apply that so they can not be so afraid of all the things.
Quick question, so what are Americans' biggest fears? Well that it actually depends on what year you ask. So in twenty fourteen, Chapman University put out a list of americans big old fears. There are the usual suspects like public speaking was number one, then heights and bugs and snakes and drowning, and then blood and needles. They usual. It's like a menu of scary stuff at a chain restaurant
you've been to a dozen times. Familiar. But according to the same source, the new biggest fears of Americans are number one, corrupt government officials, the American Healthcare Act, pollution, and being involved in a nuclear war with North Korea. So never have I been so nostalgic for just some simple old American drowning fears. But a fun thing to do is sit down, make a list of the things that scare you, and then say, hey, scary thing, I see you, And then maybe what can I actually do
about some of this stuff? Maybe not all of your fears are big, huge environmental or governmental ones. You know, I did this one and I realized that driving a Miata with a terrible blind spot on the highway was a consistent source of panic. And so I saw that thing, I got a station wagon. I never looked back. So that's one thing.
You can do.
Not that they're gonna get like there's no cure for fear, not to get rid of the fear, but like change that relationship and change that story around their fears so they can start living a.
Better life with fear now with and in fear. So what is fear and what is stress? They are the same thing. But what's happening? I know that the basics I know of O like the HPA axis, like hypopituitary adrenal, there's something going on hormonally, But what is happening? Like what is my Why is my body jacking me so hard all the time?
Yeah?
Right?
And and that's a complex like big messy ball. And this is why, you know, the study of fear is so messy. So I'm gonna answer that question by like pulling out just a little bit of there's no like discipline in any academic institution around fear. Fear time sometimes is looked at in the psychological genre. Sometimes it can
be in sociology. Sometimes it's in biology. There's also in marketing and communications literature this idea called fear appeals, which is a way to communicate a powerful persuasion tool that we have over used and now everyone's freaking out because we have trained people to be scared all the time.
Okay, side note. I looked up this term fear appeals, and y'all, it is a whole thing. Oh boy. Anytime a commercial or like a news network makes you feel like you are about to die, they're pretty much using fear appeals. So yes, sex cells, but SODA's Oh my god, you're in a lot of peril. Oops, I took your money. So one could be a cheesemonger, one could be a phish monger, but fear mong is a little less smelly and it might make you more money.
So you find these in like so many disciplines that they don't fit in one discipline, which is not necessarily surprising because fear is such a base unit of our lives, so it's not going to fit neatly into anywhere. When you're talking about like the physiology, the way that I like to explain it is if you're looking at the brain right and kind of like a simple like condition of the brain kind of separating into three big parts. So you have your hind brain that's going to be
in the back. That's going to be the most basic of functions. Some people have likened it to the reptilian brain that I'm sure that you've heard, because it's similar to other reptiles. So if we're looking in the kingdom of live kingdom aunt amalia, we have our vertebrates. We're not that closely related to reptiles, but we're going to all be vertebrates. And then you have kind of in the center of our brain, right around the mid brain, you're going to have the UI guy limbic systems center.
Right this is where the emotional magic happens. Oh, it's like a truffle. Yeah, it is like a truffle.
It's all gooy in the center you're like no, no, no, And there you're going.
To find the amygdala.
So the migdala is going to be kind of like the size of your thumbnail, but shaped like an almond, and it's going to be on both sides. If you're to cut your brain in half and you have one on each side, okay, and they're really small, but that is kind of the powerhouse of the fear response.
That's going to be the control center.
So when our body is going to perceive a stressor, So we talked about like you know, stress versus fear, you can really start to look at it as stress is going to be a physiological response that your body's having to a stressor, and that stressor is going to be the outside thing.
The trigger.
Stressors are generally never in our control, but our stress response is.
Okay.
So let's go back to the story that you said about getting mugged at knife point.
Yeah.
Right, So the stressor is going to be the mugger with the knife threatening your life.
And there were two of them, one for each side of my.
That's nice they thought about you. They're like, you know, we're gonna we're gonna tag team. I mean, you obviously are very ferocious opponents.
You're like, we're gonna need backup boys in that.
In that moment, your central nervous system is what is allowing you to interact with your internal and your external environment. So your senses, your eyes, your ears are picking up a threat. So that's gonna be the stressor. You have no control over that stressor. But their stress response is what's happening inside your body and you're you know, amigdala is kind of like hitting the panic button, being like okay, we need to.
We's go time. And then at that point it's.
Going to create a kind of like cascading effect through your hypothalamus and thalamus and getting everything ready for your body in this particular point to do the fight or fly.
Okay, so little recap. This whole shebang is part of your limbic system, and once again the little almondy amygdala deep within your brain receives info. This says ha, no, well no, I'm paraphrasing, and it chemically pokes your thalmus, which sends other signals to the brain to just release a floodgate of adrenaline and cortisol in preparation to either engage in fisticuffs or get the fuck out asap. Okay, So this next thing she says changed my whole life. Okay,
get ready for it? Are you ready for it? Get ready for it?
And I think this is a good time to kind of also separate. When we look at fear, we have kind of like two major types of fear, what I call factual fear, versus fictional fear. Oh so since we're on this example, like, factual fear is going to be actual threats to your life that are happening in a shared reality right now that your body is responding to. So you getting mugged at knife point was hell, yeah,
actual fear, Like shit is going down. It is time to put all systems into fight or flight, and that means at that time, your body.
