Fear and Your Body

by Mark Morrison

You know the physical signs - wide eyes and dilated pupils, dry mouth, faster heartbeats, body hair standing on end, and energized muscles, among other things - which range in intensity from mild to severe. And still the question remains: how does fear course through inside the body that result in the outward physical signs?

The Brain: Where It All Starts

Your brain is a very complex organ that regulates your fear reactions. Basically, the physiological chain reaction involved in feelings of fear begins with your brain and ends with the above mentioned physical signs. You will commonly associate this chain reaction with the fight-or-flight response, which every normal human being possesses as his genetic inheritance. Generally speaking, there are five areas in the brain involved with your fight-or-flight response: the thalamus, the sensory cortex, the hippocampus, the amygdale and the hypothalamus. Without going into the nitty-gritty of the scientific processes, the brain sends signals that will alert the nervous system to the presence of danger.

This nervous system activation, in turn, causes your heart to speed up, your blood pressure to rise, your skin to sweat to keep your body cool amidst all these activities, your lungs to breathe faster in order to circulate more oxygen into the body, your non-essential body systems like the digestive and immune system to slow down, and your muscles to become energized to either fight or take flight. Your physical responses to fear, even when there no actual danger is imminent like when you get startled by a sudden sound, are autonomic responses of the brain - you don't consciously think of it.In fact, the thinking side of your brain does not have time to process the whole chain reaction until after it is finished. Only after your brain has processed new information that the danger is past, as in the case of being startled by the sudden sound, does it shut down the chain reaction.

Remember that this can happen in a few seconds! Of course, for your brain to process the autonomic chain reaction involved with fear, there has to be a stimuli. The stimuli can be something as trivial as a popping balloon behind you or as dangerous as guns trained on you. Whatever the stimuli, the chain reaction is almost always the same with variations in intensity and time.There are many studies related to fear and phobias. In a study made by neuroscientist Beatrice de Gelder, it was suggested that a threatening body posture will induce an immediate response of fear as well as any scary facial expression. You probably have felt this in real life when the body language of the person sitting next to you speaks of danger even when the facial expression itself is benign.

As science advances, you will be privy to more studies related to fear.

However, you cannot hope to eliminate fear from your physiology simply because it is part of our genetic makeup and is very important in our survival as a species, be it in the tropical jungle or in the urban jungle. All you can do is live your life free from the debilitating effects of fear!Mark Morrison is founder of [http://www.QuantumLifeleap.com] and http://www.EmergeThePowerWithin.com, a site dedicated for emerging your inner power.