02 - Fear

Episode 2: Facing Fear – How to Understand It, Harness It and Stop It Holding You Back

Fear. It’s something we all feel, often more than we’d like to admit. In this episode of Flawed and Fabulous, we’re diving deep into the F word - what fear really is, how it shows up in our lives, and how to work with it (instead of letting it run the show).

Shazia and Munita explore:

• The neuroscience behind fear (including your amygdala’s starring role)
• How trauma, culture and generational experiences shape our fears
• The impact of chronic stress and how it shows up in the body
• Why fear sometimes drives perfectionism, people-pleasing or avoidance
• Strategies to move from stuck to curious, from frozen to forward

From Yoda quotes and green pepper aversions, to stoic philosophy and childhood trauma – this conversation is raw, real and relatable.

By the end of this episode, you’ll understand fear in a whole new way – and be one step closer to using it as fuel, not a full stop.

Edited and produced by Mike at Making Digital Real 🎙️

Transcript

0:02

Hello, welcome to the Flawed and Fabulous podcast, a podcast that celebrates showing up as your real, raw and beautifully imperfect selves. We will explore topics that are commonly seen as flaws and help you turn them into another dimension of your fabulous self. We discuss personal stories together with myths around topics such as perfectionism, imposter syndrome, fear, and happiness, just to name a few. I'm Shazia, co-host of the Flawed and Fabulous podcast. I'm a psychotherapist specializing in trauma and work with people struggling with issues such as anxiety, depression, PTSD, and childhood trauma, just to name a few. Hello, I'm Dr. Munita, and I'm also a co-host of the Flawed and Fabulous podcast. I'm a certified life coach, but also I'm a doctor with two decades' experience as a consultant in intensive care medicine. This gives me a unique perspective to bring to our conversations about mindset, resilience and personal growth. In my day job, I help patients through the most difficult challenges, and in my coaching practice, I help my clients break through their limitations to achieve their maximum potential. So, on this podcast, we're going to cut through the noise, have heart-centered conversations to energize and nourish your mind. So whether you're looking to optimize your mindset, navigate life's critical moments, communicate with inspiring topics around human flaws, join us. Let's dive in. Hello, welcome back to episode two of Flawed and Fabulous, the podcast that helps you learn more of what makes you tick, think, and thrive. First of all, a massive thank you to all of you that listened to the episode one on perfectionism. We've had overwhelming messages of support and incredible stats. We're being listened to in over 15 countries, would you believe? So thanks again, and keep listening. Hi everyone, this is Shazia. Just to reiterate what Monita said, thank you to all of you who have listened and send us amazing feedback, inspiring stories of how our little podcast has impacted you. We really, really appreciate it, and it's given us the impetus to carry on. So following on from our last episode on perfectionism, today we're talking about something that every one of us has felt in some way or the other, and sometimes more than we'd like to admit. And this is the big F word, fear. Fear is a biological superpower, and like all powers, it can help us or hurt us. I want to just start off with a little quote by Franklin Roosevelt, who said, the only thing we have to fear is fear itself. And I absolutely love that. What do you think, Monita? That quote is so true, isn't it? I have to say, sometimes we imagine things much more than how they actually end up being. We're filled with trepidation, but sometimes it never really comes to anything, and it's a bit of an anticlimax. What do you think? Yeah, I agree. And actually, I have another quote for you, Monita, especially because I know you are a massive Star Wars fan. Oh, tell me. And this is from your little friend Yoda, who said, fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, and hate leads to suffering. What do you think? That's what your little man, Yoda, said. Oh, everybody needs a little bit of Yoda in their life. For those of you who don't watch Star Wars, I apologize in advance. But actually, Yoda is full of wisdom and patience, and he permeates pretty much every episode. So in my eyes, a little hero. So just thinking back to our last podcast, we've had some feedback online, and I think one of the feedback mentioned that perfectionism isn't all bad, and you're absolutely right. Look, I'm an intensive care consultant and an anaesthetist. I have to keep things going along certain processes, certain pathways. You have to do it tried and tested, repeated, and that is a process that you have to perfect. So there is a section of us permeating our lives where perfectionism really does dominate. So it doesn't mean it's all bad, and we recognize that it can be good. And the same goes for fear, actually. So fear can be your friend or your foe, depending on whether it's a rational fear or if it's an irrational fear. From my point of view, geography and culture have some effects upon how we understand and perceive fear. And so later on in the episode, we're going to guide you through different perceptions of fear and how to harness it. So without further ado, Shazia, tell me, what is fear? So let's start with the very basics. Fear is an emotional and physiological response to a perceived threat. It's one of our most primal emotions, and evolutionary, it's actually what has kept us safe. It is our survival mechanism. It tells us to get ready for danger. It's a call to action. The problem is, and this is where it gets interesting, is that when fear becomes maladaptive, it starts impacting our daily lives and our ability to function. And some of the maladaptive fears, which are irrational, are phobias, for example. You know, 8% of women and 3% of men suffer from phobias. The most common ones are heights, animals, thunderstorms, even water, and I'm sure many of you can relate to this. Another maladaptive fear is social anxiety. And this is something that's so common, and I see it across many, many of my clients. It affects 8 million people in the UK, and around 22% of UK university students experience social anxiety, and this number has gone up since COVID. This is a huge number. You know, Monita, both you and I have had kids in university, we know how it has impacted them. What happens is that our brains become hypervigilant, and they react, our brain reacts based on perception, experiences, and conditioning, and often not reacting at what is actually happening. It reacts based on previous feelings and memories. Monita, you're going to go into more detail on the neuroscience and how our brains activate fear. So, that's why you can even feel immense fear when you are totally safe. This might be a good time actually for us to