Is shutting down non essential systems.
So cellular regeneration not taking that offline, don't need it, digestion like we're just we're not gonna worry about that, libido, don't need to be word about sex of time right now, just trying to get out of here, live, And then that means that other resources can be put to your skin. This is why you can either break out in cold sweat or get hot, because your blood is flowing to your muscles so that your muscles will have the energy to do what it needs to do to survive. There's
also a and that's all the stress response. There's also going to be the other side of that, which is
fictional fear. Just like a good fictional book might have a nugget of truth in it, but most of it is just made up, so with fictional fear, that is the everyday fears, and that's the fears that I really focus on of how we can change our story with our fictional fears so that they aren't like firing up theymgdala so much, and then we're not going into this full stress response because in modern times, our body isn't really good like our MiG diligious seds stressor right, it's
up to us to control how that is perceived. Because if we are constantly in hyperdrive with our migdligious keep sending signals of danger, danger, danger when it's not necessarily dangerous, like you could just be annoying, or you know, maybe it's a it's a good stressor like it's an opportunity.
If we don't start to discern that for ourselves and we constantly are just redlining the stress response, then that's why we're seeing this increase in all of these other issues in our body that usually would be taken care of, so like you know, like like the celluar regeneration. Right, Actually, when we go to sleep at night, that's our time for our bodies to be like, Okay, we're gonna do some maintenance. We're gonna get rid of themselves. We're gonna
make some new ones, do all the things. If we're constantly in the stress response, if it's constantly go time our bodies like, nope, Nope, not even dealing with that.
Wow. And and cancer is a disease of the cell cycle. That this is mind blowing. This is blowing all of my AMINGNOLA areas. So we we are keeping ourselves partly in a state of heightened fear. Yeah, when we don't need to.
Yeah, absolutely, Why because no one teaches us how to not to.
Isn't it frustrating?
Yes, so many years of like being scared, we didn't have to. Oh yeah, And that's that's my jam of because I'm I'm still that person, by the way, Like I'm I continue to apply the things and do the you know, walk the walk of of what I teach in what I study.
But it doesn't mean fear is gone.
It's just I got super tired of living in a really tiny box and knew that.
There was a life beyond the provincial town.
But in order to get to that life, I needed to hand them off your business. Yeah, because no, like no one's gonna handle it for me.
So sadly, Mary's mom passed away, and looking back on her life and how controlled by fear she was, Mary decided to face a lot of her own fears and just take some dang risks. So she was in a relationship that hadn't been working for years, and she really longed to get out of the small town that she was from. And it is here that I will refrain from crooning just a small town girl living in her lonely world. But don't stop believing that I really want to Anyway, she went on a journey.
Fast forward a year of like branching out of my original friend group, meeting people that had all these like crazy stories of like international travel and adventure, and me making the decision that I want this new life and in order to do that, I'm gonna have to make some pretty radical changes within that year. Because no too off topic of science, but you know, like the you know, our long term relationship at that point, when like twelve years wasn't going well, so we decided to get married.
Because just like having a baby in when you're struggling in your relationship is the best idea ever, it's not it's not the best idea ever.
So clearly that didn't works.
So and I was like, okay, I just I'm gonna I'm gonna completely change my life and ended that relationship.
Uh you know, started this whole like new just was traveling and when whenever I had the opportunity with with breaks from teaching at the university, then I would just travel by myself and freaked out most of the time because you know, I want I wanted to travel, but my friends had normal jobs so they couldn't just take off for like a month, and so you know, went to Costa Rica, got stuck in a cyclone in Croatia, you know, went to the markets of Marrakesh, and you know,
and most of the time being like what am I doing?
What am I doing?
Totally freaking out, but but also discovering that, you know, I want to die with good stories.
Oh right, like I'm.
Going to get that tattooed or my stomach, right, Yeah, I want to die with really good stories. And in order to do that, I needed to leave my hometown.
And so that's what I did.
And it just became kind of a game of feeling the fear and doing it anyway. And it's no wonder that we constantly stay in this loop of being afraid to do anything, because even if we have an idea, the people in our life.
Out of out of love, were like, you should know that, because you're gonna die. Well, is fear contagious? In in mammals, in social creatures, is fear contagious? Yeah, So we when we're in fear, we.
Actually give off almost kind of like a pheromone as well as like really delicate visual cues. Okay, and this is why have you seen like someone talk for the first time or they're really nervous and it is uncomfortable to watch?
There are some ted talks where you can you can hear how dry their mouth is. Yeah, and you're like, oh, you just relax, that's fine. Although I knew if I were up there, I would be crying blood. I don't know what would be happening, you know. Yeah, it's and it's that it's that visceral reaction.
For as as mammals, we want to run away from people that are in a big like fearful anxiety state because that generally means danger, like life threatening danger.
So they're like, okay, well, we're I'm not here. Yeah, you seem like the danger zones. I'm gonna go. I think some times also we're conditioned to think if I remain in an anxiety cycle, if I remain seeming scared or fragile, then I will get care from other people. But it's funny that that's actually probably in a really subtle biological way, driving people away from you.
