Don’t be scared: Fight fear with fitness, preparation - Entertainment, Books - Army Times

Don’t be scared: Fight fear with fitness, preparation

Maybe Franklin Roosevelt was wrong when he said, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”

Jeff Wise suggests another thing you may have to fear is being unfit.

“An alligator can’t make you scared,” he writes. “A skidding car can’t make you scared. The only thing that can make you scared is our mind’s interpretation of those things. Fear … resides entirely within your brain.”

So, how do you convince your brain to build courage?

“A general program of courage-enhancement might look a lot like taking care of your general health,” Wise writes. “Exercise frequently, exert cognitive control over what you eat, and in general ride herd on your more impulsive tendencies.”

This and other tips make entertaining reading in the science writer and adventurer’s book, which cites studies, experts and real-life experiences about the nature of fear, how to recognize it and how to control it:

• Hate meeting other people? So do they. “Just as social rejection triggers pain, the prospect of a social threat triggers the fear response. When you see a stranger’s face … your amygdala (the part of the brain that evaluates threat) instantly activates. It’s as though when meeting a new person we’re wired to expect the worst.”

• An ounce of courage. “People have been self-medicating to alleviate fear since the dawn of time. Probably the earliest of the anxiolytics — that is, drugs that reduce fear and anxiety — was alcohol. The phenomenon of ‘Dutch courage’ was well known to the ancient Greeks, who carried wine ... with them when they marched off to battle. The Celtic tribes of the era went one better, storming into battle not only roaring drunk, but stark naked.”

• Be prepared for stupidity. “No matter how you’ve buttressed and fortified the C-system (the reflective part of the brain), there will inevitably be a point beyond which the fear becomes too intense and the amygdala shuts down the front cortex.

“You will become stupid. So if there’s anything you’ll need to think of in the crisis ahead, the time to think about it is now, before you lose your powers of planning, thinking and reason.”

• Practice makes patterns. “The more you practice a motor pattern, the quicker and more effortless its execution becomes. Eventually, your brain can deploy it automatically without any conscious thought at all.

“A Green Beret told me of an incident during his service in Mogadishu when he saw, out of the corner of his eye, a Somali running at him with a hatchet. Before he fully realized what was happening he saw a dark blur in the periphery of his vision: His own pistol, rising toward the attacker.”