jump in into the neuroscience and talk a little bit about how our brains get impacted when the fear response gets set off. Sure. Let's talk neuroscience. So, the fear pathway involves an integrated circuit. It has three separate areas of the brain that work together in a sort of form of orchestra, some overriding other parts, but generally they work together. The amygdala, the hippocampus, and the prefrontal cortex are the three vital areas. I want to sort of stress to you that it's a dynamic two-way pathway, and it is not fixed in its responses and is adaptable. The amygdala is the brain's primary fear center. It comes from the Greek word that is amygdala, which means almond, because when you look at brains in cross-sectional CT scanning, when you look at the amygdala, it looks like an almond. It's tiny. It's got a volume of only 1.3 cubic centimeters, but it definitely packs a punch. It's a ton of neurons in it, and it's tucked away deep in the temporal lobe. Important to remember, it's a paired structure. Each one of our cerebral hemispheres has one of these little almond-shaped structures, so we've got two. They work separately and together. Each amygdala, however, has three parts to it, the central part, the inner aspect closest to the middle part of the brain, and the outer aspect closest to the outside of the brain. And each part does something slightly different. The central part of the amygdala makes your autonomic nervous system activated, so your heart rate rises and goes higher if you fear danger or sense it. Your blood pressure goes up, your pupils dilate, your sound becomes more acute so that you can hear things really rustling, and your sense of smell increases in order to mitigate toxic substances that might be around. Other parts of the amygdala are involved with processing social anxieties and social fear and fear conditioning through communication. And finally, the last part is associated with processing the memory and the fear conditioning that we get. So there's different parts, and they work by using neurochemical messages called neurotransmitters, glutamates, GABA, serotonin, oxytocin, just to name a few. Let's move on to the hippocampus now. The reason it's called that, again, is from a Greek word which is roughly translated as seahorse. Actually, when you look at cross-sectional CT scan imaging, it rather resembles a C-shaped. It's deep within the temporal lobe, and it's involved in learning and memory consolidation of sensory stimuli and recalling that memory. So it's involved a lot with learning. It's part of the limbic system. And it tends to make the memories that we have for fear contextualized on the scenario in which we experienced it. And finally, we have the prefrontal cortex, which sits in the frontal lobe, which is right behind your forehead. And really, it's the brain's executive control center. It's a bit like the CEO or a conductor of an orchestra. That's how I like to think of it anyway. And that's important because the prefrontal cortex can override anything that's going on. But most importantly, it rationalizes the threat coming from the amygdala. It will decide overall, taking information from the hippocampus, taking information from the amygdala, is this a code red for sure, or is it actually all clear? And then it allows us to move on. So you can think of the neuroscience aspects, as complicated as it might be, as an orchestra. The prefrontal cortex is the conductor. It has executive control. And it knows when to amplify the sound for one part of the orchestra or another and when to dampen it down. The amygdala is like the first violin. It has exceptional clarity. It makes immediate responses, and it is under the control of the conductor. So it can be overridden. And then there's the hippocampus, which a bit like percussion, is contextual, some drums in the background, setting the scene as it were, and allowing the memory retrieval and thought patterns. And then you have the brass section, which is your hypothalamus and brainstem that kick into action in that fight, flight or freeze response. Wow, that is absolutely fantastic. Your metaphor is superb. I discuss this, you know, as part of my psychoeducation with clients who've suffered trauma about how the brain functions, how their fear responses get activated. And I'm going to use this as a way to describe it to them. I think it's an absolutely superb way of explaining how everything functions. I think there's a lot going on there, but I have to say, when I learned about it at med school, they talked about this orchestra. It's something you kind of don't forget very easily because you can visualize it. Yeah, absolutely. In fact, with so many of my clients, I find they find themselves completely stuck, unable to move on from past experiences and trauma because they are gripped by fear. And the minute their system feels threatened by completely unrelated things, their amygdala comes into action as a form of protection and compels them to go into either fight mode, which is aggression or anger, or flight mode, where they try and avoid certain things, leave situations, relationships even, or freeze mode, where they go numb, get stuck, get depressed, choose to make no decisions and even dissociate. I recently read a book called The Neuroscience of Psychotherapy, and the phrase that stuck with me speaking about the brain structure is that the amygdala never, ever forgets. It's important to remember that because when we're acutely stressed, the amygdala decides to fire more and more. And interestingly, at the same time, the conductor puts down his hand, takes a step back and lets the amygdala just take over. So in acute stress situations, the amygdala, because it's very rapid in its response, can take priority. Yeah, and what is fascinating, and again, I read this in this book, is that from the moment of the trigger where the amygdala gets activated and clocks a particular emotion, so fear, the time taken for this information to reach the prefrontal cortex is very short, it's only six seconds, but it takes 90 seconds for the emotion to dissipate and settle. And that's why we try and encourage our clients that when they feel an emotion, to allow it to sit for at least 90 seconds before reacting. So it gives time for the information to not only pass to the CEO, but also for the emotion to settle within the body and the system to be able to then make a decision from a rational point of view. It's a really fascinating thing. That's very interesting. That's something I've learned today. And it's really good and it's sound advice. Sit with it. Do not react when you hear, see, feel something unfamiliar. You know, I was listening to Martha Beck, and she says, curiosity is the door between anxiety and creativity. So if you stop for the 90 seconds, Shazia, that you're advising, and you're curious about what exactly am I feeling that will open the door, dampen down the anxiety response, and give you that time. So she says that that is a really good way