Yeah, And it's and it's a delicate balance because one of the like so we've seen this in primate studies as well, that when we have fear, we will reach out, like young kids and primates we see it the most in will reach out for like physical like connection or some kind of connection. And that's the best way to kind of calm your fears is to reach out and get connection, to ask for connection and receive that support. As adults in Western society, we've had that trained out
of us. We've been socialized to say, especially in America, stand on your own, pick yourself up by your boot straps. You know, we're so individualized that we are like afraid
of reaching out and be rejected of that support. It's it's something that is so ingrained that we were having to fight our natural instincts because like primates and children, right, like, when what happens when like a little kid is scared, They're going to run for their safety person, Yeah, you know, whether it's mom or dad or whatever, and they want that connection there, that's their their safe spot.
As adults, we just internalize it and then maybe like numb it.
With drugs and alcohol or sex or porn, and then we we just pretend like it's not there, right, and it's it's totally affecting our entire society.
Well, what percentage of our fears would you say that we feel would you say are factual? And how how much are fictional? And also the way that we consume media, either whether it's like presidential Twitter rants or or you know, documentaries about cults or whatever. Like we I feel like we're kind of stimulating that a lot, right, Yeah, what's going on there?
So you know, as a as a scientist, I'm always hesitant to just make up percentages, right because like ninety eight percent of statistics are made up. But I would say, and it's going to be very specific to where you're living. Right, if you are an American and living in LA and you know you have your basic needs taken care of.
Most likely most of your fears are fictional.
If you are living in a really politically unstable area, if you're in Syria, right, if your basic needs are not being met, then a lot of your fears are going to be factual.
But so you know, it kind of depends on what your situation is.
But in like modern society, in countries that are wealthy, like the United States, even though that wealth is not spread apart, we're still a very wealthy country, we're still getting by, and so in that most of our fears
are going to be fictional. And you know, like fear is so funny that you know, why do we like scary movies because they give us that like rush of adrenaline when we watch a scary movie and this is gonna this is kind of where it'll be interesting with the VR world, right because our mind doesn't know the difference that that's not happening if it's a really engrossing movie.
And I just saw like on the social feed, I think yesterday, there was some I don't know it's Netflix or something that they made this like super scary episode of something and people like were shutting out, like no one was finishing it because it was so terrifying, right, I mean I clearly didn't click on it.
Yeah no, no, no, okay, I look this up. And Netflix released a list of ten films that people tend to watch more than seventy percent of, meaning that they would have turned it off earlier if they just didn't like it, But they noped it hardcore when the actions started getting too spook so they made it most of the way and then they're like no. So among these ten films, Eli Roth's Cabin Fever, plus movies like Carnage Park, one called Teeth, one called Raw, and of course Human Centipede two.
So this kind of led me down a rabbit hole to learn about people who have suffered feinting spells and heart attacks in horror movie screenings. It happens people just straight up faint and die. Oh human beings. Mat, We grew these big fat brains, and we're like, you know what we could do. We could create technology to make pictures move, and then we can scare ourselves until we literally die. Let's do that.
It's one of those things that if we can put ourselves in the story, we can like we're activating all those things but are like higher brain functions, you know, like our streabral cortex has been like, Okay, we're still safe. We're in a movie theater, we have our popcorn, we're on our cow. There's enough safety where we can play around in that fear zone and get.
The like fear high right like or like you.
Know, we also get to dress rehearse tragedies and dress rehearse fear scenarios.
Like I mean, I know what I would do during a zombie attack. I totally think about it.
I'm like, Okay, I'm on the second floor, so that means that like you know where, or or if someone broke in, like with the ax through my front door, I would probably go out the back door. I mean, we were constantly dressed rehearsing these things that will most likely never happen. Right, But so movies like that help us, almost in a weird way, feel safe because our mind likes to dress rehearse stuff, It likes to play with scenarios because in a weird way, that lets us feel like, Okay.
We at least I wouldn't. I would know what to do when zombies come, right. I wonder about that, Like why do some people love horrifying stuff and others are like, hell no, like pictures of bunnies only you know, totally, And part.
Of it's tolerance, right, Some people can have like a peach schnops and be like looping, and the other people can have straight whiskey and they'd be like, that's good, it's warm up.
So it's really a personal.
Tolerance, and that gets into personality and what your experiences are and what gets your motor rubbin.
For certain things.
So's that's definitely like a person by person thing, but the underlying physiological responses are the same. Just some people enjoy that feeling, like adrenaline junkies, right, They put themselves in physically precarious positions because they want to feel that high.
They want to like feel the knots in.
Their stomach and like all the things because they find that pleasurable, where other people are like yeah, no, yeah, that's no, that sounds hormendous.
Why why would I do that? I don't ever want to opt into diarrhea. That's always going to be a no in my book, never a yes. Side note just to say not everyone's adrenaline Russia's are the same. Some folks may love jumping off buildings in webbed onesies that allow them to drift back to the earth, while others just procrastinate on their deadlines because they're afraid to fail and need a rush of stress hormones to prod them.
Guess which one I am? Guess Do you find that there's a distinction psychologically between stress, fear, and just anxiety, Like what is an anxiety disorder or what is anxiety? Where does it play into all of that? Where does neurosis come into it?
Yeah, So it's like I said, for me, I specifically have always focused on like the non clinical, non pathological stuff, and so I'm a biologist and a science communicator by degree and training, and that means that I pull together interdisciplinary work on all of it.
