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Speaker 2: Oh hey, it's your weird old dog hiding behind the
Speaker 2: couch because I ate from the garbage. Hey w Ally
Speaker 2: Ward right here? Oh man? Okay, So this week and
Speaker 2: next week's episode originally aired in April twenty eighteen. It's
Speaker 2: a listener favorite. It's one episode people go back to
Speaker 2: for re listen when times are tough and they need
Speaker 2: a pep talk and a life coach and a brain
Speaker 2: scientist all in one for free. Also, this week, Time
Speaker 2: magazine named Ology is one of their top fifty podcasts,
Speaker 2: which freaked me out in the best way and also
Speaker 2: made me google how many podcasts are there? And there's
Speaker 2: seven hundred thousand out there, so this honor is not
Speaker 2: lost on me. Thank you Time Magazine. They shouted out
Speaker 2: this two part episode in particular is a great intro,
Speaker 2: and I decided for that reason to rerun it so
Speaker 2: new folks could easily find it. And also it's smack
Speaker 2: dab in the thick of the holidays this week, so
Speaker 2: if you've already listened, listen again. Also, do you want
Speaker 2: to hear something bananas that is forcing me to take
Speaker 2: a two week break to get ahead on January's episode? Okay,
Speaker 2: I'll tell you this is like the secret the end
Speaker 2: of the episode that's coming at the beginning. So my
Speaker 2: podcast network that I work with, I'm contracted for fifty
Speaker 2: episodes a year, and so they didn't have any slated
Speaker 2: for this week or next week. They were like, oh,
Speaker 2: you're putting out episodes and I'm like, yeah, I'm working
Speaker 2: on them, and they were like, we didn't think you
Speaker 2: were having them anyway. So there was some sort of
Speaker 2: administrative error where I'm not supposed to have episodes up
Speaker 2: this week. So the ones I was working on for
Speaker 2: this week are going to start airing January seventh, and
Speaker 2: so for this week and next week. That's another reason
Speaker 2: why I'm putting up this encore is because it's a
Speaker 2: great episode. Time Magazine just shouted it out and I'm
Speaker 2: not supposed to be running episodes this week. Woops. So
Speaker 2: make sure you're subscribed now so you get those and
Speaker 2: then come back next week to hear part two of
Speaker 2: this episode. Honestly, there's no better way to start the
Speaker 2: new year than having a refresher course on kicking your
Speaker 2: fears in the dick metaphorically. Okay, so fear, when was
Speaker 2: the last time you felt it? There might be a
Speaker 2: slim percentage of tough boys being like when I was
Speaker 2: five and we all know that you're lying. We're scared constantly.
Speaker 2: Someone almost spills a slurpee on your new shirt. No
Speaker 2: one in the group chat responds to your meme. Or
Speaker 2: your credit score went down because you messed up auto pay.
Speaker 2: Maybe you have to buy a gift for your sister.
Speaker 2: She might not like it. We're scared all the time,
Speaker 2: and as it turns out, for kind of weird reasons.
Speaker 2: But we can do something about it. Before we get
Speaker 2: into it really quick, I want to say thank you
Speaker 2: Ologies listeners, You're all great. Thank you to patrons on
Speaker 2: patreon dot com slash ologies for making it happen every
Speaker 2: week and submitting your questions for theologists. We'll hear those
Speaker 2: in part two. Thank you to the listeners for every tweet, everygram,
Speaker 2: every friend or foe you tell about the show, and
Speaker 2: of course for everyone who rates and subscribes and reviews.
Speaker 2: You know each week I read all of your reviews
Speaker 2: like a creep so that I can pick a fresh one.
Speaker 2: And this one is staymy hot. It's from December twenty
Speaker 2: n eighteen from Stepha Paluza, who says, I feel so
Speaker 2: smart now every time I listen to an ology sep
Speaker 2: My brain grows three sizes like a grin chart. Thank
Speaker 2: you so much for that. Stepha Paluza also timely reference.
Speaker 2: I dig it. Okay, fear ology. You're like, really, is
Speaker 2: this a real word? Wouldn't this be phobiology because phobias
Speaker 2: are just fears, right, No, phobias are technically irrational fears
Speaker 2: or obsessive fears. So the word fear comes from a
Speaker 2: root meaning danger. So phobias are maybe a little ott
Speaker 2: well over the top, little specific, but fear is a
Speaker 2: response to everyday danger. And I looked it up and
Speaker 2: ferology is in fact a real word, and it's been
Speaker 2: used in books about fear, for example Philosophy of Fearism,
Speaker 2: a First East West Dialogue, and then a few other
Speaker 2: experts in stress and fear and anxiety. I think this
Speaker 2: is a critical field of study. I am throwing my
Speaker 2: weight behind making farology an even realer, more commonly used word.
Speaker 2: So let's talk about it. So I came across this
Speaker 2: ologist work and I was immediately I must speak to her,
Speaker 2: I must know her. Then I sent her a fangirl
Speaker 2: email and I found out she lived a mile away
Speaker 2: from me. What thrilled. So we had a time set
Speaker 2: to do the interview, and about ten minutes before she
Speaker 2: emailed me to say she was on her way by
Speaker 2: I was eating toast at a coffee shop, having fully
Speaker 2: forgotten that we were recording. I don't know what was
Speaker 2: wrong with me. So I saw the email. I abandoned
Speaker 2: my friend and my toast at the coffee shop, and
Speaker 2: I sped walked home like a weird lady getting exercise
Speaker 2: at a mall, and I arrived just as she walked up.
Speaker 2: I was very sweaty. My apartment was littered with tax paperwork.
Speaker 2: I was mortified. I was stressed out, I was afraid
Speaker 2: of being judged. I was damp in many places. It
Speaker 2: was perfect. So we recorded for about two hours. So
Speaker 2: this episode is broken into part one this week, which
Speaker 2: covers a lot of ground, and then part two, which
Speaker 2: answers your questions and gives even more insight on how
Speaker 2: super successful folks address their fears. And there were parts
Speaker 2: where I was so shaken I couldn't make words and
Speaker 2: I just grunted in response. So come back next week
Speaker 2: for the follow up episode. Because they're both honestly real
Speaker 2: life fixers, trust Time Magazine on this. So she is
Speaker 2: an instructor at San Jose State University. She is a
Speaker 2: ted X speaker and my ever anxiety guru, whether she
Speaker 2: likes it or not. So please breathe deep and make
Speaker 2: room for epiphanies with the woman, the legend, ferologist Mary
Speaker 2: Poffin Roth. So now this is your mic. I'm I'm
Speaker 2: still sweating. I'm sorry. This is the swettiest interview I've
Speaker 2: ever done.
Speaker 5: I mean, sweating is part of the stress response. So
Speaker 5: it's it's good that you came all like ready to go.
Speaker 2: You're like, it's good. You're a literal hot mess right now?
Speaker 2: Have I ever been a lot of rest? And now? Okay?
Speaker 2: I emailed you and I was like, is there? I
Speaker 2: knew that you studied fear? Yeah, and I was like
Speaker 2: is that? And for a second, I was like, is
Speaker 2: it possible that you study pairs and this is a typo?
Speaker 2: Or you study feet or something and is a type
Speaker 2: of because there's no way that you just study fear.
Speaker 2: That's too awesome. So how did you get into the
Speaker 2: study of fear? Like why where do you even start?
Speaker 5: I was raised by someone that was afraid of everything, so,
Speaker 5: you know, like all good parents, my mom did a
Speaker 5: really awesome job of fucking me up, because I think
Speaker 5: that's what parents do, right. She was a loving mom
Speaker 5: and had a great childhood, but like all parents, that's
Speaker 5: your job to you know, pass on your dysfunctions to
Speaker 5: your children. And you know, she never had a passport,
Speaker 5: she never left the country.
Speaker 2: You know, she was very much and only went to
Speaker 2: high school.
Speaker 5: I didn't come from an educated family. I was the
Speaker 5: only one in my entire family to go to college,
Speaker 5: and so it's it's one of those things that she
Speaker 5: passed on a lot of her fears onto me, and
Speaker 5: as she got older then it just kind of escalated.
Speaker 5: And it was not until like, you know, my late
Speaker 5: twenties and I realized I haven't left the country either.
Speaker 2: Mary was the youngest of five siblings and the only
Speaker 2: one to graduate from high school. So she ended up
Speaker 2: earning one master's in science having studied ecology and evolution
Speaker 2: and population biology, and another ms in science communication, which
Speaker 2: are two really high up limbs to go out on,
Speaker 2: if you ask me, and thus very brave and cool.
Speaker 5: And I became a university lecturer in biology at age
Speaker 5: twenty seven and was doing well in my career but
Speaker 5: felt like, okay, there's all these like explorers that I
Speaker 5: see in ecological biology that I find are my heroes,
Speaker 5: and they're doing all this cool stuff, and I'm still
Speaker 5: in the same town that I've lived for my whole life.
Speaker 2: What is going on?
Speaker 5: So I started to kind of examine where that was
Speaker 5: coming from, and that's really when I started to get
Speaker 5: super excited about the study of fear. My personal research background,
Speaker 5: my first job was at NASA AMES in the Bay
Speaker 5: Area looking at the impact of hypergravity on the Mamlian system,
Speaker 5: which sounds super fancy for putting rats in a really
Speaker 5: big centrifuge and spinning them around for months.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, have you ever been in a centrifuge? No?
Speaker 5: Yeah, no, they don't let us go in there, but
Speaker 5: like the walls were so thick. We had like we're
Speaker 5: in a bunker in case things went wrong with the
Speaker 5: centrifuge because it.
Speaker 2: Could like spin out of control.
Speaker 5: And that's where I first started to get some of
Speaker 5: the physiology experience of the impact of stress. What we
Speaker 5: were looking at in the hypergravitational study was basically it
Speaker 5: was it was a preface of can we send humans
Speaker 5: into a long term journey where their bodies are going
Speaker 5: to be under hypergravitational stress. So we were looking at
Speaker 5: stress and you know, can can they pee, can make
Speaker 5: when they eat, well, they still fornicate, well, they do
Speaker 5: all the things, and you know, under long periods of stress.