of overcoming anxiety. One of the things that happens when your fear circuit is present in the acute stress pattern is different when you're in chronic stress pattern. I understand that very loosely, Shazia. You might want to talk a little bit about the chronic stress pattern and the fear circuit when it sort of becomes autopilot. So in my work, I work a lot with people who've had, who suffered with childhood trauma or any kind of trauma on a daily basis, domestic violence, sexual trauma, those sorts of really pervasive traumatic situations, even PTSD, for example, the work I do with paramedics and healthcare workers. What happens is when this fear response is set off, our cortisol goes up, as you know, blood pressure goes up. There are both, there are lots of physiological ramifications when this fierce response is activated. The idea is that the cortisol goes up to deal with the fear response. And then once the danger or the threat has passed, the cortisol levels go back down to a state of homeostasis. Now if the cortisol levels are present in our systems 24 hours of the day, this is going to have an impact on our physiological systems and our physical symptoms. The role of cortisol is to increase when we experience threat, deal with the threat and then go back once the threat has passed. But if we are to stay in a constant state of threat, can you imagine the impact on our bodies? Often the clients that I see who suffered with the maximum amount of trauma, they have a lot of physical conditions such as fibromyalgia, IBS, autoimmune diseases, these start invading the body because of these constantly elevated levels of cortisol that are persistent. I think it's also important for the listener, that's a really valid point that a permanently high cortisol 24 hours is very bad for you. These changes in the body and in the brain in particular are not permanent. In fact, the body allows itself to adapt, but the brain also adapts and this process is called neuroplasticity, which we'll bring in now. Well, we're going to talk about it later, but I think it's the right time to talk about it now. This is the brain's ability to recognize its neuronal activity based on what is required from it. If you're constantly using one part of your brain to do certain projects or work or so forth, your brain will upregulate in that area with increased neuronal connections. Likewise, if you have neuronal connections that are giving you negative attributes, chronic stress, chronic fear, then the brain does have the capacity with treatment and strategies to change itself and revert back to what was a previous state, the non-fear state for example. If you've had a maladaptive way that your brain's been working and you're having therapy or having the treatments of another type, your brain can go back. That is the process of neuronal plasticity. But here's the thing, what I want to get across is that neuronal plasticity has been shown to be increased by exercise, by learning, by social connections, by sleep and by meditation. Actually, the meditation part is really interesting, Shazia. I want to talk a little bit about the Buddhist monk experiments or observations, should I say. So, Richard Davidson is a PhD researcher from University of Wisconsin. He's done most of the work on looking at Buddhist monks and what he has found is fascinating. He's found that using functional MRI scanning and EEG, he's found that monks that practice meditation have reduced amygdala output, okay, when they are shown negative images. Furthermore, the EEG has been shown to have a much greater proportion of gamma waves which are high frequency and represent a grossly synchronized brain activity across all parts of the brain. This translates to increasing processing speeds of the brain, better mood, increasing empathy, increasing focus, increasing attention, recall and memory. And it's also correlated with the longer period of time, as in years that you've been doing meditative practices, the greater the gamma wave increases. I mean, it's been absolutely fascinating to read around this subject. And the converse is also true, Shazia. If you have insomnia, chronic stress, you're in advanced stages of aging or you've had substance abuse in the past, then your neuronal plasticity isn't as good. And it becomes really quite difficult to rise to the challenge of increasing your neuronal connections. That is so intriguing. I love this whole neuroscience bit. How does it show up in your life, in your coaching life, Munita? Well, from a life coaching perspective, people don't come and say, look, I'm scared. But actually what they do say is, I can't do this or I can't achieve that. And what I say is, OK, let's look at that. Remember, curiosity is that secret door that opens up the difference between anxiety and creativity. So I say, let's peel away. Let's be curious and see what we're trying to actually be fearful of. What is the worst thing that can happen as a result of you not achieving this? Or, actually, some of my clients, what is the worst thing that can happen if you are successful in achieving this? Because people do dread that as well. So some people won't start something because they will achieve it. And then they're scared. They don't know what to do or what to do when they succeed. So peeling away the layers of the onion of life to find out what is at the root cause of the fear is something that I see with my life coaching. And that can be because your values are misaligned with your actions, because you want to do something, but actually your brain is telling you to do something else. Perhaps it's a new signal for your body that it's time for growth again, or it's a protective mechanism for an unprocessed emotion. There are many reasons why it can show up in life coaching, but it's not immediately obvious to me or my coachee that actually that's what's going on. So it's slightly nuanced. And what about you in your psychotherapy practice? Well, fear shows up in our everyday lives all the time. It becomes more than just biology, and it becomes quite personal. In my world, fear shows up in different ways, such as anger and aggressiveness, avoidance, silence, people pleasing, not maintaining boundaries. And I encourage all of you listeners out there, ask yourself, how does fear show up in your life? For me, I would say sometimes it's anxiety. I actually feel a knot in my stomach. It becomes a physical symptom. I have clients who come to say, I have anxiety. I have a lot of worries, something like anxiety. What is it? It is essentially fear of the future, fear of the unknown, fear of the uncertain. There's so many things that we have different names for, which is essentially fear. Stress, fear. Worry is fear. Insecurity is fear. All these are the underpinnings for me and the basis of which is fear. Many of my clients feel stuck. Even being stuck is a form of fear. I also have a lot of clients who have been diagnosed with PTSD or complex PTSD, and their fears are a little bit different. These