But I don't treat patients.
So I think that's important just because anytime you're talking about this sometimes people are like, oh good, I don't need to see a professional because I can just listen to a podcast and watch a video and if you're feeling those really extreme bouts of anxiety and depression, and that's how we deal with fear, right, But it's a spectrum, So on those on those extreme things that's when you really need to get that professional support so you can
get back to having you know, like control over your life. That being said, they're all the damn same, right, And when I teach people about how to create strategies around fear, one of the mechanisms I talk about is like aria or rhea.
That okay, so this is a genius strategy. Are I a rhea? Are you ready?
The first step is just recognizing what's going on, and then the second step would be identifying it, kind of
like name it to claim it. And I was just in Kozmel last week and talking about my research with my partner, and he came up with this really funny idea that he works in creative and narrative kind of stuff as well, and he was saying that there is power in naming things throughout storytelling and mythology, pop culture, beetlejuice, right, rumblestial skin, that if you know the name of the d,
then you can control it. And I just found that really fascinating, because when you start to name it sometimes that can just short circuit the.
Fear response in and of itself.
Wow, like you recognize Okay, I'm starting to feel like the physiological effects of something to set me off, and just kind of recognizing that that's happening and identifying it some One of the things that I've made is what I call a fear wheel, which is basically a bunch of different synonyms for fear that we usually use, like I feel insecure, I feel overwhelmed, I feel stressed, I feel inadequate.
Right, this sounds like the best worst game show ever where there's just a wheel of fear that you have to spin. But it is comforting to know that whatever's making us sweat or wring our hands could be named and identified on like a glittery, colorful game show prop. I'm so into that.
When looking at fictional fears, you can really most fictional fears will fit into one of two categories, either fear of being not enough or the fear of not being in control. Oh wow, And so if you can kind of go back to that and say, like.
Okay, where where which category does this fit in?
Sometimes that will just click you right out of the fear response, like yeah, it's so fun. Because humans loved to pigeonhole, we have an entire store called the container Store because we love boxes, so damn much.
I love that contains so many different pouches.
I love it.
We love to but sh it in boxes. It's so good.
We're like, oh, yeah, like there's a relaxing like it.
So get to put the box. And we love the category stuff.
So when you get into the habit of categorizing what you're feeling, sometimes I will just click out of it and you'd be like.
Oh, it's so good. Can't put in a box, happy safe box.
I filed it correctly, yeah, and it's like ah, and it's just sometimes that's enough to like, you know, knock you out of it.
So the ria so far is our I recognize and identify, but what's the A?
And then the A is going to be to address, you know, what kind of strategies or do you need to manage outcomes for this. A lot of times you can get just in the recognizing and the identifying stage and then it'll it'll kind of click you out.
You know.
For example, I have a great story and it's just like back to cosen Mil because it was like two days ago. So we're coming off the plane's had a whole travel day, this is the end of the week, and my partner Craig and I are sitting on different seats because you know, American Airlines not my favorite airline, and I got out first. I'm waiting on the jet bridge from for him, and so he comes up and he's like, wow, you look a bit rough.
Just a little visual f yi. I looked appauled when she told me this. I made that face. I made that face and got real mad.
You're like, that was so bad, and he's not He's not someone that would ever usually say something like that, and I'm like, yeah, well I do.
Look my crap.
We've been he's traveling for like a million hours, and so at that point, I'm just like internal rage. And when you're feeling a stress response or a fear response, You're like, cerebral cortex is just where the higher thinking happens.
Just shuts down. Yes, it's like okay and I'm offline.
It just shuts down. And now I'm just I'm in it what I call like a fear storm. It's like a maelstrom because that just hit my I'm not enough button. At this point, I'm going through all of the scenarios of like he thinks some fat he thinks that I'm ugly. Oh my god, I'm old. I should probably die my hair. I should probably want to die it. I probably need to never eat again. Right, it's and it spirals so quick. This was all happening even before we left the jet bridge, and it's but it's.
So it was He did not mean it in a mean way.
It just kind of like because he when he came out, I was like tousing my hair and I kind of kind of looked like a lion. But I took it so personally, and it was my perception of what he had said, of course, and instead of I didn't ask questions like.
Oh what do you mean about that?
I just went straight down the rabbit hole of like internalizing everything.
And that was my fear talking, the fear of not being enough.
And so you know, I walked it off a little bit because I'm just like, I'm not going to talk to you right now because I'm to say something real mean, And then in my head, I'm like, okay, you gotta walk the walk.
If you're going to ask other people to do it, you gotta do it yourself.
And just analyzing, Okay, why why am I going down this crazy rabbit hole? And especially as women, Like our value is associated with how we look in Western society. We've been conditioned, so that's going to be one of our buttons. Hands down, that's gonna be one of our buttons. And so just kind of like identifying what I was feeling, naming it and putting it into a box, and I'm like, oh, okay, because it also makes us feel not so alone that it's just it's just our human body being a human body,
that it's not like what we would consider ourselves. It's our brain doing its brain thing. And that like totally helped me like snap out of it and then be able to have a conversation, right, because before that I was just so caught up in like the emotion of it. I just couldn't even ask questions about like, so, what exactly did you mean by that? Yeah? And then once I calmed down, you know what baggage claim, you know, and I was like, Okay, now now we can have
a conversation. But you know, ten years ago, before I started really studying fear, I was really shit at emotions.
