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Oh hello, Hi, it's your old dog hiding behind the couch because I ate from the garbage again. For week two, it's all Ali Ward. Okay, why well, because we're back for part two of theorology. Folks, did you listen to part one? I hope you did. If you haven't, then just stop this. Go back listen to part one. That's how things work sequentially, and part one is bananas. How crazy bananas was that episode? So I heard from so many of you that it was like life changing, totally
was for me too. And so we're back for the last half of the interview because I did talk to that ologist for one million hours, so I split it into two. Fun fact, did you know that you can't spell interview without review. Got it. And when you rate and review and subscribe to this podcast, it keeps it up in the charts, and it helps other people see it, and then boom, you have more people to talk about this stuff with at dinner parties. So and I read
every single one of your reviews. Every single one is that weird. I do it, no shame. And this week's review was just so kind. The review I picked to read is from stir Fried. The part I loved said, even when I see a topic and I'm like, eh, I give it a listen, and I get wrapped up in it as if it were a topic that I was enthralled with. Keep it up, Alli. And so if there are any episodes that you haven't listened to because you're like, I don't think I'm gonna like that, go
back and listen to it. My promise, I put stuff in there for everyone, and you're gonna be like, who knew. I am now very very excited about Jemstone and birds. So head on back, okay, but let's get back to it. So we learned last week that feorology is indeed a
real word. It has been cited in the literature and that stress is just a sneaky, deaky word for fear that blew my mind, and that fear is not helpful unless it's factual, and you need your muscles tens to outrun an angry animal, And that a lot of our fictional fears stem from just plain old human not being good enough or from being out of control? So why did I never learn that in therapy? Ever? Why not? Anyway?
No matter. Also, if this podcast makes your life any better, here's where I say, maybe consider being a patron for like a dollar a month. I'm not afraid to put that out there. Patrons get to ask their questions to theologists. And also you help support the making of the show, which requires like web hosting and editing and microphones and all sorts of other bullshit. Anyway, back to Fear. So this week we'll find out how super successful people approach fear.
We'll learn about Mary's scariest hour of her life and what she learned, plus all your questions about everything from night terrors to self spookery to shark's bad pr image to how likely is it that a snake bites your butt? And also the best thing about following your passions in life. So sit back, breathe deep, and hold on to your Amignola folks. For Fearrologists Part two Mary Puff and Roth.
And it sounds like a Harry Potter name, which is totally fine.
Let's get right into it. Let's talk about what is the most afraid Mary Poffinroth ferrologist has ever been. Do you know the most afraid you've ever been?
Let's see, I'm afraid a lot. Probably one story that pops in my mid and it's usually when you think about all the things you're really afraid of, it's like death right of some kind, either like your death or someone that you loves death. Because death is final. It's one of those things that generally you can't live through, and even living through someone else's death is always really challenging.
For more about fearing death, you can see or revisit the episode on Thanatology with Cole and Perry. Okay, sorry, let's get back to our story.
Once I was doing my graduate work in biology in the warm mountains of California, which is like very northeastern corner in the middle of nowhere, and it's like an eight hour drive from the Bay Area, which means that I had to like go by my self to do live trapping like a lot. And it's I'm probably like twenty three at the time, twenty four, and it's a bunch of sage brush scrub, which is kind of like a like a tawny blue color, almost like a gray
blue color. And I'm dressed in gray field pants and a gray vest because I'm smart, and it's hunting season because it's the middle of nowhere, so I'm not by myself in the middle of like the sage brush scrub, checking my traps, studying the habitat partition of chipmunk species. So out there dying a thing, and hear this like pop pop pop, and I like just hit like my my initial like you know, reaction is to get super small,
hit the deck, like you really really tiny. And at this point I know I'm getting shot at, Oh my god, but I don't know if they're doing it because they don't see me or because they do see me. So and as a woman, the first thing in my mind is like not death, but like, oh my god, these are hunters. They are going to be like cowboys. They're going to rape me. That's like that's where my mind initially goes and as you do, yeah, as you do, right, and the I'm like, okay, what I do?
What I do?
And I'm trying to get really small under the stage bush grub and I turn over to my left and there's a giant fire ant hill like right in front of my face. So I have to make some decisions about my life right now. The truck that I had is even if I ran, I'm not a good runner, would be like like a ten minute run to get back to the truck. So I'm like, okay, do I just stay still? Do I do? Like? Do I? I don't? Like, I can't stay right here because there's fire ants literally
in my face. And at this point, I'm going through all of the scenarios of what could happen and do I deal with the very real in my face fire ants and just stay where I am and don't move because they might see if I move? Do I make noise because maybe they'd be just don't see me? Because I want to trust that humans are good. You're like,
what are what are I motions? And then I'm thinking like the news right of like young Field biologists, Warner Mountains, and this happens within seconds, right all of these scenarios play out in your head. And I definitely and being alone, right because they like if I had been with someone else's ability to reach out would have made everything so much better, you know, safety and numbers and uh, this was like before cell phones were a thing. So this
is right, And so you're just in nature. I love nature of a biologists, but also nature is scary because we are not good at defending ourselves yet. Just we're pretty like we don't have things, we don't have a good ability to do much of anything physical.
Yeah, we'll think our way out of it.
Yeah, exactly, good luck, right, Yeah, I mean've got a posable thumbs. That's kind of cool. Helps, And so I think that probably is one definitely one of like the like scariest actual situation.
How did you resolve it?
So I kind of like scoot it down again, like looking I'm kind of you know, like very very tiny, I like to say, uh, fun sized, And I just scooted like around away from the ants and just kind of like froze there and like wait and then like waited to hear stuff. So they were like in an ATV which made noise and just waited for the ATV sounds to like move away, And I have no idea how long I was there, but just like made myself small, did not like, you know, cause the fighting that wasn't
really gonna help. Yeah, I like flying, I knew it was too far, so I'm like, I will just hide.