are based on the memory of their traumas. Their fears show up as a fear of going to a place where, for example, they've been attacked or they fear someone who looks like an abuser. These fears can be triggered even if they see someone who has the general aura of the abuser or a smell, that scent that the abuser may have had. They get an exaggerated fear conditioning. I have also examples where they hear a voice which triggers fear, and it's not even the actual voice. It's the tone that triggers them into a state of, I feel unsafe. They know fully well that this is not the person, that they are actually safe, but they feel internally unsafe because this has created the hippocampus or caused the hippocampus to come into action, saying that this has happened to you somewhere in the past. Wow, that's very telling, isn't it? That the amygdala doesn't forget, that goes back to that. In medical practice, I think what you're referring to is anticipatory fear. In medical practice, patients who undergo chemotherapy and have side effects from the chemotherapy during one cycle, when they're coming up to the next round of chemotherapy, even though they haven't actually received it, they have this anticipatory symptoms which are based on their previous experience. On a lighter note, I think my story of green peppers when I was expecting my daughter, I had sickness until about week 30 of my pregnancy. I was working in a central London teaching hospital, and the canteen there used to do on-the-spot stir-fries, and every time I walked past that place, the smell of green peppers would set me off. I developed a real bad link with feeling acutely nauseated and the smell of green peppers, and even to this day, I cannot tolerate it. So you're right, the amygdala really does not forget. Remind me not to cook green peppers when you come over. Absolutely, absolutely. So these things stay with you, and it's been a conditioning of one type, hyper-acute smells, for example. Whatever is the trigger, it's the brain doesn't forget. What we've got to do is examine when we do feel the fear, whether it is rational or irrational. Some are perfectly rational fears, like walking in the dark in the middle of the night on a lonely, unlit road. That's pretty much a rational fear, I would say. But an irrational fear, for example, would be us getting really worried that if we mess up this podcast, no one will ever listen to us again. I hope that is an irrational fear. I went through a stage where about four, maybe five or six years ago, I felt completely stuck. My life was full of ifs. I was feeling discombobulated, totally irritated with my life and myself. And then after I did a fair amount of introspection, some journaling, writing, just trying to understand what was going on for me, I realized that these were actually fears of intense, sorry, feelings of intense fear. So I asked myself, what are these? Why am I feeling like this? And I realized that I was basically petrified. I was terrified of things like, what am I going to do when my kids are grown up? They are not going to need me anymore. And each time, I thought of a different excuse. I'm not qualified to do any different kind of work. I don't have time to learn something new. I need to cook. I used to come up with all sorts of excuses. And the other thoughts that came up for me were, what will my kids think of me? I am an intelligent, educated woman, and I'm not doing anything that feels like an achievement. Are they going to look at me and think I haven't accomplished anything? Are they going to think my mom's not an achiever? And you can imagine where my mind went with this. Completely irrational. Don't you think? 100%. And actually, look at you now. So, fast forward. I tried to use those fears in a more productive way. Let's put it that way, which we'll probably discuss a little bit later. But those fears made me completely stuck. That is the word I would use. I felt extremely low, down on myself, and my self-confidence was at an all-time low. I was in a state of internal turmoil until I realized what it was. And then I was able to figure out and cope with it and find strategies to come out of that state. And yes, you probably would never have imagined if I'd said to you back then, listen, you're going to be doing a podcast, and it's going to be on Spotify and Amazon and everything else. Absolutely not. Mine's a slightly different story, but it's entertaining nonetheless, because I can look back and think I've always had a fear of the future. If I look back at my life, I can honestly tell you it has served me incredibly well. I would say most of my life has been fear-fueled growth, or a signal to growth. Take it as you will. I was born in India. For those of you that don't know, I came over here when I was very young. English was not my first language. Hindi was my first language. I came over, my parents were part of a highly skilled migrant workforce. And as such, they were very keen that I would study hard, make something of myself. And at about the age of 14, I started to get worried. Where would I be? What would I be doing? How would I earn? What career would I want to do? I went to medical school, became a doctor, then didn't know quite what specialty. I was finding myself as an individual growing at that time. Personality-wise, finding out what my likes, dislikes were. And then going through the motions of becoming a consultant, and all the challenges of working in the NHS as a consultant. Now, I'm in a situation where there's been a big life change a few years back. And I had another fear of the future. I wasn't really sure quite how things would pan out. But I'm delighted to say I decided to utilize it. Became a life coach, started doing public speaking about life coaching, have now participated in broadcasting a podcast, and run a private practice into coaching. So, the growth is still happening for me, and I'm absolutely delighted about it. So, for those of you that haven't heard about the Stoic philosophy, it's something that I came across whilst I was going through this last bit of what I call my fear-fuelled growth spurt. The Stoics are Greek and Roman philosophers from the Common Era. For those of you that have heard of it, I'm delighted. And those of you that haven't, I'm delighted to introduce you to it. So, the Stoics viewed fear as a negative emotion. For Stoics, fear happened when they mistakenly thought they were judging future events as real. So, the three main Stoics were Seneca, a very wealthy statesman who also ended up being tutor to Emperor Nero, Marcus Aurelius, who was Emperor of Rome himself, and Epictetus, a slave who got his own freedom, and then started to be a philosopher to help others gain inner freedom. And what they have said is really that fear is more in imagination than in reality. And we do see that, don't we? We see that freedom comes when you say, okay, the fear, there's nothing much I can do about it. Freedom comes from living in what we call the present