Like, like I was a scientist.
That's why I got into science, because you didn't have to have emotions in.
Fact, they give you extra credit if you didn't have emotions. I was so great. I'm like, oh, science, I'm here for you.
You are going to be my friend because I don't have to have emotions, which is kind of.
Weird for a girl, but whatever. It was so great.
And I had to like teach my self how to communicate, especially difficult emotions, and so for me to even within you know, a couple of minutes, go from ragy pants and her and like going through like.
Dramatic about it too.
Okay, now that I'm like able to get a little bit of my higher functions online.
What exactly did you mean by that? Right? He's like, oh, I'm really sorry.
I just met, like, you know, after like a long day and and you know, like when wonder Woman is at the end of the battle, you she looked a little rough too, because I'm a big comic nerd, so he's gonna pull in all the stops of this one right way to go correct?
Are that right?
You know, like, like you know, wonder Woman, she looked a little rough after the end of the battles.
That's just what I said.
I was like, you're ridiculous, okay, And and it was fine, right, But I could easily see myself ten years ago being mad about that for like a year, right, you know, and just internalizing it and being like, wait.
Well, how much do you think of our Anger in general is just fear that comes out the wrong pipe so.
Much, especially with men. That's you know, and not to like overgeneralize, and gender is very complicated as well, but generally men will go to the anger button first and women go to like the shut down button first.
Part of that is socialization.
Part of that, you know, can be associated with physiology, but anger is a way to not show what they think, not showing fear, so you know, if they're scared of not being enough, if they're scared of losing control, whether that control is financial or their health, it comes out as anger because it makes the person feel powerful, right, because anger is also one of the base emotions. But we don't feel powerful in fear. We feel powerful in anger.
And we talked about media. When we look at archetypes and media, the ones that come in they're angry and.
They got the rambo knife and they got the guns. Those are those are the power ones. They're they're here to woo bass not they're like I'm afraid in the corner, I'm the big you know, like scared pants.
I'm not saving anybody. No one wants to be the scaredy pants in the movie. They want to be the hero. And the way that we've told stories, the hero is generally angry.
Yeah, they have a they have a bone to pick, or they have revenge to seek or or something like it. They've got a score to settle, yea and so. And I find it's funny. I find when I'm when I'm scared, I either shut down and I just almost in conflict, can't even speak, and like words just won't come out. That's me. That happened when I got mugg too. I went to scream and no noise would come out of my mouth, and I was like, it was like one of those nightmares. Yeah, where you can't run. Only I ran,
but I was like just nothing. And then but yeah, sometimes I'll be super afraid. I'll have like an anxiety attack about something. Like I was doing my taxes the other day and was like I realized I forgot to pay this one thing and there was a fine on it. It was like this tiny business tax that I just didn't
see the paperwork, and I got so angry at just humanity. Yeah, I was like, but I mean, do you think that that there's a stage where we'll stop doing that, we'll stop relying on on those either shut down or anger like especially with like you know, not to make it like the world today, but I mean, I feel like people online get so angry with each other, Like politically people are so angry, Like do you think there's a way to make people recognize like you are afraid right
now and that is why you are bullying someone, or that's why you're shutting down sections of the government or whatever, you know what I mean.
I think that we definitely can get there as a society if if we try, And I think this is for me part of my why of why I think this work is so important to start these conversations because fear in and of itself is never going to go away, and it's gonna as long as we're humans. Until we can put our consciousness in a robot, then you know, we can come to.
That bridge when it exists.
But if we have our human bodies and our migdalas are intact, we're going to have fear and so changing that conversation, and you know, teaching people this is a total Like we teach people to sit on a toilet that is not a natural thing from a very young age. We're like, just don't stand and pee because most animals are just like ma, like I mean, or you know, we we teach very young children a very unnatural thing because it's more socially acceptable, so we can do it.
I believe in humanity. At some point someone's like, hey, you know this really good idea.
It's called the toilet. It's gonna be real fancy.
Yeah, And and people thought they were crazy, and you know, it caught on and then now it's it's.
Great, so so happy about it about twelve out of ten. Yeah.
And with human behavior, people have to see what's in it for them.
They have to see, like, well, what do I get out of it?
And that's going to take some people longer than others, because it's going to take humans and adult humans recognizing that this needs to be cultivated because fear can't be cured, but it can be cultivated in a way that we can have a healthy relationship with it, and changing the conversation when people are raising kids about like it's okay to be afraid, like you know, you don't you can be scared, and allowing for that to be socially acceptable
and then teaching people what to do when they're in the rabbit hole is going to be important. And I think that we definitely can get there, but it's not going to happen over night, as nothing does.
If you had kids, what would be a good toilet training for them in terms of fear. Would it be trying to recognize if they're afraid of being out of control or not being good enough, or would it be naming their fears? Like how would you try to train a kid to have better or how do you wish you had been trained or I had been trained to deal with fears?
Yeah, and I think it's depending on how old they are, Like right now you would want to start having the conversation of asking them to examine their own feelings in the moment. I think it's one of the hardest things to like, you know, since we're not trained about our emotions, sometimes we don't even know what we're feeling.