Speaker 5: And that was really when I started to examine the
Speaker 5: body's response to stress and stress. Is that funny word
Speaker 5: when we think about fear, Like no one uses.
Speaker 2: The word fear in common language. Yea for the most part.
Speaker 5: And that's another interesting side note of actually what portion
Speaker 5: of the demographic in Western society uses the word fear.
Speaker 5: We can, we can come back to that, But stress
Speaker 5: and fear basically the same when we think about I'm
Speaker 5: sorry ahead, No, I just.
Speaker 2: Was grunting because I was like, oh true, yeah, so true,
Speaker 2: especially right right now we're surrounded by my tax paperwork
Speaker 2: and I had like a full on stress smell down
Speaker 2: being like I'm doing the forms wrong and I was scared.
Speaker 5: Yeah yeah, So think about like what we call the
Speaker 5: stress response. You are going to have like tightness in
Speaker 5: your neck and your lower back. That's your body getting
Speaker 5: ready to fight with your arms and getting blood and
Speaker 5: energy to like your legs so you can run away.
Speaker 5: Getting the shortness of breath and like the tightness in
Speaker 5: your chest and getting sweaty, and you know your pupils
Speaker 5: dilating and you're body is shutting down non essential systems
Speaker 5: like digestion. This is why, you know, depend on what
Speaker 5: kind of nerves. We use that word a lot too,
Speaker 5: that you're feeling. You get like butterflies in your stomach
Speaker 5: or maybe like a little something more serious. I need
Speaker 5: to excuse yourself. So all of that is the stress
Speaker 5: and response is the fear response.
Speaker 2: So having a slightly more gravitational force on you is
Speaker 2: a type of physical stress. And so Mary was studying
Speaker 2: what would happen to other mammals i e. Humans exploring
Speaker 2: space under these conditions. And you know what, for some people,
Speaker 2: just being around a bunch of rats on what amounts
Speaker 2: to a very expensive carnival ride would be a major
Speaker 2: source of stress on its own. But I like to
Speaker 2: think that the rats just loved it, that they just
Speaker 2: stumbled out, wanting a corn dog and more tokens to
Speaker 2: go on again. But aside from rats just having a summer,
Speaker 2: what kind of data were they gathering?
Speaker 5: But we were looking at can they do the logical
Speaker 5: basic functions under stress? But we were just looking at
Speaker 5: like the renal system. Can they eat, can they drink?
Speaker 5: Can they process urine? Right?
Speaker 2: There are things coming in and going out? Did you
Speaker 2: find that, just because I have to get this question
Speaker 2: answered in hyper gravity?
Speaker 5: Were they able to pee and pooh? Yeah, okay, they
Speaker 5: just had they had there was like a there's an
Speaker 5: uptick in like.
Speaker 2: Holy shit's going on. Oh my god, we're a big interviews.
Speaker 5: And then when when everything just kind of like was
Speaker 5: on lockdown, and then we weren't studying for that, But
Speaker 5: if you were testing for that, then you could say
Speaker 5: that could have been like they were in the super
Speaker 5: fear response. And then when things kind of they got
Speaker 5: acclimated to Okay, we're just gonna keep spinning. That's okay,
Speaker 5: this is just how it is, then they would returned
Speaker 5: to their like normal daily activities of eating and drinking
Speaker 5: and going to the bottle and getting you know, some
Speaker 5: some water. You know, humans under stress go to a
Speaker 5: different kind of bottle experience.
Speaker 2: The most scared I've ever been in my life, It's funny.
Speaker 2: The only reason why I keep peppering you about this is, Yeah,
Speaker 2: most scared I've ever been is when I was in
Speaker 2: a centrifuge and at a testing facility for where they
Speaker 2: were testing and training Air Force powers.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 2: And I've been mugged at knife point and that was
Speaker 2: one of the scariest things. And being in a centrifugeal
Speaker 2: was one of the scariest. So I was like, how
Speaker 2: do they do? Like I remember the moment where they
Speaker 2: put me in the thing. I was I've never been
Speaker 2: so scared of anything, because, like, at least with mugging,
Speaker 2: it was like a surprise. I was like, whoa, but
Speaker 2: this I was getting in I just was shaking. I
Speaker 2: thought I thought I needed a diaper. I was like,
Speaker 2: I don't know what's going to come out with end.
Speaker 2: So I'm like, I'm I feel like feeling for these rats.
Speaker 2: But so that was that was one study you did,
Speaker 2: and then you started to kind of that opened up
Speaker 2: your mind too. Okay, let's really get into the indy
Speaker 2: gritty of the stress, stress response, and fear and and
Speaker 2: you're right, we do call it stress when we mean fear. Yeah.
Speaker 5: Yeah, we in Western society we have like this stress
Speaker 5: badge of courage when you ask someone how they are.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, I'm so stressed. Yeah, and like, oh
Speaker 2: my god, me too. There's the kids, and there's the work,
Speaker 2: and there's all the things.
Speaker 5: And so we we feel confident talking about stress because
Speaker 5: we can commiserate. But we don't feel confident talking about
Speaker 5: the F word because there's so much shame associated with
Speaker 5: fear in our society and we're never taught how to
Speaker 5: deal with fear in a healthy way.
Speaker 2: I mean I never was. Yeah, that's not a subject
Speaker 2: in school.
Speaker 5: Yeah, no, Yeah, it's one of the four basic human
Speaker 5: emotions that going to make.
Speaker 2: All of the rainbow of colors of all of the
Speaker 2: other emotions. Wait one second, there are four basic human emotions?
Speaker 2: Just four. I thought there were approximately one billion, and
Speaker 2: then several thousand more if you include feelings that only
Speaker 2: the French have words for. But nope, just four, say researchers.
Speaker 2: There's happy, duh, sad also duh, and then two that
Speaker 2: not unlike many LA residents who are like actors and
Speaker 2: yoga teachers. The other are two emotions that are hybrids.
Speaker 2: One is afraid slash surprised and angry slash disgusted. So
Speaker 2: right now, this information is either making you feel happy, sad,
Speaker 2: affrised or ngrusted.
Speaker 5: And fear is not something we talk about in that
Speaker 5: way because the messaging we get is be fearless, which
Speaker 5: is hella dumb, because that's like saying just don't be thirsty,
Speaker 5: I know, or like you just be hungerless.
Speaker 2: You did, Yeah, you're, I mean you're, we are, we
Speaker 2: are the product of you know, as I was talking
Speaker 2: to an evolutionary biology, I was like three point seven
Speaker 2: years of evolution. I meant three point seven billion, but whatever,
Speaker 2: And clearly the ones who could fight and run away
Speaker 2: were the ones who survived. So it would be crazy
Speaker 2: to be fearless because how would we have maybe this far?
Speaker 5: Yeah, we would have.
Speaker 2: Been dead if you were like, shit, go ahead and
Speaker 2: attack me. That's cool. Like no, So do you think
Speaker 2: that when when you first started studying stress and fear,
Speaker 2: what was the biggest question you had, Like what did
Speaker 2: you find that was lacking in either communication about fear
Speaker 2: or just data about fear. I would just like to
Speaker 2: point out that as we discussed fears and emergencies, there
Speaker 2: happened to be fire trucks and sirens screaming past my apartment,
Speaker 2: which was an unintended audio bonus, just to make sure
Speaker 2: that our fear responses were working. So yeah, Yeah, it's
Speaker 2: work fine. It's a working fine. Thanks Frank, calm your tits.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think that for me, I initially started studying
Speaker 5: fear in just a more hobby way because I was
Speaker 5: interested in it, and as an academic for my entire
Speaker 5: professional career, it's been one of those things that I'm
Speaker 5: just a big nerd and like hmm, like I just
Speaker 5: you know, was absorbing all these things because it was
Speaker 5: fascinating to me. And through that initial search, I was
Speaker 5: really finding either like clinical or pathological studies on fear
Speaker 5: that were about people that were more of the outline,
Speaker 5: that were dealing with mental health issues in a professional setting,
Speaker 5: that were having very extreme phobias or you know, really
Speaker 5: extreme anxiety that was negatively impacting their life. And I
Speaker 5: was like, well, I don't fit in that category because
Speaker 5: I'm just it's everyday fears of how, you know, how
Speaker 5: do I not freak out about this presentation or you know,
Speaker 5: how do I go say what up to that Q guy?
Speaker 5: Like this is I don't need to go and have
Speaker 5: a clinical this is just normal stuff. And I didn't
Speaker 5: really see a lot of research in that area. And
Speaker 5: then in terms of what was happening with people that
Speaker 5: were communicating because part of my degrees are in science,
Speaker 5: communication and biology, and the people that were communicating about
Speaker 5: fear were either people that were bringing a lot of
Speaker 5: like pseudoscience level of it to it or.
Speaker 2: People that really did extreme stuff.
Speaker 5: So like, yeah, bro, I call him Mount Everest and
Speaker 5: it was like super dope, and I'm here to like
Speaker 5: teach you how to like fight through the fear and
Speaker 5: also climb Mount Everest. I'm like, I'm never I hate
Speaker 5: the cold. I'm literally never going to climb Mount Everest
Speaker 5: or former Navy seals and fighter pilots and just being badasses.
Speaker 5: I'm like, that's cool. There's nothing that I can I
Speaker 5: can use there not applicable. Yeah, exactly right. And one
Speaker 5: of the things that really got me interested in not
Speaker 5: only studying it but trying to create a framework that
Speaker 5: people could take the research that has been done and
Speaker 5: apply it to their daily lives is you have to
Speaker 5: make it simple. And that's kind of my my jam
Speaker 5: with fears. I do original research, but I also am
Speaker 5: coming through the research and trying to create like strategies
Speaker 5: for people that are easy to remember, easy to use,
Speaker 5: that help them understand their own bodies and then apply
Speaker 5: that so they can not be so afraid of all
Speaker 5: the things.