moment. So, living in the present moment is having a response of knowing that today I'm doing this podcast with you, Shazia. I give it my all. I'll do my best. I can't control what other people will think of it, but I would have enjoyed myself doing it anyhow. I would have given you all of my attention in this moment and accept that I'm doing this with my time today. I won't worry about tomorrow because I can't control that. And I'm not going to worry about yesterday because it's come and gone. So, that's the present moment. It's an important concept. And the philosophers were really good at saying things about you cannot control what you cannot control. Yes, that's totally right. In my world, I often say to my clients, control the controllables. That's the only thing that's in our ability to manage and control things. Correct. Exactly what you said. You can't control what you can't control, but there are things that are within you can focus on, not what you can't. So, I think the Stoics will tell you to pre-think negative things that might happen. Okay, we do that anyway, don't we? We have a plan A and we have a plan B. We already do a lot of these things. I'm a big fan of the Stoics and I hope that will permeate through the rest of the podcasts. I know that you're not and I can see your face on the screen. So, why don't you tell me the bits that you don't like or what you think are applicable about the Stoics with respect to fear in your clients? On a personal level, I think it's, I employ how the Stoics think. The philosophy, I do use it in my personal life. But I think when I feel it's not possible to use, I see so many clients who've had very traumatic experiences. This feels very simplified for them, especially with those who've had experiences of, you know, really awful trauma like sexual abuse, domestic abuse, things like that. It is so physiologically, physically, emotionally, intrinsically embedded, this fear that the Stoic philosophy feels very cognitive and I feel like they would struggle. They might accept it on a cognitive level, but on a very daily practical level, it would be very difficult for them to put it into practice. And I think that's totally fair, isn't it? You have explained that beautifully and I think the Stoics do have a lot of plaudits, but I think there are some limitations that are important, particularly in your practice. It's good to point that out, Shazia. So, you know, I live by it. I don't have a problem with it at all. Munita, I'm not rejecting it. I promise I'm only resisting it in these circumstances. I'm pretty cool. I can handle it. Don't worry at all. Because it is so somatic for in trauma situations. That's the main, that's my point. So, that's acknowledged. So, Shazia, fear has quite a sneaky way of affecting our lives and how we make choices. Fear of failure, as we said, can stop us from starting things, stop us from doing things to the fullest potential that we have. What would you say in response to that? A hundred percent. I see it every day, like I say, and like I mentioned earlier, it causes us to get stuck. It impacts our relationships. For example, it also makes us risk averse. It stops us from taking calculated risks that can enhance our life. As far as relationships are concerned, fear of rejection or abandonment even can pull us back from someone we care about because we're afraid that they'll hurt us. Or maybe you're afraid that you'll mess things up. It often shows up as control, jealousy, emotional distance. And these are defense mechanisms to avoid vulnerability. And these walls that are built by fear keep out connections that we often crave for. I'm sure you have at some point or the other. What about you? Have you got an example from your back story? I have. I don't have a specific example, but I know that several times when I was younger, when I liked a guy, I was too afraid of rejection. So I wouldn't let him know or share how I felt with the assumption being that I would be rejected. And the thought of a positive outcome didn't even cross my mind. My mindset was in, he's not going to like me, so I'm not going to say anything. And sometimes I have wondered, what if I had said something? Would something else have happened if I wasn't afraid? Maybe I would not have been rejected. But at that time, the fear of possible rejection was so overwhelming that I was like, no, I'm going to just keep quiet. And we see this quite regularly. Having said that, on a slightly lighter note, I probably did overcome it because I eventually asked my husband to marry me and he agreed. So I did have a positive outcome, Monita. That's fantastic. I love that story. That's brilliant. You've had a positive outcome. You've gone full circle and that is awesome. So just want to loop back. So far, we've talked about fear in the body. We've talked about acute stress, chronic stress, and how all of these will affect the fear circuit and how it isn't necessarily a permanent structural change because the brain is adaptable, as we've said. So what do we think about how it affects you? You've touched upon this with fibromyalgia, weakened immune system, autoimmune diseases. What about the acute side of it from the cortisol axis? Let me elaborate. If you have a permanently high cortisol level, your blood pressure will be higher. Your muscle mass will be lower. You will have what we call sarcopenia. You'll be more prone to infections because your immune system is affected and there might even be, as you've alluded to, autoimmune disorders. Sometimes we see people who have very, very high cortisol levels may have episodes of psychosis and this is not the phobia side of things, right? This is just everyday anxiety, fear, maybe in extreme circumstances, psychosis. I think we touched on phobias earlier, which is again, irrational fears, you know, thunderstorms, spiders. People are so scared of these sort of things. What are the origins of phobia? Do you know? I don't know the details of the origins of phobia. They are irrational fears, essentially. Something may have happened in the past. Sometimes it could have even been like a story. I have a client, for example, who heard a story about a scary spider and ever since then, they have a phobia of spiders. I have, believe it or not, a phobia. I don't know if it's a phobia but I am petrified of clowns. I saw a movie when I was very young in which a clown kidnapped a child and ever since then, whenever I see a clown, I can actually feel my hands get clammy. I just, I cannot deal with clowns and the other one I'm petrified of, Munita, again, you'd be shocked to hear it, is ice cream vans with the music because again, there was something I saw, somewhere I heard an ice cream man van did something to a woman or again, it was, I think someone kidnapped someone and ever since then, I've never let my kids go to the ice cream man van by themselves. Just to let you know. Totally irrational. I don't know if it's a phobia but it's definitely a fear. That's interesting. The clown