Oh my god, what were they shooting at?
Do you think point dear? Yeah, it's it's like really middle of nowhere California, like the one town. And by town, I mean there was a gas station and a bar that was the town and that was like an hour and fifteen minutes away drive. Oh my god.
Yeah, just a quick note. So curiosity got the better of me and I was like, what happens if you do bury your face in a pile of fire ants? What happens? And it led me to a YouTube video with fourteen million views in which a guy named Coyote Peterson inserts his hands into a mound of loose sandy soil like he's just getting the world's worst manicure by thousands of Satan servants giving him itchy lumps and pustules. Let's listen in.
I'm Kyartie Peterson, not about ten to the strike zone with the fire ant. You guys ready you shot good yep one two, three, holy cow out?
Oh oh, holy cow.
That's a lot of things already.
Anyway, he tries to keep them in there for like sixty full seconds, just like a good cuticle soak, but he lasts maybe twenty five because he's like, fuck this shit, I hate science. Now he doesn't say that vocal, but I bet it's it's head a little bit. Okay, back to Mary, who were they shooting at and what happened?
It was. It was definitely one of those like I am actually kind of screwed if they if they were shooting at me because they saw me. But then the reality is the chances are they probably were shooting at a deer and not me, and they shouldn't see me because I was all in gray and still, yeah, that's I'm going to put that in the factual. Yeah, oh yeah, definitely it was. You know, the the getting shot at
was super fact. But then you know, my mind continue to make all different reasons and in that situation, you know, you don't know, and so I just kind of like waited it out until I heard them like really far away, and then just like took off.
Thank God, You're like, do we owe someone money? Am I the mob? What's happening?
Is this a political assassination?
So yes, even ferologists get afraid. It happens. But like super successful, crazy successful people, they must just lack a gene. They just must not feel fear. Right, So actually I want to come back. This was the beginning of the top of the talk.
I was saying that there's uh a guy who did some research looking at how what vocabulary was being used of super successful people versus like less than successful or mediocre people. And like the hyper successful people like the Richard Branson's and the Ed Catmell of Pixar and like the I mean wow, have done crazy stuff. They use the word fear. They use the word afraid, and they
use the word scared. No yeah, so yeah, Like in Ed Catmull's book that he wrote about creativity, Creativity, Inc. I think he used the exact word fear like ninety eight times.
Oh my god.
And people that are less successful, guess what word they use stress?
Stress shut up?
Are you serious?
Yeah?
Yeah, oh my god. So like like and Camill said, if we're not afraid, we're not doing our job, because that means we are playing small and we are not pushing our limits. So learning that fear is something you should run towards in a healthy way with those fictional fears,
not like you run towards your mugger, right, let's hug. Yeah, but you know, making those adult decisions, but feeling that fear and being like, oh, okay, this is maybe an area that I don't feel confident in, So what can I do to push that a little harder instead of running away from it?
And that is in terms of you know, this is a different episode, but in terms of phobias like that is why exposure therapy can be helpful.
Yeah, yeah, And there's a lot of work being done with like VR with phobias and exposure therapy. So it's they feel a little bit safe, but still their brain is getting trained. It's okay to you know, get on a plane or wear a sweater whatever that is to help their retrain themselves.
It would just be me in a spreadsheet.
Spreadsheet, breadsheet of phobia, God excelophobia, Yes.
Them so much. Okay, you're ready for rapid fire. Mm hmm, Okay, I'm just gonna throw these out. You can answer as quickly as you want. Okay. These are from Patreon's patrons on Patreon who support the show. Thanks guys. Tyler Fox wants to know. Is fear of the dark mostly universal?
I would say yes, because as humans we have really poor eyesight at night. We're a diurnal species. That means that we're going to be naturally, you know, awake during the day, even though in modern parts we have the
ability to have fancy electric light. Our bodies are meant to be active hunting in the day, so at night we would naturally get in our little safe protective area, whatever you know that would be, whether that is you know, a tribal situation or if you're a primate in your little nest, and then we don't leave because we can't see and there's predators out there and we can't see that well at night, like walk into your room or
like the bathroom. And this is and when you talk about beer, you want to really try and separate the ones you just are going to be part of your life forever. So I'm still afraid to go in the bathroom when it's dark at night, but I don't want to turn on a light because I'm be able to go back to bed. But have to pee, and I just keep thinking, like, what if there's but if there's a snake in the toilet. I live in downtown La, y'all, Like there's no. I mean, I don't live in the tropics.
I mean that's but I just I don't know why. It's like, what if it bites my butt?
I don't know.
I'm really it's how cute, how cut would be just be like mar.
N h.
I mean, but the probability very slim.
I mean it's very slim. Okay, quick note here, how probable is it that a snake will bite your butt? I started looking into this to prove that it's happened like one time, and the news likes to sell fear, and yes, sure enough, a family in Seattle a few years ago found an enormous ball python in their apartment toilet, and that kind of blew the notion up a bit. But then I started finding more and more stories. Apparently
this is not an isolated incident. So the BBC did a piece on toilet critters, and one Australian wildlife worker says that rats sometimes hang out in sewer pipes, which is like so on brand for them and the snakes follow the rats. They're just like walking hamburgers. So this guy gets called on about four or five times a year, and he was like, not vague about his feelings. He said, quote, it's the worst job. You get a toilet bowl that's been there thirty forty years. We see the bit that
gets cleaned, but the rest of it doesn't. So when you go to pull the thing out of there, it's not fun. I usually have a bottle of disinfectant with me. Only imagine. He said all of that in a very charming wildlife Australian. Okay, So then I scrolled through a large volume of images online of things in your toilet that should not be in your toilet, and I found photos of very wet baby bunnies, a dazed and sopping squirrel, and dozens of bright green toilet frogs that had just
sauntered up a pipe after a rainstorm. So it happens, but it's still rare, and most of the time just think of it as a universe delivering you a new temporary pet.