We're just like, I'm just I'm not happy, Like like, what is it? I'm just I'm not happy.
I'm in the not happy spectrum of not happy, I'm growley. Yeah, it was like raw and getting to the practice of Okay, you know, I'm feeling insecure or I'm feeling terrified, or you know, trying to trying to attach names to things, so even just in the moment they can say, you know, I'm feeling this way, and teaching them to reach out in that moment if they're they're smaller, even if they're larger, saying like, you know, I as your parent that loves you,
I am a source for you to reach out. So when you're scared, you reach out to me, whether that's a text, whether that's a call, whether that is physically coming over and like just holding my hand, Like I can be your booie when you're when you're afraid and
we could talk about it. I think one of the worst things is to just really super internalize the things you're afraid of, because then you just keep building that story and it gets bigger and bigger, and the stories that we tell ourselves continue to grow if we just keep in that cycle. So kind of creating a pattern of behavior that acknowledges the fear that is aware of it is accepting of it and then focuses on kind of ways to cultivate a better relationship with it.
Do you recommend that adults kind of have those same conversations with themselves, like when you're when you're feeling you know, anxious or angry or whatever, sitting down with yourself and saying, like, what are you feeling? Yeah? Yeah, all the time.
And one of the reasons I'm so excited about like what I study is because I was, like, I'm not kidding, I was really bad at emotion. I was good at showing happy, bubbly, perfect Mary, everything's perfect, But darker emotions, No, they doesn't.
I don't have those, they don't exist, you know. And everything was coming out sideways.
So having that conversation with yourself is going to be important. Knowing what your fear reactions are is going to be essential. Like you said, you shut down, right, that's really common. People will run away, they'll get angry, they'll self medicate
with food or substances, they'll become depressed or inactive. These are all unhealthy ways to respond to fear, But knowing how you respond is really important for building those relationships, so you have those people to reach out to so having like you know, like a romantic partner or friends, and you know, once they're in that kind of like circle of trust, saying like this is how I react when I'm in fear, Like I shut down. It's not
that I don't want to talk to you. My mouth isn't working, Like I'm one of those people like I, you know, like just I'm I'm stonewall, and I know that's not the person I want to be, but it's
also going to just be part of the equation. And when you add in you're tired, or you have eight hundred other things that on your plate, you know you're not always going to be that perfect person of being like, Hi, I'm feeling fear, and I'm going to eloquently articulate those feelings for you in a very nice and gentle tone. So there's going to be no you know, friction between us. You're like, I have a power point.
I've made a slide deck. It's on Prezzy. I just had to look up what presny was, and I'm sure it's for lecturers and marketing professionals, but it seems like a real snazzy way to tell a lover how and why they bruised your feelings, I'm gonna use it like that's just it's not gonna it's not how it's going to come out right.
But knowing how you and your partner like react when you're in fear is going to be important. So you can also start to see it so that if they're shutting down or if they're getting angry that's disproportioned to the thing, you can actually be like, Okay, this is not me like an ass like are you are you feeling afraid right now? And are you able to talk about it? Or maybe do we need to like take a five? And like, for me, sometimes I just need
to walk away. Yeah, I'm just gonna say something stupid.
So I just and what's happening in that because I will sometimes be I know, there's this adage of like, never go to bed angry, and sometimes I'm like, if I'm annoyed or angry, insecure or fearful, and it's coming out sideways thanks folicism, Like I'll fall asleep and I'll wake up and I'm like I'm fine, and I'm like and that's so anathetical to then never go to bed angry. But I feel like I'm like, this is a chemical tornado in my brain. Yeah, and it's gonna go away.
And I is there ever, is it just like different structure, different folks, or like, is there something good about just like letting your brain chemicals drain and get broken down over time like an hour, five minutes.
Yeah, we're essentially always two year olds, okay, like forever, and sometimes we just need a goddamn map and we just need to take a little nap or have like a snack.
Hangar is a thing, and sometimes the root of the.
Problem is just, yeah, your brain just needs a break or you're hungry, and that sounds oversimplified, but it's also true. And so sometimes if you just feel like everything's going wrong. I heard this quote a couple of weeks ago, and it was great. It was like, if you run into one asshole during the day, that person was an asshole. If you keep running the assholes all day, it's you. Yeah,
you're the assle, You're the asshole. And so if you just all day everyone is just on your last nerve, it's you just go take a nap, right, It's probably you haven't had enough sleeps.
So there is something to be said for going about angry and just waking up chill. I saw this one psychology website that said that the typical fight or flight response lasts about twenty minutes, and so twenty minutes of calm is just a good start to drain your brain of the panic juice, which I'm starting to realize maybe
why some meditation practices recommend twenty minute stretches at a time. Now, okay, if you can't find a soft surface to peace out and dream or just breathe your fears rage away, Apparently exercise can also help you burn through some of that cortisol and epinephrine. So if you're having a day, you're having a moment, just announce I'm going to run around the parking lot a bunch to metabolize my very common
chemical feelings of inadequacy. Be right back, thank you. Also, maybe take a look at what's making you have those adrenaline spikes, But do you think that there is there should maybe be a deeper look at like the way that we do scare ourselves, Like should we maybe stop looking at Twitter accounts that terrify us all the time? Should we put a cap on how much how many rabbit holes we go down or do you think that if we're going down it, we should be going down at.