Speaker 2: Quick question, so what are Americans' biggest fears? Well that
Speaker 2: it actually depends on what year you ask. So in
Speaker 2: twenty fourteen, Chapman University put out a list of americans
Speaker 2: big old fears. There are the usual suspects like public
Speaker 2: speaking was number one, then heights and bugs and snakes
Speaker 2: and drowning, and then blood and needles. They usual. It's
Speaker 2: like a menu of scary stuff at a chain restaurant
Speaker 2: you've been to a dozen times. Familiar. But according to
Speaker 2: the same source, the new biggest fears of Americans are
Speaker 2: number one, corrupt government officials, the American Healthcare Act, pollution,
Speaker 2: and being involved in a nuclear war with North Korea.
Speaker 2: So never have I been so nostalgic for just some
Speaker 2: simple old American drowning fears. But a fun thing to
Speaker 2: do is sit down, make a list of the things
Speaker 2: that scare you, and then say, hey, scary thing, I
Speaker 2: see you, And then maybe what can I actually do
Speaker 2: about some of this stuff? Maybe not all of your
Speaker 2: fears are big, huge environmental or governmental ones. You know,
Speaker 2: I did this one and I realized that driving a
Speaker 2: Miata with a terrible blind spot on the highway was
Speaker 2: a consistent source of panic. And so I saw that thing,
Speaker 2: I got a station wagon. I never looked back. So
Speaker 2: that's one thing.
Speaker 4: You can do.
Speaker 5: Not that they're gonna get like there's no cure for fear,
Speaker 5: not to get rid of the fear, but like change
Speaker 5: that relationship and change that story around their fears so
Speaker 5: they can start living a.
Speaker 2: Better life with fear now with and in fear. So
Speaker 2: what is fear and what is stress? They are the
Speaker 2: same thing. But what's happening? I know that the basics
Speaker 2: I know of O like the HPA axis, like hypopituitary adrenal,
Speaker 2: there's something going on hormonally, But what is happening? Like
Speaker 2: what is my Why is my body jacking me so
Speaker 2: hard all the time?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 5: And and that's a complex like big messy ball. And
Speaker 5: this is why, you know, the study of fear is
Speaker 5: so messy. So I'm gonna answer that question by like
Speaker 5: pulling out just a little bit of there's no like
Speaker 5: discipline in any academic institution around fear. Fear time sometimes
Speaker 5: is looked at in the psychological genre. Sometimes it can
Speaker 5: be in sociology. Sometimes it's in biology. There's also in
Speaker 5: marketing and communications literature this idea called fear appeals, which
Speaker 5: is a way to communicate a powerful persuasion tool that
Speaker 5: we have over used and now everyone's freaking out because
Speaker 5: we have trained people to be scared all the time.
Speaker 2: Okay, side note. I looked up this term fear appeals,
Speaker 2: and y'all, it is a whole thing. Oh boy. Anytime
Speaker 2: a commercial or like a news network makes you feel
Speaker 2: like you are about to die, they're pretty much using
Speaker 2: fear appeals. So yes, sex cells, but SODA's Oh my god,
Speaker 2: you're in a lot of peril. Oops, I took your money.
Speaker 2: So one could be a cheesemonger, one could be a
Speaker 2: phish monger, but fear mong is a little less smelly
Speaker 2: and it might make you more money.
Speaker 5: So you find these in like so many disciplines that
Speaker 5: they don't fit in one discipline, which is not necessarily
Speaker 5: surprising because fear is such a base unit of our lives,
Speaker 5: so it's not going to fit neatly into anywhere. When
Speaker 5: you're talking about like the physiology, the way that I
Speaker 5: like to explain it is if you're looking at the
Speaker 5: brain right and kind of like a simple like condition
Speaker 5: of the brain kind of separating into three big parts.
Speaker 5: So you have your hind brain that's going to be
Speaker 5: in the back. That's going to be the most basic
Speaker 5: of functions. Some people have likened it to the reptilian
Speaker 5: brain that I'm sure that you've heard, because it's similar
Speaker 5: to other reptiles. So if we're looking in the kingdom
Speaker 5: of live kingdom aunt amalia, we have our vertebrates. We're
Speaker 5: not that closely related to reptiles, but we're going to
Speaker 5: all be vertebrates. And then you have kind of in
Speaker 5: the center of our brain, right around the mid brain,
Speaker 5: you're going to have the UI guy limbic systems center.
Speaker 2: Right this is where the emotional magic happens. Oh, it's
Speaker 2: like a truffle. Yeah, it is like a truffle.
Speaker 5: It's all gooy in the center you're like no, no, no,
Speaker 5: And there you're going.
Speaker 2: To find the amygdala.
Speaker 5: So the migdala is going to be kind of like
Speaker 5: the size of your thumbnail, but shaped like an almond,
Speaker 5: and it's going to be on both sides. If you're
Speaker 5: to cut your brain in half and you have one
Speaker 5: on each side, okay, and they're really small, but that
Speaker 5: is kind of the powerhouse of the fear response.
Speaker 2: That's going to be the control center.
Speaker 5: So when our body is going to perceive a stressor,
Speaker 5: So we talked about like you know, stress versus fear,
Speaker 5: you can really start to look at it as stress
Speaker 5: is going to be a physiological response that your body's
Speaker 5: having to a stressor, and that stressor is going to
Speaker 5: be the outside thing.
Speaker 2: The trigger.
Speaker 5: Stressors are generally never in our control, but our stress
Speaker 5: response is.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 5: So let's go back to the story that you said
Speaker 5: about getting mugged at knife point.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Right, So the stressor is going to be the mugger
Speaker 5: with the knife threatening your life.
Speaker 2: And there were two of them, one for each side
Speaker 2: of my.
Speaker 5: That's nice they thought about you. They're like, you know,
Speaker 5: we're gonna we're gonna tag team. I mean, you obviously
Speaker 5: are very ferocious opponents.
Speaker 2: You're like, we're gonna need backup boys in that.
Speaker 5: In that moment, your central nervous system is what is
Speaker 5: allowing you to interact with your internal and your external environment.
Speaker 5: So your senses, your eyes, your ears are picking up
Speaker 5: a threat. So that's gonna be the stressor. You have
Speaker 5: no control over that stressor. But their stress response is
Speaker 5: what's happening inside your body and you're you know, amigdala
Speaker 5: is kind of like hitting the panic button, being like okay,
Speaker 5: we need to.
Speaker 2: We's go time. And then at that point it's.
Speaker 5: Going to create a kind of like cascading effect through
Speaker 5: your hypothalamus and thalamus and getting everything ready for your
Speaker 5: body in this particular point to do the fight or fly.
Speaker 2: Okay, so little recap. This whole shebang is part of
Speaker 2: your limbic system, and once again the little almondy amygdala
Speaker 2: deep within your brain receives info. This says ha, no,
Speaker 2: well no, I'm paraphrasing, and it chemically pokes your thalmus,
Speaker 2: which sends other signals to the brain to just release
Speaker 2: a floodgate of adrenaline and cortisol in preparation to either
Speaker 2: engage in fisticuffs or get the fuck out asap. Okay,
Speaker 2: So this next thing she says changed my whole life. Okay,
Speaker 2: get ready for it? Are you ready for it? Get
Speaker 2: ready for it?
Speaker 5: And I think this is a good time to kind
Speaker 5: of also separate. When we look at fear, we have
Speaker 5: kind of like two major types of fear, what I
Speaker 5: call factual fear, versus fictional fear. Oh so since we're
Speaker 5: on this example, like, factual fear is going to be
Speaker 5: actual threats to your life that are happening in a
Speaker 5: shared reality right now that your body is responding to.
Speaker 5: So you getting mugged at knife point was hell, yeah,
Speaker 5: actual fear, Like shit is going down. It is time
Speaker 5: to put all systems into fight or flight, and that
Speaker 5: means at that time, your body.
Speaker 2: Is shutting down non essential systems.
Speaker 5: So cellular regeneration not taking that offline, don't need it,
Speaker 5: digestion like we're just we're not gonna worry about that, libido,
Speaker 5: don't need to be word about sex of time right now,
Speaker 5: just trying to get out of here, live, And then
Speaker 5: that means that other resources can be put to your skin.
Speaker 5: This is why you can either break out in cold
Speaker 5: sweat or get hot, because your blood is flowing to
Speaker 5: your muscles so that your muscles will have the energy
Speaker 5: to do what it needs to do to survive. There's
Speaker 5: also a and that's all the stress response. There's also
Speaker 5: going to be the other side of that, which is
Speaker 5: fictional fear. Just like a good fictional book might have
Speaker 5: a nugget of truth in it, but most of it
Speaker 5: is just made up, so with fictional fear, that is
Speaker 5: the everyday fears, and that's the fears that I really
Speaker 5: focus on of how we can change our story with
Speaker 5: our fictional fears so that they aren't like firing up
Speaker 5: theymgdala so much, and then we're not going into this
Speaker 5: full stress response because in modern times, our body isn't
Speaker 5: really good like our MiG diligious seds stressor right, it's
Speaker 5: up to us to control how that is perceived. Because
Speaker 5: if we are constantly in hyperdrive with our migdligious keep
Speaker 5: sending signals of danger, danger, danger when it's not necessarily dangerous,
Speaker 5: like you could just be annoying, or you know, maybe
Speaker 5: it's a it's a good stressor like it's an opportunity.
Speaker 5: If we don't start to discern that for ourselves and
Speaker 5: we constantly are just redlining the stress response, then that's
Speaker 5: why we're seeing this increase in all of these other
Speaker 5: issues in our body that usually would be taken care of,
Speaker 5: so like you know, like like the celluar regeneration. Right, Actually,
Speaker 5: when we go to sleep at night, that's our time
Speaker 5: for our bodies to be like, Okay, we're gonna do
Speaker 5: some maintenance. We're gonna get rid of themselves. We're gonna
Speaker 5: make some new ones, do all the things. If we're
Speaker 5: constantly in the stress response, if it's constantly go time
Speaker 5: our bodies like, nope, Nope, not even dealing with that.
Speaker 2: Wow. And and cancer is a disease of the cell cycle.
Speaker 2: That this is mind blowing. This is blowing all of
Speaker 2: my AMINGNOLA areas. So we we are keeping ourselves partly
Speaker 2: in a state of heightened fear. Yeah, when we don't
Speaker 2: need to.
Speaker 5: Yeah, absolutely, Why because no one teaches us how to
Speaker 5: not to.