thing I can understand because in the series of movies with a clown called It and that did set off quite a similar number of people feeling a phobia about clowns. So, it's not something I, you know, think is completely irrational and it's based on, yes, a series of movies and so forth. Well, the ice cream van, I can't help you out there. I'm sorry. Yeah, I've never understood how people have found clowns and I'm just terrified of them. So, with coaching clients sometimes, I personally don't take on clients who have phobias but there are coaches out there who I am a neuro-linguistic programming coach but I am not one that takes on phobias and they try to retrain them through timeline therapy rather than exposure therapy which is the classic. It's more about neuronal retraining to try and elicit less and less and less of a physiological response to the said trigger and we'll talk about that a bit later in the global cultural bit because there are other ways that some communities use that. CBT is also cognitive behavioral therapies also often prescribed for people with phobias to help them activate the prefrontal cortex to rationalize the phobia. So, there's logic associated with it if that makes sense. This is one of the therapies that is recommended for people with phobia. Okay, the next part we're going to talk about how cultures have harnessed fear and some of the unique fears that have been shared by different generations. We're also going to talk about how to make fear work for you and leverage it and so fear has been used as a psychological tool for a really really long time by religious groups, political systems, marketing, media. So, delving into them fear has been used as a construct for moral and social guidance with you know images of the afterlife being really terrible if you don't adhere to this way or that. Using all of that to create authority and cohesion between groups and I think we all understand and we hear we're seen in whatever type of religions we may have been exposed to. Personally, mine have been Catholicism and Hinduism and there's always an undertone of moral authority. Political systems, while we might think it's all to do with authoritarian non-democratic organizations who use fear of external enemies to justify control and limit opposition. Actually, we see it quite a lot now. We're seeing it in democratic politics with the emergence of populism, polarization and post-truth as Alastair Campbell said in his book But What Can I Do? We have the emergence of the far right, we have politics driving a fear of crime, a fear of poor economies, of migrants, of cultural change in order to win votes and to justify their policies and I just wish actually it would be much easier if they just said will you vote for me if I do this this and this to improve your life. It would be a lot simpler but they don't they don't seem to want to do that. We're now in an age where we get information 24 hours a day Shazia. What do you feel about the media pushback of the amount of media coverage we have about each and everything now? Yes, we are getting information 24 hours a day through social media, through our TV channels, the level of fear that we feel and the level of and the amount of bombarding of negative information creates this sense of fear. If you think about it when we were growing up at least when I was growing up I saw the news once a day in the evening and it was limited. It was a one hour program maybe. Now if you put on any of the news channels, several news channels at that, you are seeing images and hearing about what is going on 24 seven and really gruesome images at that. So it's not only television, it is on our phones, it is on our laptops, it is on our iPads, wherever you go you are getting to see and it also we get notifications you know on our phone. You'll get a pop-up to say so and so thing has happened, this war has happened, x number of people have been founded. So you can imagine how much anxiety is going into our subconscious, how much fear is invading our system on a really really subconscious level. Yeah so this this concept of negativity bias exploitation by algorithms and so forth is really interesting. So we have a preference to hear about negative things and we keep them in our brains longer than positive things which seem to sort of seep out of our brains very quickly. So the media use fear to augment viewership or leadership. So you know the there is the the phrase if it bleeds it leads and they will put it all over the front pages or it appears as you say as a notification on your phone or tablet. Actually what I find difficult is that we are bombarded with images now of frontline war. We are you know just only a couple of weeks back I was getting notifications of images of Indian warships entering the Arabian Sea when India and Pakistan were fighting. We have all been witness to the terrible scenes in the White House in the Oval Office where politicians were being berated by Trump notably Zelensky and that was dreadful. So there's lots of things that we're seeing that we never saw before and it's astonishing really. But then again even marketing close at home we're buying things as consumers because we're worried about not fitting in not wearing the right trainers at school if you're a child not wearing the right trainers in the coffee morning with the mums if you're an adult. So it permeates all of us really. There's plenty of all of the marketing fears that play on our vulnerabilities. Yes that's right. We see it all the time every day. I think we live generally in a society underpinned by fear and we don't even realize it actually. The algorithms these days are all designed to create FOMO. You know we talked about it in our last podcast didn't we. Again when we in our last podcast we talked about perfectionism which was again based from a place of fear and we see it daily. We talked about FOMO, we talked about JOMO, we talked about FODO and we're not going to talk about them again and we'd be delighted if you haven't listened to the podcast the last one if you would please do that because then you would you would understand what we're talking about. One of the things I found incredibly interesting when looking at different things to include in this podcast of ours was how different cultures help their communities cope with fear or harness it. So the Japanese, I didn't realize the Japanese are really into their horror movies and this is a thing called KAIDAN, K-A-I-D-A-N which is a culture of horror storytelling. What it's meant to do is to create the physiology of fear in the comfort of your home or a cinema hall so that you know how to how fear feels you know how to cope with it perhaps you have an idea that this is fear if you're feeling anxious. So it's an interesting way of educating the population in an emotion which I think is quite novel. In arctic circles where there's lots of ice and freezing water they use idea of evil spirits to teach their young not to go onto thin ice not