But it's one of those things that I think about and be like, Okay, it's irrational. I'm just gonna just let it go. And so and part of it is when you go into a dark room, it's you don't know what's going to be there. And this is why when we look at horror movies and the tropes that are in there, they're very specifically tapping into those natural fears, you know, Like horror movies are usually dark and there's a spooky house or there's a corn field, and it's
not like bright, sunny, beautiful day. Usually it's like dark, so that you can hide in the shadows.
Yeah, they're never like they never take place in like a brightly lit wal mart or something or.
Thought that might be a good one.
Yeah, that strikes terror in a lot of people, I'm sure. Tofer Mendoza wants to know. Is fear a learned behavior? Says, I used to be afraid of a lot of things, and then my belief structure change. Now I find it really hard to be scared by things that are supposed to be scary.
So with fear, there's both, like we're saying, fictional and factual fear, So we're always going to have a natural fear response. So at the top of hour, we're talking about stressors versus stress, So as those stressors change, we can have a different perception of how we're going to react to those stressors, and everyone's gonna have a little bit of a different tolerance for dealing with different stressors. So you can learn to be more afraid, you can
be you can learn to be less afraid. But you're always going to have fear in some way, shape or form. It might not be something you're dealing with daily, right like that factual fear of having your life physically threatened, or someone that you love that you know you're out of control to impact it, or you know, those kind of fears. Hopefully you're very minimal in our lives. So really the fictional fears where we can do the most
work and we have the most impact. So it sounds like the Patreon there was able to do that work with the fictional fears and start whittling down their reaction to those things that are not directly impacting their ability to survive, and even within factual fears, like you look at military training where they're trying to get people to move past what their initial like fear reaction would be with you know, someone literally coming to pretend to kill them.
Military training involves something called fear inoculation, which is getting exposed to scary ish situations in kind of small amounts until you're just no longer shocked by them. You're just kind of over it. So how do they do this? They simulate bad via in this kind of blew my mind paintball and laser tag, which now totally justifies my
dislike of these recreational activities. If someone's like, hey, it's Saturday afternoon, you want to go do minigolf or like eat pancakes on a patio or pretend to kill each other with lasers, there's one of those things that I'm like, no, I'm good.
And that's training and it takes a while. But to say that even a highly trained Navy seal is not afraid is ridiculous. They're still they're going to acknowledge it, but they're going to have the skills in training to move past it to do what they need to do.
It'd be interesting to make a list of the things that scare you most, or the times you've been most afraid, and go back and think, was there an actual danger there?
Yeah?
You know what I mean? And how would I handle that fear in hindsight? Knowing I'm thinking about the times I've been most afraid, and yeah, I think about like the centrifuge, and I'm like, yeah, no, I didn't need to be afraid. Even the mugging. I got through it. I threw my purse really far. I distracted them, I
memorized your plates. I took them to court. Like you know, it was not a pleasant experience, and I had ptsc for a while, but I clearly, you know, I think that if I if you look back on all the times that you've you've been afraid and thought, well, I handled it and so I survived, you know, then it almost feels more empowering. But you know, Jordan s wants to know weird and dumb question, why does anxiety slash
dread give us that stomach achey crampy feeling. I understand the racing heart and fast breathing, but I can never really get why that stomach cramp feeling happens.
And I'm the big D word.
Yeah, I love that rhea is the way to get yourself out of it. You're like, ria are rihah already got pick one? Yeah, so if you listen to part one, you may remember that Mary's tactic when you feel stressed out or angry or fretful, is to stop and do some ri I A some riha which stands for recognize, identify, and address a fear or a stress when it comes up to figure out exactly what it is that you're afraid of.
Throughout the work that I do. I like to have a dichotomy because people love one or the other right like binary of like left, right, good, bad, up down. So in particularly for that question we're talking about digestion, it's because digestion is a non essential function of when we are in fear. So this is also why a sustained fear response leads to part of the OBCD epidemic that we're seeing in the United States and throughout the developed world, because when our body is in fear, it's
not trying to digest properly. It's just be like, okay, shut it down, because that's not going to our digestive system is not going to help us fight off the stuff. So when like the grumbly tumbly stuff, that's more of the digestion system, like trying to like take things offline, and with the excavation aspect, that's trying to lighten the payload so that we we just you know, like dump the cargo so you can run faster, which is which
is an animal response. Like when birds like take off for flight, they want to lighten the cargo load, which is why they like pooh before flight.
Right.
You want to you know, make the journey as light as possible.
You feel like anytime you have loaded a pet into the car to go to the vet, you've probably gotten shit on it, like at least once. Like I remember having to take a cat to the vet once and it was just explosion. It was like you stepped on a pastry bag. And I was like why, and it's like I'm scared.
I don't know what a car. I don't understand cars.
Yeah, Like I guess that our bodies do that before a big presentation or whatever. You know, your body's like, you know what would help this presentation. It's just a bit a diarrhea.
Give that something extra.