Speaker 2: Isn't it frustrating?
Speaker 5: Yes, so many years of like being scared, we didn't
Speaker 5: have to. Oh yeah, And that's that's my jam of
Speaker 5: because I'm I'm still that person, by the way, Like
Speaker 5: I'm I continue to apply the things and do the
Speaker 5: you know, walk the walk of of what I teach
Speaker 5: in what I study.
Speaker 2: But it doesn't mean fear is gone.
Speaker 5: It's just I got super tired of living in a
Speaker 5: really tiny box and knew that.
Speaker 2: There was a life beyond the provincial town.
Speaker 5: But in order to get to that life, I needed
Speaker 5: to hand them off your business. Yeah, because no, like
Speaker 5: no one's gonna handle it for me.
Speaker 2: So sadly, Mary's mom passed away, and looking back on
Speaker 2: her life and how controlled by fear she was, Mary
Speaker 2: decided to face a lot of her own fears and
Speaker 2: just take some dang risks. So she was in a
Speaker 2: relationship that hadn't been working for years, and she really
Speaker 2: longed to get out of the small town that she
Speaker 2: was from. And it is here that I will refrain
Speaker 2: from crooning just a small town girl living in her
Speaker 2: lonely world. But don't stop believing that I really want
Speaker 2: to Anyway, she went on a journey.
Speaker 5: Fast forward a year of like branching out of my
Speaker 5: original friend group, meeting people that had all these like
Speaker 5: crazy stories of like international travel and adventure, and me
Speaker 5: making the decision that I want this new life and
Speaker 5: in order to do that, I'm gonna have to make
Speaker 5: some pretty radical changes within that year. Because no too
Speaker 5: off topic of science, but you know, like the you know,
Speaker 5: our long term relationship at that point, when like twelve
Speaker 5: years wasn't going well, so we decided to get married.
Speaker 5: Because just like having a baby in when you're struggling
Speaker 5: in your relationship is the best idea ever, it's not
Speaker 5: it's not the best idea ever.
Speaker 2: So clearly that didn't works.
Speaker 5: So and I was like, okay, I just I'm gonna
Speaker 5: I'm gonna completely change my life and ended that relationship.
Speaker 5: Uh you know, started this whole like new just was
Speaker 5: traveling and when whenever I had the opportunity with with
Speaker 5: breaks from teaching at the university, then I would just
Speaker 5: travel by myself and freaked out most of the time
Speaker 5: because you know, I want I wanted to travel, but
Speaker 5: my friends had normal jobs so they couldn't just take
Speaker 5: off for like a month, and so you know, went
Speaker 5: to Costa Rica, got stuck in a cyclone in Croatia,
Speaker 5: you know, went to the markets of Marrakesh, and you know,
Speaker 5: and most of the time being like what am I doing?
Speaker 2: What am I doing?
Speaker 5: Totally freaking out, but but also discovering that, you know,
Speaker 5: I want to die with good stories.
Speaker 2: Oh right, like I'm.
Speaker 5: Going to get that tattooed or my stomach, right, Yeah,
Speaker 5: I want to die with really good stories. And in
Speaker 5: order to do that, I needed to leave my hometown.
Speaker 2: And so that's what I did.
Speaker 5: And it just became kind of a game of feeling
Speaker 5: the fear and doing it anyway. And it's no wonder
Speaker 5: that we constantly stay in this loop of being afraid
Speaker 5: to do anything, because even if we have an idea,
Speaker 5: the people in our life.
Speaker 2: Out of out of love, were like, you should know that,
Speaker 2: because you're gonna die. Well, is fear contagious? In in mammals,
Speaker 2: in social creatures, is fear contagious? Yeah, So we when
Speaker 2: we're in fear, we.
Speaker 5: Actually give off almost kind of like a pheromone as
Speaker 5: well as like really delicate visual cues. Okay, and this
Speaker 5: is why have you seen like someone talk for the
Speaker 5: first time or they're really nervous and it is uncomfortable
Speaker 5: to watch?
Speaker 2: There are some ted talks where you can you can
Speaker 2: hear how dry their mouth is. Yeah, and you're like, oh,
Speaker 2: you just relax, that's fine. Although I knew if I
Speaker 2: were up there, I would be crying blood. I don't
Speaker 2: know what would be happening, you know. Yeah, it's and
Speaker 2: it's that it's that visceral reaction.
Speaker 5: For as as mammals, we want to run away from
Speaker 5: people that are in a big like fearful anxiety state
Speaker 5: because that generally means danger, like life threatening danger.
Speaker 2: So they're like, okay, well, we're I'm not here. Yeah,
Speaker 2: you seem like the danger zones. I'm gonna go. I
Speaker 2: think some times also we're conditioned to think if I
Speaker 2: remain in an anxiety cycle, if I remain seeming scared
Speaker 2: or fragile, then I will get care from other people.
Speaker 2: But it's funny that that's actually probably in a really
Speaker 2: subtle biological way, driving people away from you.
Speaker 5: Yeah, And it's and it's a delicate balance because one
Speaker 5: of the like so we've seen this in primate studies
Speaker 5: as well, that when we have fear, we will reach out,
Speaker 5: like young kids and primates we see it the most
Speaker 5: in will reach out for like physical like connection or
Speaker 5: some kind of connection. And that's the best way to
Speaker 5: kind of calm your fears is to reach out and
Speaker 5: get connection, to ask for connection and receive that support.
Speaker 5: As adults in Western society, we've had that trained out
Speaker 5: of us. We've been socialized to say, especially in America,
Speaker 5: stand on your own, pick yourself up by your boot straps.
Speaker 5: You know, we're so individualized that we are like afraid
Speaker 5: of reaching out and be rejected of that support. It's
Speaker 5: it's something that is so ingrained that we were having
Speaker 5: to fight our natural instincts because like primates and children, right, like,
Speaker 5: when what happens when like a little kid is scared,
Speaker 5: They're going to run for their safety person, Yeah, you know,
Speaker 5: whether it's mom or dad or whatever, and they want
Speaker 5: that connection there, that's their their safe spot.
Speaker 2: As adults, we just internalize it and then maybe like
Speaker 2: numb it.
Speaker 5: With drugs and alcohol or sex or porn, and then
Speaker 5: we we just pretend like it's not there, right, and
Speaker 5: it's it's totally affecting our entire society.
Speaker 2: Well, what percentage of our fears would you say that
Speaker 2: we feel would you say are factual? And how how
Speaker 2: much are fictional? And also the way that we consume media,
Speaker 2: either whether it's like presidential Twitter rants or or you know,
Speaker 2: documentaries about cults or whatever. Like we I feel like
Speaker 2: we're kind of stimulating that a lot, right, Yeah, what's
Speaker 2: going on there?
Speaker 5: So you know, as a as a scientist, I'm always
Speaker 5: hesitant to just make up percentages, right because like ninety
Speaker 5: eight percent of statistics are made up. But I would say,
Speaker 5: and it's going to be very specific to where you're living. Right,
Speaker 5: if you are an American and living in LA and
Speaker 5: you know you have your basic needs taken care of.
Speaker 2: Most likely most of your fears are fictional.
Speaker 5: If you are living in a really politically unstable area,
Speaker 5: if you're in Syria, right, if your basic needs are
Speaker 5: not being met, then a lot of your fears are
Speaker 5: going to be factual.
Speaker 2: But so you know, it kind of depends on what
Speaker 2: your situation is.
Speaker 5: But in like modern society, in countries that are wealthy,
Speaker 5: like the United States, even though that wealth is not
Speaker 5: spread apart, we're still a very wealthy country, we're still
Speaker 5: getting by, and so in that most of our fears
Speaker 5: are going to be fictional. And you know, like fear
Speaker 5: is so funny that you know, why do we like
Speaker 5: scary movies because they give us that like rush of
Speaker 5: adrenaline when we watch a scary movie and this is
Speaker 5: gonna this is kind of where it'll be interesting with
Speaker 5: the VR world, right because our mind doesn't know the
Speaker 5: difference that that's not happening if it's a really engrossing movie.
Speaker 5: And I just saw like on the social feed, I
Speaker 5: think yesterday, there was some I don't know it's Netflix
Speaker 5: or something that they made this like super scary episode
Speaker 5: of something and people like were shutting out, like no
Speaker 5: one was finishing it because it was so terrifying, right,
Speaker 5: I mean I clearly didn't click on it.
Speaker 2: Yeah no, no, no, okay, I look this up. And Netflix
Speaker 2: released a list of ten films that people tend to
Speaker 2: watch more than seventy percent of, meaning that they would
Speaker 2: have turned it off earlier if they just didn't like it,
Speaker 2: But they noped it hardcore when the actions started getting
Speaker 2: too spook so they made it most of the way
Speaker 2: and then they're like no. So among these ten films,
Speaker 2: Eli Roth's Cabin Fever, plus movies like Carnage Park, one
Speaker 2: called Teeth, one called Raw, and of course Human Centipede two.
Speaker 2: So this kind of led me down a rabbit hole
Speaker 2: to learn about people who have suffered feinting spells and
Speaker 2: heart attacks in horror movie screenings. It happens people just
Speaker 2: straight up faint and die. Oh human beings. Mat, We
Speaker 2: grew these big fat brains, and we're like, you know
Speaker 2: what we could do. We could create technology to make
Speaker 2: pictures move, and then we can scare ourselves until we
Speaker 2: literally die. Let's do that.
Speaker 5: It's one of those things that if we can put
Speaker 5: ourselves in the story, we can like we're activating all
Speaker 5: those things but are like higher brain functions, you know,
Speaker 5: like our streabral cortex has been like, Okay, we're still safe.
Speaker 5: We're in a movie theater, we have our popcorn, we're
Speaker 5: on our cow. There's enough safety where we can play
Speaker 5: around in that fear zone and get.
Speaker 2: The like fear high right like or like you.
Speaker 5: Know, we also get to dress rehearse tragedies and dress
Speaker 5: rehearse fear scenarios.
Speaker 2: Like I mean, I know what I would do during
Speaker 2: a zombie attack. I totally think about it.