I think you have to like really be discerning on where you're going to spend kind of your your stress response. So we know that having a stress response all day long is really bad for you. It will kill you, Like your body is not able to take care of itself. It's not going to be mentally fun. It's not good all around. It's not good for your relationships because you're constantly like so, you're not going to have the best life if you're constantly in that state of stress and fear.
So just like you can't eat all the things every minute of the day. You have to be discerning, right, It's got to be discerning on what kind of things do you want to expose yourself to, what kind of things do you want to spend your stress money on?
Right?
Like for me, I don't engage with people in like comment sections, and as you do media as well, and like especially when you do visual media, and as a woman, even if it's in science, people make crazy ask and you're like, seriously, you came to a science show to I'm not imedian into it, but I I'm just gonna let it go because that's not worth my stress energy. It's a finite amount of like currency that I have, and.
I'm not going to spend it on that stuff.
That doesn't matter if it's something I enjoy, Like I don't like horror like slasher films, but like spooky films, you know, or like psychological thrillers.
And that's kind of fun. If I don't have to go to bed alone have like, oh spooky, then that's that's fun for me.
So I'm gonna spend some of my my stress energy there, but that's gonna be a choice. And really it's it's about it's about choices and knowing which things are going to kind of be your stress responses and you're not going to fully manage those, but just kind of making making better choices of what is my like return on investment in this, Like you know, like we're talking about social media, going to change that person's opinion by fighting
with them in the comment section, probably not right. People like cognitive bias is a thing, and and people in the comment section are not there usually to have a deep, meaningful conversation. They're there to get their anger fix, and so like for me. I'm like, I'm not gonna be your dealer.
Sorry, I'm just You're gonna have to get your anger fixed somewhere else. So staying calm and super collected might be the cruelest response. And then, to quote the wisdom of ancient East Coast philosophy, forget about it.
And when you have like rumination, when you have like fear and anger that don't have an outlet, then you just keep cycling in your body.
You're just like, I'm gonna hold onto this and.
Just get more angry and more, you know, like frustrated or fearful about things.
That's not serving anything. It's not doing any good.
You know.
I know, we don't know a whole lot about depression and anxiety. I mean, compared to the amount people suffer from it, to what we know. I think we still figure out like how SSRIs really work in the brain. How much do you think of anxiety is genetic physiological? And how much is it learned responses? Do you know what I mean? I mean, I know that cognitive behavioral therapy is super helpful and not is relearning. But I'm just curious and I can look more into this just
because I thinking of my family history of anxiety. I'm wondering how much of it is just patterns of behavior.
Yeah, it's definitely going to be a mix and with a lot of like mental health issues part of it. You know, it's going to be genetic predisposition. Take addiction right. Part of it is genetic predisposition.
Part of it is going to be the environment in which you were raised.
Part of it is going to be your active choices and the support system or education that you've been given around how to make different choices. So humans are so complex and this is kind of why there's no easy answer to any of these things. But there's always going to have that genetic predisposition be a part of it
because we do have lineages. They just came out I think, like like a few months ago you probably saw this with like scientific evidence to support trauma gets passed on through generations and not just in utero, Like there's a genetic with a telomeres impact of trauma that gets passed through DNA.
You're like, what, so if you have a trauma a lot, you're screwed. It was not even your fault, doesn't do anything. It's I just let me get my life. That is quite an inheritance, right, Like, yeah, you're like, I got shitty telomeres and some epigenetics that are boning me thanks to Grandpa. Right, So, if you listened to the Evolutionary Biology episode, you might remember some things about acqui genetics and epigenetics and gene expression, and this kind of falls
in line with that. So there was a study out in the American Journal of Psychiatry in twenty fourteen, and it involved data about war survivors who suffered PTSD having children with higher methylation of a gene involved in stress response. But it was a small study. It only looked at a little slice of genes with not that many people, So some scientists say that more data needs to be gathered. We got a lot to.
Learn, and a lot, especially like really big trauma on things like the Holocaust, things that we're completely out of those individuals control. It continues to get passed down in generations. So I mean, with the brain, there's still so much we don't know and we're kind of still scratching the
surface of understanding, like learned fears. We still don't quite know how that works, of why someone you know learns to be afraid of water because something happened when they're a kid, and then you have.
Other people that love water.
So there's still like a lot of research to be done on that end, but it's definitely passed on both I think genetically as well as behaviorally, because how do you learn how to be a human for your parents in your family, Like, especially when you're young and and really impressionable, like how do I human?
Oh? That's how I human? Okay, And that's so.
Deeply imprinted that even when you start to learn new behaviors, it's not going to be as powerful as what was imprinted when you were young. So depending on what kind of you know, shake of the dice you got, that's going to have a huge impact on how you're going to like express yourself as an adult.