to go into the freezing water and they sort of try and make a fable out of the whole thing or a myth and that then generates a genuine fear of not going near ice that looks like it's too thin or the water which may be freezing and have really severe consequences. And then there's the other extreme so you have places like Bhutan doesn't look at its economics as a viable score of how its country's doing but looks at its happiness score but they're made to be happy through community support and through buddhist teaching. The idea is of impermanence that nothing lasts forever and so therefore whatever you're experiencing in the present moment you should be happy with and that is where the notion of impermanence comes and again that's one of our key concepts we might come back to that in another another podcast. So Korea another slightly different thing and I know it's quite controversial Shazia I know you're looking at me through your glasses and actually the Korean education system names and shames people that don't do well they have a national ranking system the idea being that it sort of shames you into getting really high scores improving prosperity and to be fair to them they have improved their prosperity their economics a huge amount but probably at the expense of seriously an anxious population don't you think? Yeah you can imagine where my head is going when I heard that. I'm thinking what about the emotional well-being of these people? Exactly. So not my cup of tea Muneetha for sure. No no but it's good to know that it's out there and then the Latin Americans who you know have the Dia de los Muertos which is the day of the dead where they celebrate those people that have passed because the fear of dying is a big fear worldwide but the South Americans do it very well they remember they celebrate there are parties there are parades there are pictures of their loved ones who have died and they come to terms with the fact that life again it comes back to the impermanence nothing lasts forever but you can choose to deal with it in a positive way. This is all extremely fascinating I love stories about myths and stories about how cultures manage different ways of being earlier on when we were discussing this you were telling me about the different generations and the famous people in each generation and how they dealt with fear based on the time that they were born which is also really fascinating to hear so would be great for you to share it. Yeah different generations have had their own unique fears that they've had to navigate I hadn't really realized what they were and the fact that prominent people within those generations really were addressing those fears so the silent generation from 1928 to 1945 had to undergo World War II and the Great Depression these people were really worried and concerned about economic stability whether they were going to have their rations and the food cards in their memories they were worried about conflicts it was after this that NATO emerged and so we had famous people like Martin Luther King Jr who came along and wanted a peaceful approach to the American civil rights movement he wanted to peacefully try and sort out having had in the back of his mind conflict as a child and you can see where his ethos was coming from. Moving on to baby boomers from 1946 through to 64 these are people that had the Cold War that was in the background the Iron Curtain as we heard and this was prior to the emergence of perestroika and glasnost that we remember you know the Cold War and the nuclear annihilation that was what they were really worried about and through this came Bill Gates he was a baby boomer and one of the first things he did was the Bill Gates foundation like him or loathe him you know was to create a nuclear threat initiative to go around the world educate people about nuclear weapons about disarmament and what they were alternatives that people could use so through using institutional channels and technology he decided that he would use his money and philanthropy to educate people so that then we come on to our generation. Gen X 1965 to 1980 in this era there were rising divorce rates the children of this era were called latchkey kids they were going between two homes they had their own keys and famous people who have been quoted from this include Kurt Cobain from Nirvana so he was he was an anti-establishment set of lyrics with the disillusionment of this generation and the alienation that they felt it deeply resonated with a lot of people and they shot to fame fairly quickly he definitely wasn't corporate. Millennials from 1981 to 96 seems like a long time ago but 9 11 was really prominent for them and the war on terror they were losing connections with people there was a time when there was a great banking crisis the so-called great recession of 2008 and at this time people were worried about getting a secure employment a regular income which were very much at the forefront of their minds this coincided funnily enough with the era of Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg emerging to try and minimize the size of the world try and bring people together and all of that and try to work out how they could make it more of a global village and then of course there's Gen Z 1997 through till 2012 who fear the climate crisis and have experienced the pandemic as we all know too well. Greta Thunberg does she need an introduction probably not she's an activist she voiced her concerns her relentless rejection of the do-nothing approach for climate change so people really have articulated over the generations their fears and the behavior patterns have changed accordingly I mean it's really very interesting. It's extremely interesting that there are of course global influences in addition to individual experiences that determine people's fear structure and fear construct the environment geographical cultural area cultural areas that we've all grown up in determine what we call the social this fierce fear construct of an individual very very fascinating the whole package of experiences that determine how we function in life and the different generational aspects as you were reading through it was sort of clocking in my head about intergenerational fear something that goes down through generations and we'll probably see this in communities that have had a war that they have grown up with so we see it within the Jewish communities we see it amongst Palestinian communities we probably see it now with Ukrainians that this fear will pass down through generations it could create a different kind of way of being for people from that community. Yeah it's interesting as a medic we often talk about the genetic makeup of somebody and the effect of the environment on them the so-called phenotype and I think we would all have our own genetic makeup and then the fear is modulated by where we live the upbringing we've had what the generations before us have been through how that molds your fear response how