Speaker 5: I'm like, Okay, I'm on the second floor, so that
Speaker 5: means that like you know where, or or if someone
Speaker 5: broke in, like with the ax through my front door,
Speaker 5: I would probably go out the back door. I mean,
Speaker 5: we were constantly dressed rehearsing these things that will most
Speaker 5: likely never happen. Right, But so movies like that help us,
Speaker 5: almost in a weird way, feel safe because our mind
Speaker 5: likes to dress rehearse stuff, It likes to play with
Speaker 5: scenarios because in a weird way, that lets us feel like, Okay.
Speaker 2: We at least I wouldn't. I would know what to
Speaker 2: do when zombies come, right. I wonder about that, Like
Speaker 2: why do some people love horrifying stuff and others are like,
Speaker 2: hell no, like pictures of bunnies only you know, totally,
Speaker 2: And part.
Speaker 5: Of it's tolerance, right, Some people can have like a
Speaker 5: peach schnops and be like looping, and the other people
Speaker 5: can have straight whiskey and they'd be like, that's good,
Speaker 5: it's warm up.
Speaker 2: So it's really a personal.
Speaker 5: Tolerance, and that gets into personality and what your experiences
Speaker 5: are and what gets your motor rubbin.
Speaker 2: For certain things.
Speaker 5: So's that's definitely like a person by person thing, but
Speaker 5: the underlying physiological responses are the same. Just some people
Speaker 5: enjoy that feeling, like adrenaline junkies, right, They put themselves
Speaker 5: in physically precarious positions because they want to feel that high.
Speaker 2: They want to like feel the knots in.
Speaker 5: Their stomach and like all the things because they find
Speaker 5: that pleasurable, where other people are like yeah, no, yeah,
Speaker 5: that's no, that sounds hormendous.
Speaker 2: Why why would I do that? I don't ever want
Speaker 2: to opt into diarrhea. That's always going to be a
Speaker 2: no in my book, never a yes. Side note just
Speaker 2: to say not everyone's adrenaline Russia's are the same. Some
Speaker 2: folks may love jumping off buildings in webbed onesies that
Speaker 2: allow them to drift back to the earth, while others
Speaker 2: just procrastinate on their deadlines because they're afraid to fail
Speaker 2: and need a rush of stress hormones to prod them.
Speaker 2: Guess which one I am? Guess Do you find that
Speaker 2: there's a distinction psychologically between stress, fear, and just anxiety,
Speaker 2: Like what is an anxiety disorder or what is anxiety?
Speaker 2: Where does it play into all of that? Where does
Speaker 2: neurosis come into it?
Speaker 5: Yeah, So it's like I said, for me, I specifically
Speaker 5: have always focused on like the non clinical, non pathological stuff,
Speaker 5: and so I'm a biologist and a science communicator by
Speaker 5: degree and training, and that means that I pull together
Speaker 5: interdisciplinary work on all of it.
Speaker 2: But I don't treat patients.
Speaker 5: So I think that's important just because anytime you're talking
Speaker 5: about this sometimes people are like, oh good, I don't
Speaker 5: need to see a professional because I can just listen
Speaker 5: to a podcast and watch a video and if you're
Speaker 5: feeling those really extreme bouts of anxiety and depression, and
Speaker 5: that's how we deal with fear, right, But it's a spectrum,
Speaker 5: So on those on those extreme things that's when you
Speaker 5: really need to get that professional support so you can
Speaker 5: get back to having you know, like control over your life.
Speaker 5: That being said, they're all the damn same, right, And
Speaker 5: when I teach people about how to create strategies around fear,
Speaker 5: one of the mechanisms I talk about is like aria
Speaker 5: or rhea.
Speaker 2: That okay, so this is a genius strategy. Are I
Speaker 2: a rhea? Are you ready?
Speaker 5: The first step is just recognizing what's going on, and
Speaker 5: then the second step would be identifying it, kind of
Speaker 5: like name it to claim it. And I was just
Speaker 5: in Kozmel last week and talking about my research with
Speaker 5: my partner, and he came up with this really funny
Speaker 5: idea that he works in creative and narrative kind of
Speaker 5: stuff as well, and he was saying that there is
Speaker 5: power in naming things throughout storytelling and mythology, pop culture, beetlejuice, right,
Speaker 5: rumblestial skin, that if you know the name of the d,
Speaker 5: then you can control it. And I just found that
Speaker 5: really fascinating, because when you start to name it sometimes
Speaker 5: that can just short circuit the.
Speaker 2: Fear response in and of itself.
Speaker 5: Wow, like you recognize Okay, I'm starting to feel like
Speaker 5: the physiological effects of something to set me off, and
Speaker 5: just kind of recognizing that that's happening and identifying it
Speaker 5: some One of the things that I've made is what
Speaker 5: I call a fear wheel, which is basically a bunch
Speaker 5: of different synonyms for fear that we usually use, like
Speaker 5: I feel insecure, I feel overwhelmed, I feel stressed, I
Speaker 5: feel inadequate.
Speaker 2: Right, this sounds like the best worst game show ever
Speaker 2: where there's just a wheel of fear that you have
Speaker 2: to spin. But it is comforting to know that whatever's
Speaker 2: making us sweat or wring our hands could be named
Speaker 2: and identified on like a glittery, colorful game show prop.
Speaker 2: I'm so into that.
Speaker 5: When looking at fictional fears, you can really most fictional
Speaker 5: fears will fit into one of two categories, either fear
Speaker 5: of being not enough or the fear of not being
Speaker 5: in control. Oh wow, And so if you can kind
Speaker 5: of go back to that and say, like.
Speaker 2: Okay, where where which category does this fit in?
Speaker 5: Sometimes that will just click you right out of the
Speaker 5: fear response, like yeah, it's so fun. Because humans loved
Speaker 5: to pigeonhole, we have an entire store called the container
Speaker 5: Store because we love boxes, so damn much.
Speaker 2: I love that contains so many different pouches.
Speaker 3: I love it.
Speaker 2: We love to but sh it in boxes. It's so good.
Speaker 5: We're like, oh, yeah, like there's a relaxing like it.
Speaker 2: So get to put the box. And we love the
Speaker 2: category stuff.
Speaker 5: So when you get into the habit of categorizing what
Speaker 5: you're feeling, sometimes I will just click out of it
Speaker 5: and you'd be like.
Speaker 2: Oh, it's so good. Can't put in a box, happy
Speaker 2: safe box.
Speaker 5: I filed it correctly, yeah, and it's like ah, and
Speaker 5: it's just sometimes that's enough to like, you know, knock
Speaker 5: you out of it.
Speaker 2: So the ria so far is our I recognize and identify,
Speaker 2: but what's the A?
Speaker 5: And then the A is going to be to address,
Speaker 5: you know, what kind of strategies or do you need
Speaker 5: to manage outcomes for this. A lot of times you
Speaker 5: can get just in the recognizing and the identifying stage
Speaker 5: and then it'll it'll kind of click you out.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 5: For example, I have a great story and it's just
Speaker 5: like back to cosen Mil because it was like two
Speaker 5: days ago. So we're coming off the plane's had a
Speaker 5: whole travel day, this is the end of the week,
Speaker 5: and my partner Craig and I are sitting on different
Speaker 5: seats because you know, American Airlines not my favorite airline,
Speaker 5: and I got out first. I'm waiting on the jet
Speaker 5: bridge from for him, and so he comes up and
Speaker 5: he's like, wow, you look a bit rough.
Speaker 2: Just a little visual f yi. I looked appauled when
Speaker 2: she told me this. I made that face. I made
Speaker 2: that face and got real mad.
Speaker 5: You're like, that was so bad, and he's not He's
Speaker 5: not someone that would ever usually say something like that,
Speaker 5: and I'm like, yeah, well I do.
Speaker 2: Look my crap.
Speaker 5: We've been he's traveling for like a million hours, and
Speaker 5: so at that point, I'm just like internal rage. And
Speaker 5: when you're feeling a stress response or a fear response,
Speaker 5: You're like, cerebral cortex is just where the higher thinking happens.
Speaker 2: Just shuts down. Yes, it's like okay and I'm offline.
Speaker 5: It just shuts down. And now I'm just I'm in
Speaker 5: it what I call like a fear storm. It's like
Speaker 5: a maelstrom because that just hit my I'm not enough button.
Speaker 5: At this point, I'm going through all of the scenarios
Speaker 5: of like he thinks some fat he thinks that I'm ugly.
Speaker 5: Oh my god, I'm old. I should probably die my hair.
Speaker 5: I should probably want to die it. I probably need
Speaker 5: to never eat again. Right, it's and it spirals so quick.
Speaker 5: This was all happening even before we left the jet bridge,
Speaker 5: and it's but it's.
Speaker 2: So it was He did not mean it in a
Speaker 2: mean way.
Speaker 5: It just kind of like because he when he came out,
Speaker 5: I was like tousing my hair and I kind of
Speaker 5: kind of looked like a lion. But I took it
Speaker 5: so personally, and it was my perception of what he
Speaker 5: had said, of course, and instead of I didn't ask
Speaker 5: questions like.
Speaker 2: Oh what do you mean about that?
Speaker 5: I just went straight down the rabbit hole of like
Speaker 5: internalizing everything.
Speaker 2: And that was my fear talking, the fear of not
Speaker 2: being enough.
Speaker 5: And so you know, I walked it off a little
Speaker 5: bit because I'm just like, I'm not going to talk
Speaker 5: to you right now because I'm to say something real mean,
Speaker 5: And then in my head, I'm like, okay, you gotta
Speaker 5: walk the walk.
Speaker 2: If you're going to ask other people to do it,
Speaker 2: you gotta do it yourself.
Speaker 5: And just analyzing, Okay, why why am I going down
Speaker 5: this crazy rabbit hole? And especially as women, Like our
Speaker 5: value is associated with how we look in Western society.
Speaker 5: We've been conditioned, so that's going to be one of
Speaker 5: our buttons. Hands down, that's gonna be one of our buttons.