But it's interesting to me that like learning about how much of our fears, especially in the Western world or you know, in a in a you know, big city or whatever, are fictional, gives me more faith in pursuing more like cognitive behavioral tactics. I think there's at some point I think you kind of just surrend teer anxiety
and you're like, well, I'm an anxious person. Like I got diagnosed with a generalized anxiety disorder, and I was like a few years ago, and I was like, oh, that's why I'm constantly worried about like living under a bridge. That's why I'm always afraid of being a failure or something. And so I think I at some point I kind of was like, well, I got a diagnosis, so I'm
surrendering to it. Yeah, Like it's who I am. And it's interesting to hear about you talk about it in that way because I'm like, oh, I'm there are steps that I just don't take because I just think, like, this is my lot and life. Like it'd be like if you were a diabetic and you're like, well, why bother taking insulin? I'm diabetic, you know what I mean. You're like, I'm like, I have more power to actually change things than I probably have given myself credit for,
you know what I mean. I think I And I think it's interesting because I feel like the more people open up about fear and anxiety and stress, the more you find out a lot of other people have it. And it's there's something really tragic about that because that means a lot of us struggle with it and none of us know what to do to self soothe in the moment, like we just it's we're just not equipped. We weren't given that. That's so that's so fascinating. I'm
going to remember that. Yeah, all right, Yeah, super helpful.
Yeah, and it's and it's one of those things that you know, like having professional therapy can be super super helpful, but that's only maybe once a week, maybe twice a week, and we feel fear every damn day. So we need things that are gonna be easy to remember when our higher functions are just shutting down. Yeah, then we can put in our pocket and be like, Okay, I'm gonna I'm gonna pull this out and I'm gonna pull myself out of this.
Like fear storm. And that empowers us.
That makes us like not feel like we're just the whims of our brain exactly that you know, our brain's.
Just gonna be like I do what I want. And the other thing is, especially if you're having I fear can be divided, If fictional fears can be divided into I'm not good enough or I'm out of control, I think that feeling like embarrassed that you're afraid, we're ashamed that you your fear made you angry. That only triggers more of that I'm not good enough and I'm out of control because I'm not in control of my emotions and I'm a huge turd for feeling angry and afraid.
And now I'm even worse because I'm ashamed that I'm angry and afraid, you know what I mean. So it's just like it really spirals down so quickly. It's like the song that never ends? Is that down? How do I turn you off?
So?
Who? If you're an alive human, you probably related to a lot of this and you're like, wait, there's so much more I need to know, But don't fear Part two is here, while it will be next week. So I broke this episode into two. I made Mary talk to me in my couch for so long. I'm obsessed with her work now. So stay tuned next week to hear about Mary's own personal moments of greatest fear and what she did and when it taught her, as well as a ton of really good questions sent in from
your own inquisitive brains, which Mary will answer. Meanwhile, you can find Mary online at www. Marypoffanroth dot com. She's on Facebook at Marypoffinroth. She's also on Twitter at Marypoffinroth Instagram, though her handle is fear forward, so gently stalk her. This podcast is at Ologies on Instagram and Twitter. I'm at Ali Ward with one L on Instagram and Twitter. You can pick up Ologies shirts and pins and totes at the newly designed ologiesmerch dot com site. We have birdpins,
bug pins, clockpins. We just got in this week these cosmetology pins and they are glittery. They're eight bucks. So much cuteness, so go to ologiesmerch dot com for that. Thank you Bonnie Dutch and Shannon Felts for helping with the merch site. You can join the Ologies Facebook group if you like nice people. Thanks Hannah Lippo and Aaron Talbert for admitting. And thank you Steven ray Morris for the lastest minute editing ever. You're a champion. Also, happy
belated birthday Stephen ray Morris. It was last Tuesday. Thank you for existing. The music was written by Nick Thorburn of the band Islands, And if you stick around through the credits, you know you get a secret. I'm just gonna tell you that this is so dumb. So this
whole two part episode is about fear and stress. This weekend, I was on a tiny vacation with some of my best girlfriends I've known since I was twelve, and I had to get the audio uploaded, and the Wi Fi at the airbnb we're staying at was the slowest ever. Like this will not mean anything to most people, but it was point two four megabytes per second upload speed, which if that, if you deal at all with any uploading of anything, you know that that is just that's
like tear inducingly slow. Anyway, I finally went to a library. Shout out to public libraries, y'all have fast, free Wi Fi and I love you. But my poor girlfriends I've own us since high school had to watch me freaking out trying to upload this episode all about fear and this rest response. So it's uploaded, and I had to ask myself why am I freaking out right now? And I was like, I'm afraid I'm not good enough because I didn't upload this earlier, and what if this episode
isn't good enough and no one listens anymore? So there you go. There's my secret for the week you guys. Real life fears. What if I'm not good enough? What if this isn't good enough all because of slow upload speeds. So anyway, think about what you're afraid about. We'll have more next week. This is a it's a what a
great two parter. It's kind of like free therapy, even though I think I'm supposed to say a disclaimer about that this is not intended to diagnose or treat anything, and you should get professional health for everything because the podcasts aren't allowed to fix anything. But it's very helpful nonetheless. Okay, pretty deep, and I'll.
Pack a German college hommeology, cryptos lithology, meteorology, theology, theology, seriology.
This is the song that doesn't and get value you can't argue with. At Tesco, with their amazing club card prices, have the perfect night in with their finest frozen pizza meal deal. Get the finest frozen pizza, chips and ice cream all for six euro like our delicious spicy salami, hot honey and do you or Margarito wood fired pizzas served up with their crispy chunkie chips and ice cream like sea salta caramel or pistachio for dessert can't argue
with that shop in store or online. Tesco every little helps available in most stories. Prices varying, Express