This is what's going to help you survive your like PhD dissertation, it's just explode your butthole. I've also heard that right before a fight, your body wants to lighten your load and you get stabbed by claws like in your colon, and then the less you have on board, the smaller your risk of contaminating your own body with the filthy contents that is the bag of waste that
is your guts. I hope you're not eating. So I look for some articles on this and I can't confirm it, but I think it's a cute idea, kind of like your body, just like toss in a bowllet chili in the bushes before a fistfight, so it doesn't stain your shirt. Now, okay, what if you're just blessed with not feeling any fear at all. Well, there's this disease called herbach wife. I
think that's how you pronounce it. That can cause calcium deposits and lesions on the little almond fear factory that is your amygdala, and thus it can reduce a patient's fear response to next to nothing. My friend, doctor Tigenwall, thank you, by the way for telling me about this over dinner. So one sufferer of this disease is identified only as SM It's probably at the behest of the researchers for an anonymity, but she's probably like so a lot of people find I now who I am? I
literally fear nothing. That's probably not true, but according to Wikipedia quote, SM appears to experience relatively little negative emotion while simultaneously experiencing a relatively high degree of positive effect despite great adversity in her life. So researchers are like, yeah, she's pretty happy. Man. She's got a shit life, but she's pretty happy. So researchers took SM to an exotic pet store. They had her whole snakes and spiders, and she was fine. She was like, this is dope, which
I kind of have to agree with her. That would be pretty cool. But they also took her to a haunted halloween house and she was just chill. She was like, this is fun. Her lack of anticipatory fear, though, has had as consequences. She walks alone at night whenever she wants, and she's been mugged, but she continues to take the same walk home, something that her amygdala in a healthy state would otherwise be screaming at her, like no recalculating route, bitch, no,
do not go down that street. But as Sam is said to be super friendly to strangers, so I imagine she's probably like a hoot at a cocktail party. Megan Gerard asks, setting aside really split second super bad situations factional, what can we do to help control or tamp down fear for things that we know logically are not dangerous or scary? So once again, Rhea, Yeah, you.
Know, like try and recognize even just the I mean, there's so much power in just having the self awareness saying, oh, I'm having a fear response right now, instead of just following that fear response like Alice in Wonderland down the rabbit hole, being like should should I follow that rabbit or should I maybe just chill out and see what the situation is? So recognizing that in the moment, identifying it, you know, like name it to claim it, saying okay,
so what is this? Is it? Is it dread? Do I just kind of like am I anxious that something's gonna happen? Am I actually terrified? Am I feeling just insecure? Like I just I don't have control over the situation? And like I said before, those two are usually like enough to start pulling you out of it and then really address what kind of outcomes can be managed here?
Is there a strategy you can employ that would help to alleviate what you're feeling right now, or just even doing kind of what's the worst that could happen that if you play that little game you know in your head, what's the worst that could happen, and just keep going for like five or six times you get to a point you're like, Okay, I'm actually not gonna die. Then your brain's like okay, we're not gonna die. Cool, I'm gonna go back to say good right.
Those are this is I'm gonna have to just carry that around on like an emergency bracelet. That's like in case of emergency. Ari Sarah Mischell asks how can someone be afraid of something they haven't necessarily experienced, like sharks for example? Like what triggers a fearful response if you've never even been scared of it in person?
Part of that can be media, and sharks is such a good example because uh, like toasters and vending machines kill more people every year than sharks, right for real, And unless you are a scuba diver or a surfer, like, it's not a shark nado, yeah up in your hometown
in Nebraska, Like why it's they're literally in the ocean. Yeah, but we have a tear of sharks because thinks Jaws, because they make a really good villain because they're not that cute, they have like funky teeth, they're big, they're cold blooded, and so they make a really good way for stories to have a big scary monster, because we like to be scared in a safe way and we want those big scary monsters, and sharks just fit the
bill really well. So we have been trained to be scared of sharks, and part of that is good storytelling of the build up and not having control like you know in Jaws, where you have like the little swimmer on the top and why are they always women in bikinis that get eaten whatever, and so you you know, and we're not made to be in water. We can be in water for a short amount of time, but we're not that good. We're kind of clunky and like, and so we don't have full control over over our faculties.
And that's already putting us in a vulnerable position. So already kind of like on edge. And then you have something coming from the deep and it's you know, like I just wooh, scary, move us us again, right.
So you have darkness and you have the inability to I mean, you probably can't fight it because you just you got these dumb little arms. And then flight is difficult because you're you can't swim as fast as you can run.
Yeah.
Yeah, you can't see it. Yeah, you probably can't hear it because it's under the ocean. They're not like, hey, I'm a shark.
Of comment.
Like, it's so all of our senses that keep us safe, that let us understand our outside world aren't really that great in the water, and that makes us vulnerable to actual death. And that's what is really good to tap into the big scary monster idea.
So sharks just get a bad wrap, I know, or sharks vending machines watch out. I've did some research on that one. So once I was hosting and writing on the show about fearful situations and the science behind them, and so before we shot, I did some digging on air show fighter pilot dangers versus shark dangers versus vending machines.
And it turns out that sharks in the US kill like one person every two years, and maybe one or two deaths a year happened in fighter jet aeronautic flights like air shows, but vending machines tipping over killed two people a year, usually people who've been trying to shake
snacks free from their coiled grip. While I was on location with fighter pilots shooting the show, a vending machine at the Air Force base started to dispense some barbecue potato chips, about which I was very excited, but then just dangled them mercilessly at me. And these two fighter pilots were like, yeah, sometimes you just have to kind of shake the machine, and I was like, no, y'all can't go out like this. Of all the ways, this
is the most dangerous. But it was fine and the chips, the chips were good, so and I was like, dang, vending machines are dangerous, yes, yep.
And it's perception right, and data will only go so far to calling your perceived fears, like no one's afraid of any machine. Yet the data shows that more people die from vending machines than sharks. But our brain has that such a debias of like I'm still.