Speaker 5: And so just kind of like identifying what I was feeling,
Speaker 5: naming it and putting it into a box, and I'm like, oh, okay,
Speaker 5: because it also makes us feel not so alone that
Speaker 5: it's just it's just our human body being a human body,
Speaker 5: that it's not like what we would consider ourselves. It's
Speaker 5: our brain doing its brain thing. And that like totally
Speaker 5: helped me like snap out of it and then be
Speaker 5: able to have a conversation, right, because before that I
Speaker 5: was just so caught up in like the emotion of it.
Speaker 5: I just couldn't even ask questions about like, so, what
Speaker 5: exactly did you mean by that? Yeah? And then once
Speaker 5: I calmed down, you know what baggage claim, you know,
Speaker 5: and I was like, Okay, now now we can have
Speaker 5: a conversation. But you know, ten years ago, before I
Speaker 5: started really studying fear, I was really shit at emotions.
Speaker 2: Like, like I was a scientist.
Speaker 5: That's why I got into science, because you didn't have
Speaker 5: to have emotions in.
Speaker 2: Fact, they give you extra credit if you didn't have emotions.
Speaker 2: I was so great. I'm like, oh, science, I'm here
Speaker 2: for you.
Speaker 5: You are going to be my friend because I don't
Speaker 5: have to have emotions, which is kind of.
Speaker 2: Weird for a girl, but whatever. It was so great.
Speaker 5: And I had to like teach my self how to communicate,
Speaker 5: especially difficult emotions, and so for me to even within
Speaker 5: you know, a couple of minutes, go from ragy pants
Speaker 5: and her and like going through like.
Speaker 2: Dramatic about it too.
Speaker 5: Okay, now that I'm like able to get a little
Speaker 5: bit of my higher functions online.
Speaker 2: What exactly did you mean by that? Right? He's like, oh,
Speaker 2: I'm really sorry.
Speaker 5: I just met, like, you know, after like a long
Speaker 5: day and and you know, like when wonder Woman is
Speaker 5: at the end of the battle, you she looked a
Speaker 5: little rough too, because I'm a big comic nerd, so
Speaker 5: he's gonna pull in all the stops of this one
Speaker 5: right way to go correct?
Speaker 2: Are that right?
Speaker 5: You know, like, like you know, wonder Woman, she looked
Speaker 5: a little rough after the end of the battles.
Speaker 2: That's just what I said.
Speaker 5: I was like, you're ridiculous, okay, And and it was fine, right,
Speaker 5: But I could easily see myself ten years ago being
Speaker 5: mad about that for like a year, right, you know,
Speaker 5: and just internalizing it and being like, wait.
Speaker 2: Well, how much do you think of our Anger in
Speaker 2: general is just fear that comes out the wrong pipe so.
Speaker 5: Much, especially with men. That's you know, and not to
Speaker 5: like overgeneralize, and gender is very complicated as well, but
Speaker 5: generally men will go to the anger button first and
Speaker 5: women go to like the shut down button first.
Speaker 2: Part of that is socialization.
Speaker 5: Part of that, you know, can be associated with physiology,
Speaker 5: but anger is a way to not show what they think,
Speaker 5: not showing fear, so you know, if they're scared of
Speaker 5: not being enough, if they're scared of losing control, whether
Speaker 5: that control is financial or their health, it comes out
Speaker 5: as anger because it makes the person feel powerful, right,
Speaker 5: because anger is also one of the base emotions. But
Speaker 5: we don't feel powerful in fear. We feel powerful in anger.
Speaker 5: And we talked about media. When we look at archetypes
Speaker 5: and media, the ones that come in they're angry and.
Speaker 2: They got the rambo knife and they got the guns.
Speaker 2: Those are those are the power ones. They're they're here
Speaker 2: to woo bass not they're like I'm afraid in the corner,
Speaker 2: I'm the big you know, like scared pants.
Speaker 5: I'm not saving anybody. No one wants to be the
Speaker 5: scaredy pants in the movie. They want to be the hero.
Speaker 5: And the way that we've told stories, the hero is
Speaker 5: generally angry.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they have a they have a bone to pick,
Speaker 2: or they have revenge to seek or or something like it.
Speaker 2: They've got a score to settle, yea and so. And
Speaker 2: I find it's funny. I find when I'm when I'm scared,
Speaker 2: I either shut down and I just almost in conflict,
Speaker 2: can't even speak, and like words just won't come out.
Speaker 2: That's me. That happened when I got mugg too. I
Speaker 2: went to scream and no noise would come out of
Speaker 2: my mouth, and I was like, it was like one
Speaker 2: of those nightmares. Yeah, where you can't run. Only I ran,
Speaker 2: but I was like just nothing. And then but yeah,
Speaker 2: sometimes I'll be super afraid. I'll have like an anxiety
Speaker 2: attack about something. Like I was doing my taxes the
Speaker 2: other day and was like I realized I forgot to
Speaker 2: pay this one thing and there was a fine on it. It
Speaker 2: was like this tiny business tax that I just didn't
Speaker 2: see the paperwork, and I got so angry at just humanity. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I was like, but I mean, do you think that
Speaker 2: that there's a stage where we'll stop doing that, we'll
Speaker 2: stop relying on on those either shut down or anger
Speaker 2: like especially with like you know, not to make it
Speaker 2: like the world today, but I mean, I feel like
Speaker 2: people online get so angry with each other, Like politically
Speaker 2: people are so angry, Like do you think there's a
Speaker 2: way to make people recognize like you are afraid right
Speaker 2: now and that is why you are bullying someone, or
Speaker 2: that's why you're shutting down sections of the government or whatever,
Speaker 2: you know what I mean.
Speaker 5: I think that we definitely can get there as a
Speaker 5: society if if we try, And I think this is
Speaker 5: for me part of my why of why I think
Speaker 5: this work is so important to start these conversations because
Speaker 5: fear in and of itself is never going to go away,
Speaker 5: and it's gonna as long as we're humans. Until we
Speaker 5: can put our consciousness in a robot, then you know,
Speaker 5: we can come to.
Speaker 2: That bridge when it exists.
Speaker 5: But if we have our human bodies and our migdalas
Speaker 5: are intact, we're going to have fear and so changing
Speaker 5: that conversation, and you know, teaching people this is a
Speaker 5: total Like we teach people to sit on a toilet
Speaker 5: that is not a natural thing from a very young age.
Speaker 5: We're like, just don't stand and pee because most animals
Speaker 5: are just like ma, like I mean, or you know,
Speaker 5: we we teach very young children a very unnatural thing
Speaker 5: because it's more socially acceptable, so we can do it.
Speaker 5: I believe in humanity. At some point someone's like, hey,
Speaker 5: you know this really good idea.
Speaker 2: It's called the toilet. It's gonna be real fancy.
Speaker 5: Yeah, And and people thought they were crazy, and you know,
Speaker 5: it caught on and then now it's it's.
Speaker 2: Great, so so happy about it about twelve out of ten. Yeah.
Speaker 5: And with human behavior, people have to see what's in
Speaker 5: it for them.
Speaker 2: They have to see, like, well, what do I get
Speaker 2: out of it?
Speaker 5: And that's going to take some people longer than others,
Speaker 5: because it's going to take humans and adult humans recognizing
Speaker 5: that this needs to be cultivated because fear can't be cured,
Speaker 5: but it can be cultivated in a way that we
Speaker 5: can have a healthy relationship with it, and changing the
Speaker 5: conversation when people are raising kids about like it's okay
Speaker 5: to be afraid, like you know, you don't you can
Speaker 5: be scared, and allowing for that to be socially acceptable
Speaker 5: and then teaching people what to do when they're in
Speaker 5: the rabbit hole is going to be important. And I
Speaker 5: think that we definitely can get there, but it's not
Speaker 5: going to happen over night, as nothing does.
Speaker 2: If you had kids, what would be a good toilet
Speaker 2: training for them in terms of fear. Would it be
Speaker 2: trying to recognize if they're afraid of being out of
Speaker 2: control or not being good enough, or would it be
Speaker 2: naming their fears? Like how would you try to train
Speaker 2: a kid to have better or how do you wish
Speaker 2: you had been trained or I had been trained to
Speaker 2: deal with fears?
Speaker 5: Yeah, and I think it's depending on how old they are,
Speaker 5: Like right now you would want to start having the
Speaker 5: conversation of asking them to examine their own feelings in
Speaker 5: the moment. I think it's one of the hardest things
Speaker 5: to like, you know, since we're not trained about our emotions,
Speaker 5: sometimes we don't even know what we're feeling.
Speaker 2: We're just like, I'm just I'm not happy, Like like,
Speaker 2: what is it? I'm just I'm not happy.
Speaker 5: I'm in the not happy spectrum of not happy, I'm growley. Yeah,
Speaker 5: it was like raw and getting to the practice of Okay,
Speaker 5: you know, I'm feeling insecure or I'm feeling terrified, or
Speaker 5: you know, trying to trying to attach names to things,
Speaker 5: so even just in the moment they can say, you know,
Speaker 5: I'm feeling this way, and teaching them to reach out
Speaker 5: in that moment if they're they're smaller, even if they're larger,
Speaker 5: saying like, you know, I as your parent that loves you,
Speaker 5: I am a source for you to reach out. So
Speaker 5: when you're scared, you reach out to me, whether that's
Speaker 5: a text, whether that's a call, whether that is physically
Speaker 5: coming over and like just holding my hand, Like I
Speaker 5: can be your booie when you're when you're afraid and
Speaker 5: we could talk about it. I think one of the
Speaker 5: worst things is to just really super internalize the things
Speaker 5: you're afraid of, because then you just keep building that
Speaker 5: story and it gets bigger and bigger, and the stories
Speaker 5: that we tell ourselves continue to grow if we just
Speaker 5: keep in that cycle. So kind of creating a pattern
Speaker 5: of behavior that acknowledges the fear that is aware of
Speaker 5: it is accepting of it and then focuses on kind
Speaker 5: of ways to cultivate a better relationship with it.
Speaker 2: Do you recommend that adults kind of have those same
Speaker 2: conversations with themselves, like when you're when you're feeling you know,
Speaker 2: anxious or angry or whatever, sitting down with yourself and saying, like,
Speaker 2: what are you feeling? Yeah? Yeah, all the time.
