HOW AND WHY NOT TO BE SCARED
Nature has provided us with a sense of fear to be able to cope with the impending danger. Although fear is undoubtedly a useful emotion that has in many cases helped humanity to survive, nowadays it represents one of the main problems of self-development. How can we or our children deal with fear? Can it be prevented? Jan Mühlfeit and Katka Novotná are speaking out about fear slightly differently.
Chemistry of fear
The chemical processes in our head are still the same as a million years ago. In stress situations, hormones are being excreted which increases the overall availability of the organism. Especially the adrenaline, i.e. the stress hormone, and cortisol, which prepares us, for example, for fighting or escape. Human priority is survival, with which hormones help us, but at the expense of that, our immunity is weakened. People exposed to stress or fear for a long time are therefore often more susceptible to diseases.
In addition to internal chemical processes, stress also manifests itself on the external physical side. Part of the nervous system that supports stress is activated and prepares us for impending danger. Accelerated breathing often occurs during this reaction. Stress blocking the diaphragm cause that we are not able to breathe deeply and breathe just shallowly. Another sign is the increase in resting heart rate and the draining of blood from the brain to the limbs, so one is not capable of rational thinking. Although the processes that take place in our bodies during stressful situations have hardly changed in the last few millennia, the number of times we are exposed to stress has increased many times. Previously, people faced danger several times a month, and the felt fear was real. Today, in most cases, the fear is artificial, and our ego has taken over the defence mechanism, which is nothing but a ball of our fears. The success and the positive reality we experience are basically invisible for the amygdala (i.e. a component of the emotional part of the brain), in the case of negative sensations, the amygdala behaves like a zipper and sticks everything up.