Not going to be afraid of a vending machine, and that doesn't even count the cholesterol problems that might happen with a veny machine, or like you know the coronary disease that happens. I mean, you're talking to someone who used to eat ham sandwiches out of vending machines. Yeah, I had a job where that was dinner at like midnight, as I would go down and get a ham sandwich. So yeah, they're dangerous on a lot of front.
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Bob wants to know how clear is a line between anxiety and fear, and can you tell me a little bit more about those negative health effects of living with fear.
Now, you said anxiety and fear pretty much the same thing, pretty much, saything. Yeah, Now we're talking about clinical level anxiety. That's going to be a actual thing that needs to be addressed in a professional setting, right, so that's when you aren't able to adequately handle your fear and your anxiety is negatively impacting your life. And it's that line
is always fuzzy. It's kind of like addiction. Right where are you someone that just likes to drink or is the drinking impact in your life where you can't be successful, you're not having good relationships, you can't get to work or school. You know, where is that line? Not everyone that drinks wine needs to be treated at an addiction center, but there are some people that go to that level of the spectrum that they can't handle their consumption of
alcohol and need to go be treated. I find addiction one of those things that's almost easier to talk about than fear and anxiety in society, which is why I use it as an analogy, because sometimes you know, the brain has gotten to the point where just having these strategies isn't going to help, and you need to kind of get to that root of you know, what's it trauma driven? Well, you know what's going on for that
individual person and where that threshold is. It is seriously just like a person by a.
Person thing and some of the health effects of fear, you're saying sell regeneration, skin, digestive health, like scare me a little bit more about not being scared, you.
Know, And it's definitely not in my nature to try and bring the doom and gloom. But when we look at like more and a research is coming out associating the way we live our lives and the fear responses and the stress response to these like what we thought were unrelated like large issues in health. So the top killers of humans in the United States is heart disease, stroke, and cancer. So those are gonna be like your big three,
and they're all associated with stress and fear. Now there's going to be a like genetic component of it, but you can't control your genetic component. You can control your stress level and you can control your lifestyle choices. So you know, those are the things you want to focus on. And just looking at the three, the big three, stroke, heart disease, and cancer, I mean I don't have statistically, but like they kill a lot of people.
Yeah, okay, I'm going to rattle these off as fast as I can so no one is too bummed out. But heart disease is six hundred and thirty thousand deaths a year. Cancer about six hundred thousand deaths a year and then lower respiratory diseases one hundred and fifty thousand a year. So okay, it's afraid of sharks and spiders and toilet snakes and public speaking, and I guess be more afraid of ice cream. It's so weird to think that gelato looks like your friend, but it could actually
be your murderer. Like our typical American diet is just in menacing cahoots with stress and sleep deprivation.
And they're all going to have that component of fear and stress because they are something that is cultivated every day, you know, Like cancer is one of those things that lifestyle choices are going to impact it. So it depends. Cancer is one of those really tricky things to talk about, which is one word because every cancer is very different and how it behaves and how it's going to come about in the body. But at the heart of it, it's a disease of the cell cycle. So during that
cellular generation process, something went wrong. The cell is like chugging along, wanted to do its thing, and something went wrong, and it starts making cells that it didn't mean to make, and those are going to turn into those cancer cells, and depending on what type of cancer you're looking at, they're going to be an impact of how your body's constantly in that stress state and not focusing energy on
cellular regeneration and keeping up the housekeeping. So like your cell house is getting super messy because your brain is like, no, we need to focus all the energy on the stress responses because we think that we're dying all the time, because our body is not meant to be in that constant state of oh my gosh, we're gonna.
Diem And now I imagine also that must affect immunology and your immune system's ability to kind of police things and say, is this you need to send them cells after this thing?
And well, yeah, I mean the biggest part of your immunity is contained in your digestive system. So if your digestive system is not getting any attention because your body's like, sorry, digestive system, we need to take care of other things. And then in the in the moments that you do calm down, a lot of people turn to food to help like get those like happy feelings going. Yeah, so
they're shoving a bunch of food. Usually Nott's like, no, one stress eats broccoli like I've had such a hard day, baby, I just I need some broccoli before I can talk to you. Literally said, no one ever did.
Some research on this, and I found at least one person who might argue otherwise. So on September fourteenth, twenty sixteen, someone on the website twitter dot com with the handle blanket person tweeted quote, I think I'm addicted to broccoli. I'm going to fave and retweet this from theologies Twitter and perhaps, just perhaps we can follow up to see if he's still struggling with that. Meanwhile, the rest of us tend to make less healthy choices when we numb out.
So what do you do. You go for the sugars, You go for the fads, You go for the crunchy, the things that you probably shouldn't be eating anyway, but you want to get some you know, happy brain chemicals happening, so you're shoving that into your body. Then maybe you go back on your email, you start the whole thing over again, and your body's not really properly digesting things. The bacterial flora in your digestive system isn't, you know, up to par. You can have bacterial die off with stress,
which is decreasing your immunity. So it's like a total body thing.
You know.