Speaker 5: And one of the reasons I'm so excited about like
Speaker 5: what I study is because I was, like, I'm not kidding,
Speaker 5: I was really bad at emotion. I was good at
Speaker 5: showing happy, bubbly, perfect Mary, everything's perfect, But darker emotions, No,
Speaker 5: they doesn't.
Speaker 2: I don't have those, they don't exist, you know. And
Speaker 2: everything was coming out sideways.
Speaker 5: So having that conversation with yourself is going to be important.
Speaker 5: Knowing what your fear reactions are is going to be essential.
Speaker 5: Like you said, you shut down, right, that's really common.
Speaker 5: People will run away, they'll get angry, they'll self medicate
Speaker 5: with food or substances, they'll become depressed or inactive. These
Speaker 5: are all unhealthy ways to respond to fear, But knowing
Speaker 5: how you respond is really important for building those relationships,
Speaker 5: so you have those people to reach out to so
Speaker 5: having like you know, like a romantic partner or friends,
Speaker 5: and you know, once they're in that kind of like
Speaker 5: circle of trust, saying like this is how I react
Speaker 5: when I'm in fear, Like I shut down. It's not
Speaker 5: that I don't want to talk to you. My mouth
Speaker 5: isn't working, Like I'm one of those people like I,
Speaker 5: you know, like just I'm I'm stonewall, and I know
Speaker 5: that's not the person I want to be, but it's
Speaker 5: also going to just be part of the equation. And
Speaker 5: when you add in you're tired, or you have eight
Speaker 5: hundred other things that on your plate, you know you're
Speaker 5: not always going to be that perfect person of being like, Hi,
Speaker 5: I'm feeling fear, and I'm going to eloquently articulate those
Speaker 5: feelings for you in a very nice and gentle tone.
Speaker 5: So there's going to be no you know, friction between us.
Speaker 5: You're like, I have a power point.
Speaker 2: I've made a slide deck. It's on Prezzy. I just
Speaker 2: had to look up what presny was, and I'm sure
Speaker 2: it's for lecturers and marketing professionals, but it seems like
Speaker 2: a real snazzy way to tell a lover how and
Speaker 2: why they bruised your feelings, I'm gonna use it like
Speaker 2: that's just it's not gonna it's not how it's going
Speaker 2: to come out right.
Speaker 5: But knowing how you and your partner like react when
Speaker 5: you're in fear is going to be important. So you
Speaker 5: can also start to see it so that if they're
Speaker 5: shutting down or if they're getting angry that's disproportioned to
Speaker 5: the thing, you can actually be like, Okay, this is
Speaker 5: not me like an ass like are you are you
Speaker 5: feeling afraid right now? And are you able to talk
Speaker 5: about it? Or maybe do we need to like take
Speaker 5: a five? And like, for me, sometimes I just need
Speaker 5: to walk away. Yeah, I'm just gonna say something stupid.
Speaker 2: So I just and what's happening in that because I
Speaker 2: will sometimes be I know, there's this adage of like,
Speaker 2: never go to bed angry, and sometimes I'm like, if
Speaker 2: I'm annoyed or angry, insecure or fearful, and it's coming
Speaker 2: out sideways thanks folicism, Like I'll fall asleep and I'll
Speaker 2: wake up and I'm like I'm fine, and I'm like
Speaker 2: and that's so anathetical to then never go to bed angry.
Speaker 2: But I feel like I'm like, this is a chemical
Speaker 2: tornado in my brain. Yeah, and it's gonna go away.
Speaker 2: And I is there ever, is it just like different structure,
Speaker 2: different folks, or like, is there something good about just
Speaker 2: like letting your brain chemicals drain and get broken down
Speaker 2: over time like an hour, five minutes.
Speaker 5: Yeah, we're essentially always two year olds, okay, like forever,
Speaker 5: and sometimes we just need a goddamn map and we
Speaker 5: just need to take a little nap or have like
Speaker 5: a snack.
Speaker 2: Hangar is a thing, and sometimes the root of the.
Speaker 5: Problem is just, yeah, your brain just needs a break
Speaker 5: or you're hungry, and that sounds oversimplified, but it's also true.
Speaker 5: And so sometimes if you just feel like everything's going wrong.
Speaker 5: I heard this quote a couple of weeks ago, and
Speaker 5: it was great. It was like, if you run into
Speaker 5: one asshole during the day, that person was an asshole.
Speaker 5: If you keep running the assholes all day, it's you. Yeah,
Speaker 5: you're the assle, You're the asshole. And so if you
Speaker 5: just all day everyone is just on your last nerve,
Speaker 5: it's you just go take a nap, right, It's probably
Speaker 5: you haven't had enough sleeps.
Speaker 2: So there is something to be said for going about
Speaker 2: angry and just waking up chill. I saw this one
Speaker 2: psychology website that said that the typical fight or flight
Speaker 2: response lasts about twenty minutes, and so twenty minutes of
Speaker 2: calm is just a good start to drain your brain
Speaker 2: of the panic juice, which I'm starting to realize maybe
Speaker 2: why some meditation practices recommend twenty minute stretches at a time. Now, okay,
Speaker 2: if you can't find a soft surface to peace out
Speaker 2: and dream or just breathe your fears rage away, Apparently
Speaker 2: exercise can also help you burn through some of that
Speaker 2: cortisol and epinephrine. So if you're having a day, you're
Speaker 2: having a moment, just announce I'm going to run around
Speaker 2: the parking lot a bunch to metabolize my very common
Speaker 2: chemical feelings of inadequacy. Be right back, thank you. Also,
Speaker 2: maybe take a look at what's making you have those
Speaker 2: adrenaline spikes, But do you think that there is there
Speaker 2: should maybe be a deeper look at like the way
Speaker 2: that we do scare ourselves, Like should we maybe stop
Speaker 2: looking at Twitter accounts that terrify us all the time?
Speaker 2: Should we put a cap on how much how many
Speaker 2: rabbit holes we go down or do you think that
Speaker 2: if we're going down it, we should be going down at.
Speaker 5: I think you have to like really be discerning on
Speaker 5: where you're going to spend kind of your your stress response.
Speaker 5: So we know that having a stress response all day
Speaker 5: long is really bad for you. It will kill you,
Speaker 5: Like your body is not able to take care of itself.
Speaker 5: It's not going to be mentally fun. It's not good
Speaker 5: all around. It's not good for your relationships because you're
Speaker 5: constantly like so, you're not going to have the best
Speaker 5: life if you're constantly in that state of stress and fear.
Speaker 5: So just like you can't eat all the things every
Speaker 5: minute of the day. You have to be discerning, right,
Speaker 5: It's got to be discerning on what kind of things
Speaker 5: do you want to expose yourself to, what kind of
Speaker 5: things do you want to spend your stress money on?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 5: Like for me, I don't engage with people in like
Speaker 5: comment sections, and as you do media as well, and
Speaker 5: like especially when you do visual media, and as a woman,
Speaker 5: even if it's in science, people make crazy ask and
Speaker 5: you're like, seriously, you came to a science show to
Speaker 5: I'm not imedian into it, but I I'm just gonna
Speaker 5: let it go because that's not worth my stress energy.
Speaker 5: It's a finite amount of like currency that I have, and.
Speaker 2: I'm not going to spend it on that stuff.
Speaker 5: That doesn't matter if it's something I enjoy, Like I
Speaker 5: don't like horror like slasher films, but like spooky films,
Speaker 5: you know, or like psychological thrillers.
Speaker 2: And that's kind of fun. If I don't have to
Speaker 2: go to bed alone have like, oh spooky, then that's
Speaker 2: that's fun for me.
Speaker 5: So I'm gonna spend some of my my stress energy there,
Speaker 5: but that's gonna be a choice. And really it's it's
Speaker 5: about it's about choices and knowing which things are going
Speaker 5: to kind of be your stress responses and you're not
Speaker 5: going to fully manage those, but just kind of making
Speaker 5: making better choices of what is my like return on
Speaker 5: investment in this, Like you know, like we're talking about
Speaker 5: social media, going to change that person's opinion by fighting
Speaker 5: with them in the comment section, probably not right. People
Speaker 5: like cognitive bias is a thing, and and people in
Speaker 5: the comment section are not there usually to have a deep,
Speaker 5: meaningful conversation. They're there to get their anger fix, and
Speaker 5: so like for me. I'm like, I'm not gonna be
Speaker 5: your dealer.
Speaker 2: Sorry, I'm just You're gonna have to get your anger
Speaker 2: fixed somewhere else. So staying calm and super collected might
Speaker 2: be the cruelest response. And then, to quote the wisdom
Speaker 2: of ancient East Coast philosophy, forget about it.
Speaker 5: And when you have like rumination, when you have like
Speaker 5: fear and anger that don't have an outlet, then you
Speaker 5: just keep cycling in your body.
Speaker 2: You're just like, I'm gonna hold onto this and.
Speaker 5: Just get more angry and more, you know, like frustrated
Speaker 5: or fearful about things.
Speaker 2: That's not serving anything. It's not doing any good.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: I know, we don't know a whole lot about depression
Speaker 2: and anxiety. I mean, compared to the amount people suffer
Speaker 2: from it, to what we know. I think we still
Speaker 2: figure out like how SSRIs really work in the brain.
Speaker 2: How much do you think of anxiety is genetic physiological?
Speaker 2: And how much is it learned responses? Do you know
Speaker 2: what I mean? I mean, I know that cognitive behavioral
Speaker 2: therapy is super helpful and not is relearning. But I'm
Speaker 2: just curious and I can look more into this just
Speaker 2: because I thinking of my family history of anxiety. I'm
Speaker 2: wondering how much of it is just patterns of behavior.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's definitely going to be a mix and with
Speaker 5: a lot of like mental health issues part of it.
Speaker 5: You know, it's going to be genetic predisposition. Take addiction right.
Speaker 5: Part of it is genetic predisposition.
Speaker 2: Part of it is going to be the environment in
Speaker 2: which you were raised.