it molds your attitude and beliefs in your behaviors I think it's I think it's a really interesting topic. It really is and we've only just scratched the surface here. So the empowering part about fear is that we can leverage it why don't you tell me a little bit more about that. Fear is information right it's our body saying something feels off let's check it out so when you I did all the introspection when I was going through my crisis six or seven years ago it was fear that galvanized me that got me thinking I have to do something it was what got me out of my rut when we experience that fear on a physical level on an emotional level we can think to ourselves which is what I did I could either let it get the better of me or I could take a chance go for it and deal with whatever the outcome was because you know ask yourself sometimes and I tell my clients this as well what if the outcome is good what if it turns out to be the way you wanted it to be I embarked on a new career which has led me to this where I am today and so it's important for us to consider how can I think of fear and use it as a push to create a positive outcome instead of reacting blindly to fear get curious about it ask yourself what am I actually afraid of is it failure is it judgment is it being out of control is this reality or is it made up in my mind is it perception can we learn from the stoic philosophy that you mentioned before yeah to some great effect and some less effect I still think for a second indulge me I think from the stoic philosophy Marcus Aurelius was an emperor from 161 to 180 CE in the common era let's use the notion that he is the CEO of a multi-billion dollar company right now would we be privy to the journals kept by Elon Musk by Jeff Bezos I think they'd be very interesting but interesting is what Marcus Aurelius made of his journals he used them for himself he wasn't aware they were going to be published he used them to guide himself so that he didn't stray he could have he was an emperor he could do anything he wanted but actually he was virtuous and so the stoic philosophy outside of trauma is certainly something to look at folks I would highly recommend it I agree with you I'm not going to resist it at all let's talk a little bit about some strategies to deal with rather to cope with feeling fear that sometimes causes us to get stuck let's say you're working on something that's a big goal and it's something you've been wanting to do for a long time to achieve so much so that the fear of it is getting is creating procrastination that you don't even start and this sort of weaves into our last episode of perfectionism start with small steps quick wins that make you feel like you're making progress I'm feeling like you're looking at me now I'm smiling at you because actually that's me the procrastinator the perfectionist that doesn't ever start but somehow we managed to get around to this podcast I don't know how we've managed it but start basically small steps think of plan b always think of plan b what if the current plan doesn't work what are your options and there are all these options you know this concept of living in the present moment we've talked about this earlier as well as I think you can have a positive spin on the impermanence like the Bhutanese do nothing will last forever something's bad happening to you potentially it's not going to be hanging around forever it's bad you deal with it you move on so I do like both the concept of the present moment and the impermanence quite a lot yes most definitely and if we were to just think about Eckhart Tolle he wrote the power of now he's one of the most fantastic books I've read and I highly recommend it to all of you who haven't read it he said the past has no power over the present moment so I would say start with small steps think of plan b what are your options if plan a doesn't work exactly what Eckhart Tolle said as well the concept of living in the present moment and we talked about you talked about this earlier munita about using resilience boosters like mindfulness techniques to create this space between fear and your responses using breathing exercises journaling or just even naming the fear out loud can help and most importantly practice doing it anyway just do it so I just want to talk about meditation for a second because people sort of raise their eyes when you say meditation I don't find it very easy I only do 10 minutes a day but I have got better at doing it I find it incredibly helpful I have a clarity of thought afterwards I feel calm because it often incorporates breathing exercises and I'm gonna give a shameless plug to Dog Down which is an app that you can get guided meditation I think guided meditation is the way to go if you're struggling to meditate on your own it's the way I use it so don't expect that you're going to be able to take straight away folks because you won't but you will get better at it if you persist and you will find it really helpful yeah I would also give plugs to other apps like the Calm app and the Headspace app all have really lovely guided meditation options on there and you're absolutely right meditation is not easy start with really small amounts of time and hopefully you can bend so just to recap we've talked about what fear is it's neuroscience underpinnings how it manifests how different cultures harness it how generations perceive fear and what they feared and we've discussed strategies to leverage fear so yeah fear is a weird messy beautiful part of being human it can hold us back or propel us forward the key is learning how to work with it not against it so our key takeaways from today number one fear permeates and infiltrates our everyday life number two shall number two acknowledging and accepting fear is better than ignoring and denying it number three for centuries different cultures have used fear in different ways number four being vulnerable and expressing fear is not a weakness number five neuroplasticity means your brain is not hardwired to fear forever number six the stoic philosophy can give us guidance with respect to leadership and inner freedom and applicable even today outside of trauma number seven learning strategies is key and number eight living in the present moment is vital and i just like to end with a quote from one of my favorite people nelson mandela which says who says i learned that courage is not the absence of fear but the triumph over it superb and what a man so if this episode made you rethink your relationship with fear share it with a friend or write us a message on our instagram page at flawed and fabulous podcast don't forget to follow flawed and fabulous whenever you get your podcast and if you're feeling brave leave us a review it really helps us grow until next time stay flawed stay fabulous and let's keep figuring out life together remember growth happens in the space between who we are and who we're becoming until next time be kind stay curious and have no fear of discovering yourself