I have to say also, I think that, like, if you're going to spend time doing serums and sheet masks, it's probably also good for your skin to just talk yourself through your fear storms, right, do you know what I mean? I have to say when I was meditating more, people were like, your skin looks amazing, and I was like, oh, and dang, I didn't. I was probably changing my body's priorities a little bit. I'll have to look into that, all right. I looked into this, and apparently it is
a thing. So being in a constant state of fear ups your cortisol, which boosts oil production and gives you breakouts. It also boosts sugar levels in the blood, which breaks down collagen, and that makes your skin look old and wrinkly and dry. So if people are starting to tell you that you look like your dad and you're like, dude, I'm thirty, or you're missing out on sleep because you're up watching videos about what serums to spend forty six
dollars on. There's so many serums, maybe we should all just give this meditation thing a good go and just calm this amygdalah meditation Like it seems kind of annoying if it's just like hocus focus, But when you look at it as a brief respite from terror and the chemical effects of just having like a fire alarm happening in your brain or body, You're like, yes, sure, Nomas day,
let's do this. I mean it is it's cheaper than cheat masks, and it takes way less time per day than under ice backle and you just you might end up crying less in airport bathrooms. I'm talking exclusively to myself on that last one. Courtney Sobieski asks, why do we sometimes rescare ourselves if our minds wander, Like say, I listened to a scary story and then a week later, as I'm falling asleep, I think about the scary story
and experience the fear reaction all over again, unprompted. Why does my body do that to me?
She asks, Because we're kind of like masochistic, and we just there's that porst of our brain. Part of it is that we like to dress rehearse tragedy. Yeah, because there's a portion of our dysfunctional mind that thinks that if we just practice enough, we will be prepared, we will be safe. Right, We're constantly looking for safety, and even though safety really doesn't exist, that we're constantly striving for it. And by dress rehearsing that tragedy, our mind's like, okay, cool,
I will be ready. I will be ready, and you keep going back to it. And part of it is we just have this like sick fascination with beating ourselves up or for stuff. I think that's that's never going to go away, But you definitely can manage it in a way where it stops being so negative on your life, and it's it's going to pop up, especially if you're someone that naturally goes to those places. It's not like
it's going to just magically disappear. But you can turn down the dial a whole lot to where it's a whisper instead of like blaring in your ear. And you can't put us on anything else.
A bullhorn of fear just a foghorn, but a foghorn's the next level man, lighthouse of anxiety. Jim person who is a wonderful person. I know him personally. Hi, Jim says, I'm so curious as to the ethical implications in studying fear. How does one conduct an experiment that requires someone to feel afraid that doesn't also harm them? So do scientists have to make sure to reinforce the subject's safety after they've made them feel afraid? So how is fear studied
in a clinical aspect? How do clinicians do experiments on stress response?
Yeah, so fear as like a study is massive, right, if you're going to focus on humans and like more of the clinical extremes, the outliers of the populations. In terms of ethics, it depends what ear you're looking at. So you know, pre nineteen eighties not great. Pre nineteen twenties really not great. Oh the bottomy is yeah, whould totally did that. And mental health is one of those things that there's still stigma around mental wellness and mental health.
It used to be where people had no rights. If you were like mentally unwell, you were put in asylums, you were abused. I mean, so, I mean terms of ethics, wasn't a lot of ethics. So it depends on what time period you're looking at. If you're looking at modern studies, it's definitely and if its in a clinical situation and it's United States based. Again, every country's a little bit
different on their laws. Now we have a lot of protections for patients and their well being, and it's part of the design process before whatever institution or organization you're at, you have to have really really like strong safeguards in there to be able to have that study approved. So now it's much more ethical. Usually it's it's partnered with
a treatment. Right now, the newest thing, like I was saying before, is is VR and how we can use VR to give some of that experience and exposure therapy, but in the safest way, because it used to be you know, like, oh'm afraid of spiders. Okay, we're gonna put your hand in a box of spiders. You're like what most people just even like or not, No, I'll
just be phrase spiders. That's fine. But with VR, because people know it's quote unquote fake, but it's kind of your brain doesn't know that, your like conscious brain knows that, but you're you're subconscious brain doesn't, and so they're a little bit more open to being like, Okay, I'll give
it a try. Doesn't sound fun, but it doesn't sound as bad as some other exposure therapy, So it's going to open a lot more ability to research and just asking people, right, humans, Staying humans is hard, So a lot of it is asking, Okay, what are your perceptions, what is your level of fear on spiders before you went into the VR, what's your level after, and just really exploring that.
By the way, VR stands for virtual reality, which is like those oculous rift like the huge goggles that cover your face and like an immersive, crazy situation. So I didn't want to interrupt before, but yeah, that's what that means. So virtual spiders may pave the way to calming your shit around three dimensional alive ones. And here's a secret. The alive ones, they usually just they want to hang out in your shower. They just want to look up
at you. They want to hear you sing. You're like, they're nude Selene Dion, So do not smear your biggest fans into a paste with a paper towel.
They love you. There's also some research in the clinical setting around depression and using really delicate electrical current and like you know, like outside of the skull, so it would be like an in office visit where you'd have like little pads and they'd put it, you know, like on your forehead and whar your skull to kind of like see if they can get away from so much medication based treatments and start to kind of almost reset
the electrical currents in your brain. And some people find a lot of like you know, therapeutic stuff with that. So there's gonna be a lot more research again with people that are already struggling with that thing and seeing how those treatment options are are helping to impact them, to get them back to like a baseline where they're a higher functioning in that area.
So instead of just like going to them all and kidnapping someone and saying I'm gonna show you a bunch of weapons and see how it's scared you get, it's some of the research is more like, you have a problem, Yeah, come on into this study, let's see if we can help with the problem.
Yeah, exactly, and the other kind of aspect, and we've done this forever. A lot of the biology and physiological studies are usually done on soldiers because it's a captive audience. You don't really need their permission, and it's crazy, but yeah, there's I mean it's so you know, the ethics have gotten better around that. But in terms of fear, it's very common to study special ops groups or incoming cadets, and because they're you know, they're gonna be in the
same place, they live together. So it's kind of like in in ecological studies, we love to study islands because you start to decrease the number of variables. So we study our military a lot, but then you run into the situation of those aren't everyone's experiences. Very few people when you look at the whole population, are ever going to be Navy seals. Like I can't even do a push up. I could do a plank, but like, I mean, not even a real push up, So they keep.