Speaker 5: Part of it is going to be your active choices
Speaker 5: and the support system or education that you've been given
Speaker 5: around how to make different choices. So humans are so
Speaker 5: complex and this is kind of why there's no easy
Speaker 5: answer to any of these things. But there's always going
Speaker 5: to have that genetic predisposition be a part of it
Speaker 5: because we do have lineages. They just came out I think,
Speaker 5: like like a few months ago you probably saw this
Speaker 5: with like scientific evidence to support trauma gets passed on
Speaker 5: through generations and not just in utero, Like there's a
Speaker 5: genetic with a telomeres impact of trauma that gets passed
Speaker 5: through DNA.
Speaker 2: You're like, what, so if you have a trauma a lot,
Speaker 2: you're screwed. It was not even your fault, doesn't do anything.
Speaker 2: It's I just let me get my life. That is
Speaker 2: quite an inheritance, right, Like, yeah, you're like, I got
Speaker 2: shitty telomeres and some epigenetics that are boning me thanks
Speaker 2: to Grandpa. Right, So, if you listened to the Evolutionary
Speaker 2: Biology episode, you might remember some things about acqui genetics
Speaker 2: and epigenetics and gene expression, and this kind of falls
Speaker 2: in line with that. So there was a study out
Speaker 2: in the American Journal of Psychiatry in twenty fourteen, and
Speaker 2: it involved data about war survivors who suffered PTSD having
Speaker 2: children with higher methylation of a gene involved in stress response.
Speaker 2: But it was a small study. It only looked at
Speaker 2: a little slice of genes with not that many people,
Speaker 2: So some scientists say that more data needs to be gathered.
Speaker 2: We got a lot to.
Speaker 5: Learn, and a lot, especially like really big trauma on
Speaker 5: things like the Holocaust, things that we're completely out of
Speaker 5: those individuals control. It continues to get passed down in generations.
Speaker 5: So I mean, with the brain, there's still so much
Speaker 5: we don't know and we're kind of still scratching the
Speaker 5: surface of understanding, like learned fears. We still don't quite
Speaker 5: know how that works, of why someone you know learns
Speaker 5: to be afraid of water because something happened when they're
Speaker 5: a kid, and then you have.
Speaker 2: Other people that love water.
Speaker 5: So there's still like a lot of research to be
Speaker 5: done on that end, but it's definitely passed on both
Speaker 5: I think genetically as well as behaviorally, because how do
Speaker 5: you learn how to be a human for your parents
Speaker 5: in your family, Like, especially when you're young and and
Speaker 5: really impressionable, like how do I human?
Speaker 2: Oh? That's how I human? Okay, And that's so.
Speaker 5: Deeply imprinted that even when you start to learn new behaviors,
Speaker 5: it's not going to be as powerful as what was
Speaker 5: imprinted when you were young. So depending on what kind
Speaker 5: of you know, shake of the dice you got, that's
Speaker 5: going to have a huge impact on how you're going
Speaker 5: to like express yourself as an adult.
Speaker 2: But it's interesting to me that like learning about how
Speaker 2: much of our fears, especially in the Western world or
Speaker 2: you know, in a in a you know, big city
Speaker 2: or whatever, are fictional, gives me more faith in pursuing
Speaker 2: more like cognitive behavioral tactics. I think there's at some
Speaker 2: point I think you kind of just surrend teer anxiety
Speaker 2: and you're like, well, I'm an anxious person. Like I
Speaker 2: got diagnosed with a generalized anxiety disorder, and I was
Speaker 2: like a few years ago, and I was like, oh,
Speaker 2: that's why I'm constantly worried about like living under a bridge.
Speaker 2: That's why I'm always afraid of being a failure or something.
Speaker 2: And so I think I at some point I kind
Speaker 2: of was like, well, I got a diagnosis, so I'm
Speaker 2: surrendering to it. Yeah, Like it's who I am. And
Speaker 2: it's interesting to hear about you talk about it in
Speaker 2: that way because I'm like, oh, I'm there are steps
Speaker 2: that I just don't take because I just think, like,
Speaker 2: this is my lot and life. Like it'd be like
Speaker 2: if you were a diabetic and you're like, well, why
Speaker 2: bother taking insulin? I'm diabetic, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2: You're like, I'm like, I have more power to actually
Speaker 2: change things than I probably have given myself credit for,
Speaker 2: you know what I mean. I think I And I
Speaker 2: think it's interesting because I feel like the more people
Speaker 2: open up about fear and anxiety and stress, the more
Speaker 2: you find out a lot of other people have it.
Speaker 2: And it's there's something really tragic about that because that
Speaker 2: means a lot of us struggle with it and none
Speaker 2: of us know what to do to self soothe in
Speaker 2: the moment, like we just it's we're just not equipped.
Speaker 2: We weren't given that. That's so that's so fascinating. I'm
Speaker 2: going to remember that. Yeah, all right, Yeah, super helpful.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and it's and it's one of those things that
Speaker 5: you know, like having professional therapy can be super super helpful,
Speaker 5: but that's only maybe once a week, maybe twice a week,
Speaker 5: and we feel fear every damn day. So we need
Speaker 5: things that are gonna be easy to remember when our
Speaker 5: higher functions are just shutting down. Yeah, then we can
Speaker 5: put in our pocket and be like, Okay, I'm gonna
Speaker 5: I'm gonna pull this out and I'm gonna pull myself
Speaker 5: out of this.
Speaker 2: Like fear storm. And that empowers us.
Speaker 5: That makes us like not feel like we're just the
Speaker 5: whims of our brain exactly that you know, our brain's.
Speaker 2: Just gonna be like I do what I want. And
Speaker 2: the other thing is, especially if you're having I fear
Speaker 2: can be divided, If fictional fears can be divided into
Speaker 2: I'm not good enough or I'm out of control, I
Speaker 2: think that feeling like embarrassed that you're afraid, we're ashamed
Speaker 2: that you your fear made you angry. That only triggers
Speaker 2: more of that I'm not good enough and I'm out
Speaker 2: of control because I'm not in control of my emotions
Speaker 2: and I'm a huge turd for feeling angry and afraid.
Speaker 2: And now I'm even worse because I'm ashamed that I'm
Speaker 2: angry and afraid, you know what I mean. So it's
Speaker 2: just like it really spirals down so quickly. It's like
Speaker 2: the song that never ends? Is that down? How do
Speaker 2: I turn you off?
Speaker 6: So?
Speaker 2: Who? If you're an alive human, you probably related to
Speaker 2: a lot of this and you're like, wait, there's so
Speaker 2: much more I need to know, But don't fear Part
Speaker 2: two is here, while it will be next week. So
Speaker 2: I broke this episode into two. I made Mary talk
Speaker 2: to me in my couch for so long. I'm obsessed
Speaker 2: with her work now. So stay tuned next week to
Speaker 2: hear about Mary's own personal moments of greatest fear and
Speaker 2: what she did and when it taught her, as well
Speaker 2: as a ton of really good questions sent in from
Speaker 2: your own inquisitive brains, which Mary will answer. Meanwhile, you
Speaker 2: can find Mary online at www. Marypoffanroth dot com. She's
Speaker 2: on Facebook at Marypoffinroth. She's also on Twitter at Marypoffinroth Instagram,
Speaker 2: though her handle is fear forward, so gently stalk her.
Speaker 2: This podcast is at Ologies on Instagram and Twitter. I'm
Speaker 2: at Ali Ward with one L on Instagram and Twitter.
Speaker 2: You can pick up Ologies shirts and pins and totes
Speaker 2: at the newly designed ologiesmerch dot com site. We have birdpins,
Speaker 2: bug pins, clockpins. We just got in this week these
Speaker 2: cosmetology pins and they are glittery. They're eight bucks. So
Speaker 2: much cuteness, so go to ologiesmerch dot com for that.
Speaker 2: Thank you Bonnie Dutch and Shannon Felts for helping with
Speaker 2: the merch site. You can join the Ologies Facebook group
Speaker 2: if you like nice people. Thanks Hannah Lippo and Aaron
Speaker 2: Talbert for admitting. And thank you Steven ray Morris for
Speaker 2: the lastest minute editing ever. You're a champion. Also, happy
Speaker 2: belated birthday Stephen ray Morris. It was last Tuesday. Thank
Speaker 2: you for existing. The music was written by Nick Thorburn
Speaker 2: of the band Islands, And if you stick around through
Speaker 2: the credits, you know you get a secret. I'm just
Speaker 2: gonna tell you that this is so dumb. So this
Speaker 2: whole two part episode is about fear and stress. This weekend,
Speaker 2: I was on a tiny vacation with some of my
Speaker 2: best girlfriends I've known since I was twelve, and I
Speaker 2: had to get the audio uploaded, and the Wi Fi
Speaker 2: at the airbnb we're staying at was the slowest ever.
Speaker 2: Like this will not mean anything to most people, but
Speaker 2: it was point two four megabytes per second upload speed,
Speaker 2: which if that, if you deal at all with any
Speaker 2: uploading of anything, you know that that is just that's
Speaker 2: like tear inducingly slow. Anyway, I finally went to a library.
Speaker 2: Shout out to public libraries, y'all have fast, free Wi
Speaker 2: Fi and I love you. But my poor girlfriends I've
Speaker 2: own us since high school had to watch me freaking
Speaker 2: out trying to upload this episode all about fear and
Speaker 2: this rest response. So it's uploaded, and I had to
Speaker 2: ask myself why am I freaking out right now? And
Speaker 2: I was like, I'm afraid I'm not good enough because
Speaker 2: I didn't upload this earlier, and what if this episode
Speaker 2: isn't good enough and no one listens anymore? So there
Speaker 2: you go. There's my secret for the week you guys.
Speaker 2: Real life fears. What if I'm not good enough? What
Speaker 2: if this isn't good enough all because of slow upload speeds.
Speaker 2: So anyway, think about what you're afraid about. We'll have
Speaker 2: more next week. This is a it's a what a
Speaker 2: great two parter. It's kind of like free therapy, even
Speaker 2: though I think I'm supposed to say a disclaimer about
Speaker 2: that this is not intended to diagnose or treat anything,
Speaker 2: and you should get professional health for everything because the
Speaker 2: podcasts aren't allowed to fix anything. But it's very helpful nonetheless. Okay,
Speaker 2: pretty deep, and I'll.
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