Get to Know of Interesting Facts About Fear

Natalie Dattilo, a medical health psychologist at Indiana University Health, shares some fascinating truths about worry.

Worry is Ordinary-- and needed.

" Fear is a primitive response that avoids us from putting ourselves in unsafe or deadly circumstances," says Dattilo. In fact, certain fears are innate, such as worry of heights and loud noises. "Fear just becomes an issue when it prevents us from living our daily lives or the anxiety is so extreme that it makes us ill," says Dattilo.

Fears do not constantly originate from bad individual experiences.

Many fears are learned, but that can happen straight or indirectly. Someone may establish a fear of canines, for instance, if a pet dog bit him when he was a kid. However it's also possible to end up being scared of canines from seeing another person get assaulted or even just becoming aware of the occurrence. It's a procedure called vicarious knowing, says Dattilo: "We internalize the other individual's experience and become afraid ourselves."

Non-stop news coverage assists shape our worries.

Thanks to 24-hour news networks-- and our capability to access the news anytime on tablets and mobile phones when we're on the go-- it's all too simple to vicariously learn fears considering that the scariest, most terrible events are often the ones that dominate the media. And this can seriously warp our perspective. "The most sensationalized stories are typically about uncommon events, however the amount of coverage they get makes them appear like much larger dangers than they actually are," states Dattilo. The outcome: we wind up being the most scared of things that are the least likely to take place to us.

Some people are wired to feel fear differently.

So what describes the thrill-seekers amongst us, the ones who rock climb without ropes or swim with sharks? What enables to them to do things the rest people consider scary? The answer might come down to brain chemistry. "The body releases dopamine when you're afraid, and in some people this turns on the part of the brain related to enjoyment and reward," states Dattilo. That said, people do have the ability to learn how to enjoy specific scary activities. "If you handle to do something you're afraid of and it turns out to be interesting and not as frightening as you believed, this permits you to rationalize your way out of the worry," states Dattilo.

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