Trying to recruit me, and I'm like, you guys, not now, I'm going to be in my peak form two three years from now. Ask me again, paying me then, right. But so we can use them though, maybe to look at trends or to look at models, and then apply that in once we've refined them into the greater population. Okay, oh that's fascinating. Jessica Guysler wants to know is there a biological advantage to a metaphobia. I haven't been able
to shake it my entire life. I think that is the fear of barfing, because there is a barfing emoji, and I don't know about that. That might be a phobic question. I think that's a fear of barfing.
Yeah, I've never heard of that, but I I mean, if there's a barfing emoji.
Yeah, yes that is. I just looked it up, and it is a fear of barfing. Okay.
You know, I don't personally study phobia's, so I would be hesitant to say if there's I mean, the ability to vomit is a evolutionary adaptation for survival in and of itself, of all humans, which is one of the uh I know. I keep coming back to AAR and VR because I'm actually doing AR and VR work in education, so it's like on my mind. So there is a you know, as they're continuing to develop VR is that
a lot of people getnauxious from it. And that's because when our body has perceived that something is making like our ability to see things correctly, it assumes that it's like something we've eaten that's bad. So our body is like, oh no, we've been poisoned eject you know, stomach context, right, this is why, like if you put someone else's glasses on that they will make you like oh, like yeah, it starts to make you dizzy or nauseous, or if
your glasses aren't quite more than need to be. So it could be like something you know, over developed in that area, because I mean, it is a way that if we have eaten something bad, our body can purge it. But I've had a guess. My two cent answer.
Isn't that nuts? So the little fluid filled tubes in your ears are like, Okay, I'm sensing motion. Yep, that was a corner. We're moving, Holy shit. And your body's like no, no, no, no, no dude, I'm just sitting here in the seat. I'm not even moving my legs or anything. So they have a meeting about it, and the consensus is we're hallucinating. We've eaten moldy garbage. We're hallucinating. Let's barf. So okay, this is not an episode on Phobia's but Jessica,
I don't want to leave you hanging. So I did look it up and one method of getting over it involves confronting the fear head on and then abstaining from any rituals that you might do to avoid it, like running away or praying for the apocalypse. This kind of therapy is called exposure and response prevention aka ERP or ERP, which is coincidentally the noise I made before unpoisoning myself over my snake basin when I last had the stomach flu.
I don't know how the exposure part works, by the way, but maybe they just take you to a spring break party. Let me know how it goes. Dane Goding wants to know does your body have the same chemical and autonomic reactions to fear when you're asleep and having a nightmare as it does when you're awake and conscious, So.
The fear in stress response system is the same all the time. Oh, when we're asleep, our body has created a system to essentially paralyze us, so we don't act out our dreams, which is good for our bed partners, you know, like right, but we still have the physiological system. So like if you have like a really vivid nightmare and you wake up and you're like you're probably sweating, right, and you feel like you've been running, and like it takes you a second to figure out that it was
just a dream. Our body is still having that physiological response, but because we're in sleep, we also have that kind of protective sheath of sleep that is preventing us from acting out our dreams. Now, sometimes people don't always have that strong of sheath, and that's why you can have like night terrors, or if you are taking a sleeping pill like ambient. This is why sometimes people will have you know, get up and drive a car or do
things on sleep medication. So it doesn't always work, but that's usually why we wake up and we haven't like pummeled our bed partner, but we're all like sweaty and out of breath. Ah, that's so nuts.
Anna Marie says, I have chronic night terrors. I had chronic night ters as a child, and I still have them occasionally as a thirty five year old. This is something that ever fully goes away.
That's probably give me like a person by person basis. So usually night terrors are going to be like really extreme nightmares and they're recurring generally, you know, they could be associated with the trauma, like they're reliving that trauma because they haven't like fully like dealt with it. It could just be something that their psyche is trying to like act out and express in their dream state. So you know, it's kind of I don't think that anyone
has one answer that fits all humans. Yeah, it also kind of probably depends on what they're doing to address it, right, Like are they getting professional therapy where they're able to say, like, oh, this is happening, and you know, oh, maybe this is why, or maybe you could address this kind of thing, or or they you know, just numbing it out with particular substances, or they just ignoring it. So I think it also depends on what that like individual or any individual is doing to kind of address.
It's good, that's a good answer. Side note, I just watched a bunch of videos on YouTube about night terrors and I don't recommend it, although I do have to give credit to Britain for making sympathetic TV shows exploring these really frightening medical topics, such as their program titled quote Embarrassing Bodies. Is there anything embarrassing or challenging about Mary's job? What is the crappiest thing about your job? What is the hardest thing, what is the most annoying thing.
Is it scheduling? Is it having to look at your own internal working? It's like, what's the is it email taxes?
I would say, like I mean about my like professional job.
It's constantly dealing with like imposter syndrome of being what I do is so weird and so interdisciplinary that I'm you know, specifically trained with in you know, have graduate degrees in biology, my science communication master'ses from Imperial College and those make me feel good about what I'm saying for about five seconds and then you know, it's it's one of those things that because it's so weird, I feel like, oh I'm not I'm not good enough to
do these things, or like who am I to you know, like have this share this knowledge and stuff. And and that's why I'm always really really careful to say like I'm not a clinical psychologist. I don't see clients or patients, so that people know, like I'm I am getting this stuff from some of my own research, but also research in the literature, and that just continuing to convince myself that this work is important because other people will have
value from it. That's a constant conversation for me because I think it's you know it's so much easier. I've been teaching at Santa se State University. This is my eleventh year now, and I could just I can continue doing exactly only that role until I retire, and it'd be safe and be comfortable. And I mean, I know that I'm a good teacher. I feel confident it because I'm doing it for eleven years. But that's not going
to ever allow me to grow. And if I want to experience the world in a in a greater, more colorful way, then I have to do the things that scare me, and that means constantly pushing the like boundaries of my own personal boundaries. And I also do a lot of like public speaking, and every time, you know, like before I go on stage, I'm just like on the text with my friends, like oh my god, oh my god, I'm gonna die, Like okay, like at what point do you stop being freaked out by like a
really big talk? And maybe that's never right, but I always feel really good coming off stage. I feel really good having that ability to connect with people and they find value in in these tips and tricks that they can then apply to their lives and and for me having that as like a bigger goal helps with the imposter syndrome. But I think I think everyone you know, like rolls with that of.
Like so many people, it's amazing, and people that you would.
Be like, you have a brother, you're the book.
You make me have imposters, You're so amazing. So yeah, I think, you know. I I talk to the in the gynecology episode of about that, to the gynecologist who didn't feel comfortable saying she was a doctor for a while, and how the imposter syndrome is more prevalent in people who are capable and intelligence, which is so annoying because you're like, so if you have imposter syndrome, chances are you don't need to have it. That's there, you go,
I fixed it. What's your favorite part about what you do?
I think that it allows me to have I've taken a long time to craft a lifestyle that is really fairal where I'm a full digital nomad. I do everything on a weird schedule. I'm constantly traveling, and I love that lifestyle of not being in a tiny box and not having a time to like, you know, punch the clock.
And that's something that I've really been able to find a lot of joy in that I could pare my research and my science can munication and my teaching and my love of travel and put all those things together is just you know, like really really special and I'm very privileged to be able to do that of you know, posting the like here's my office today with my laptop on the beach right, and it's it's such a unique experience that there's not all the jobs in the world
that you could do that. So so really lucky that I can pull all these things in. Everything I do has been driven by my interests, which is also a privilege. Oft times, you know, people are in jobs they're like the reason why they're unhappy is because they have no interest in what they're doing. Where I do this because I love it. That means I don't have a distinct off switch. Yeah, it's you know, it's a lifestyle, not a job that you clock in and clock out of.
My mind's always thinking about things, you know, like writing down stories that would be good to tell on stage. I'm thinking about how I can do an activity in a workshop. So that's not for everyone. Yeah, a lot of people want to just like leave it at the office, you know, since my office is the planet. It there's you know, but it's such a privilege to be able to do that.
It's funny too, because that was one of your mother's greatest fears, and that was one of your greatest fears, is leaving home, and that's one of your greatest joys.
Now run towards your fear.
Yeah, which is amazing. It almost makes it makes me want to write down what I am most afraid of and really examine it differently, because I think that I just let fear kind of knock on my door, and who is it come in? And for my life? You know what I mean? Like, I don't really I don't necessarily like run toward the things that that might be scary and kind of get over them. So that's really inspiring. I can tell you that you do not have any of the marketings of an imposter. I think you are
very good at what you do. Please take that throw it into the ocean. You're amazing. Thank you for letting me talk to you. This is the longest interview I've ever done because I cannot asking you questions. You are amazing. Thank you so so much for me on.
Oh, you're so so welcome.
So for more about Marypoffinroth if you haven't already gingerly begun stocking her. Her website is Marypoffanroth dot com. She's Marypoffinroth on Twitter and Facebook and on Instagram. She's fear forward. Now to follow Ologies, We're at Ologies on Twitter and on Instagram. We're on patreon dot com slash Ologies if you'd like some perks there, like submitting your questions to ologists and seeing photos and videos. You can also fund the podcast and cover your body at ologiesmerch dot com,
which was just updated by Bonnie Dutch. We have some new pin designs up by Shannon Feltis. Thank you both for that. You can join up on Facebook on the Ologies podcast group. Thank you, Hannahlippo Esquire she just passed the bar. And Aaron Talbert for admitting for your ole pop. And thank you to Stephen Ray Morris for editing and cutting this all up and putting it back together for me every week. You're the best. The music was written and performed by Nick Thorburn of the band Islands. You
should check them out. And you know what, Okay, I have an idea. What if you ask smart people dumb questions, because thinking the questions are dumb is actually a fictional fear. No questions are dumb. I just say that so that you don't judge yourself. Okay, so if you hang through the credits, you know I tell secrets the end of every episode, and this one I thought i'd stay on brand. I wrote this on an airplane somewhere over Tennessee, just tippity tapping away. So I thought i'd make a list
of my fears and tell you what they are. One getting divorced, which is probably why I've never gotten married. Two mismanaging money, so I'm so afraid of overspending my money like an idiot, or like mc hammer did in the nineteen nineties. God bless them that. I just never buy myself shoes or clothes, so I could probably change that and live a little. Another fear teeth falling out. You know those dreams where your teeth fall out. I do not want that, irl, which also reminds me I'm
out of dental flus. So okay, everyone, let's read up on I don't know, retirement accounts and maybe treat yourself to some shoes on sale, and let's practice good oral hygiene. I hope you may end up making a list of things that have been nagging at you. I mean, there are some things we can't change, like the death of people we love or just the inevitable. Our butts are going to get droopy, but we can say to ourselves that I'll live that sorrow when it comes. You can't
pre grieve anything. You can only enjoy what you have right now and deal with the fears that you have and you can do something about so I hope that helps. I hope you go out and do the things you want to do. Okay, bye bye pacodermatology, homeology or doo zoology, lithology, minology, meteorology, pology, anthology, zeriology, elinology.
This is the song that probably