The Language of Fear
On the amygdala, false alarms, and what your body is actually asking.
"If you want to overcome your fears, it helps to first understand the language fear speaks."
A good starting place is getting to know a part of your brain called the amygdala—or, as I like to humanize it, Amy Gdala.
Amy is not dumb.
They may appear dumb because logic isn't necessarily what gets their attention, but Amy considers their job much more important than sitting around debating ideas with you.
Evolution gave Amy a specialized task:
Keep you alive.
And Amy takes that job very seriously.
While the cerebral cortex—the part of the brain involved in reasoning, planning, and more complex thinking—can spend hours developing philosophies about what is safe, what is dangerous, and what the chances are that something terrible will happen, Amy works differently.
Amy is looking for patterns.
Movement.
Sounds.
Sensations.
Memories.
Anything that could potentially signal danger.
Amy doesn't particularly care about truth.
Amy cares about survival.
IMeet Amy Gdala
Let's imagine you're hiking.
You hear something rattling in the bushes.
Your logical brain might eventually say:
"It could just be a bird moving around."
Amy doesn't have time for that conversation.
Amy hears:
Rattle. Snake. Danger.
Your heart rate increases.
Your muscles tighten.
Your attention immediately turns toward the bushes.
You are ready to move.
Does Amy care that it might be a harmless gopher snake?
Not particularly.
Does Amy care that the sound might actually be a bird rummaging through some leaves?
Not yet.
From Amy's perspective, a false alarm is much cheaper than ignoring a real threat.
Our ancestors lived in environments where getting that calculation wrong could mean death.
Amy is ancient.
And Amy still operates with some ancient rules.
IISo How Do We Talk to Amy?
This is where things become interesting.
Psychologist David Carbonell has written extensively about the difficulty of trying to reason your way out of anxiety and panic.
You may intellectually understand:
"The plane is safe."
"My heart has raced before and I've been okay."
"Most dogs aren't dangerous."
"This thought doesn't mean anything."
And yet your body is still screaming:
DANGER.
This can be incredibly frustrating.
You might think:
"I KNOW this isn't dangerous. Why am I still scared?"
Then you start arguing with yourself.
"Nothing bad is going to happen."
"I'm completely safe."
"This is ridiculous."
"Calm down."
And Amy doesn't seem impressed.
But this does not mean Amy cannot communicate with you.
Amy is communicating with you all the time.
The issue is that you may be speaking different languages.
Just like in any healthy relationship, effective communication requires learning how the other person actually communicates.
If you speak Spanish to someone who only understands Mandarin, you can repeat yourself louder, slower, and with more passion—but they still aren't going to understand you.
You have to learn their language first.
Fear works the same way.
You may be speaking to Amy in the language of logic:
"Statistically this is unlikely."
"The doctor already said I'm fine."
"I've flown before and nothing happened."
Amy may be speaking in the language of:
What did you do when I sounded the alarm?
Did you run?
Did you avoid?
Did you check?
Did you ask somebody for reassurance?
Did you immediately try to make the feeling disappear?
Or did you stay?
This is why logic alone often isn't enough to change a fear response.
Fear learning involves circuits connecting the amygdala with areas of the prefrontal cortex and other parts of the brain. These systems communicate with one another, but consciously knowing something is safe and experiencing it as safe are not always the same thing.
Amy learns especially well from experience.
IIIAmy Watches What You Do
Here's the important part.
Even though Amy may not be persuaded by your philosophical argument about why you shouldn't be scared, Amy is paying very close attention to how you behave when fear shows up.
Let's say you're afraid of dogs.
A dog walks toward you.
Your heart starts racing.
You immediately cross the street.
What did Amy learn?
Probably not:
"That dog was harmless."
Amy may instead learn:
"Thank God we crossed the street. That's why we survived."
Now imagine the next time you see a dog.
You stay on the same side of the street, but the moment the dog barks, you run away.
Amy learns:
"Good move. Barking meant danger, and escaping protected us."
This is how fear can become reinforced.
Not because you're doing anything stupid.
You're doing exactly what a frightened nervous system naturally wants to do.
The problem is that every escape can become another piece of evidence for Amy.
IVThe Feedback Loop
Now imagine trying to convince Amy that everything is okay.
A dog approaches.
You tell yourself:
"It's fine."
Then again:
"It's fine."
Then:
"It's definitely fine."
Then:
"Why am I still scared?"
Suddenly you become even more frightened.
Because somewhere in the background another thought appears:
"If I'm doing all of this reassuring and I'm STILL scared, maybe there really is something wrong."
Now the fear becomes evidence for more fear.
Amy sees you scanning the dog, repeating reassuring thoughts, preparing to escape, and monitoring your body.
From Amy's perspective, your behavior looks a lot like someone dealing with a real threat.
So Amy says:
"Wow. Sasha seems really concerned about this dog. Maybe I underestimated the situation."
And Amy turns the alarm up.
This is one of the strangest parts of anxiety.
Sometimes the harder you work to convince yourself that you're safe, the more your behavior communicates that danger must be nearby.
VAmy Understands Behavior
This gives us a clue about Amy's language.
Amy may not respond very well when you say:
"Stop being afraid."
But Amy pays attention when you show:
I can be afraid and still stay here.
That is a completely different message.
Imagine someone who was bitten by a dog as a child.
Years later, they see danger in almost every dog.
The dog can be wagging its tail.
Lying on its back.
Twenty feet away.
Amy doesn't care.
Amy remembers:
Dog = danger.
Remember, Amy is fast and efficient. That is exactly what you want when you're dealing with a real emergency.
The downside is that Amy can sometimes become too efficient.
Now every dog gets placed into the same category.
So how do we help Amy learn something new?
Not by giving a lecture about dog-bite statistics.
We show Amy.
Slowly.
VIFear Needs New Experiences
Maybe you start by watching a dog from across the street.
Amy gets nervous.
But you stay.
Nothing happens.
Maybe later you stand a little closer.
Amy sends another alarm.
You stay again.
Eventually you're near a calm dog.
Your body is uncomfortable, but instead of immediately escaping, you allow yourself to experience the discomfort.
Little by little, Amy starts receiving new information.
Dog doesn't always equal danger.
More importantly:
Fear doesn't always mean danger.
You aren't telling Amy how to do their job.
You're giving Amy better data.
VIIBut What About Safety Behaviors?
This is where people can practice facing a fear and still feel like they aren't getting anywhere.
Often there is a hidden behavior happening at the same time.
We call these safety behaviors.
A safety behavior is something you do to prevent, escape, or minimize the feared outcome.
Let's return to the dog example.
You approach a dog, but only while gripping your friend's arm.
Or you stand nearby but repeatedly tell yourself:
"The owner promised me he doesn't bite."
Or you get close, but the second the dog moves suddenly you step ten feet backward.
Technically, you approached the dog.
But Amy may learn:
"We were only safe because we held onto our friend."
"We survived because we kept reminding ourselves the dog doesn't bite."
"Backing away saved us."
The question becomes:
What does Amy think kept me safe?
VIIIWe Need to Build Confidence for You and Amy
This is where the work becomes less about eliminating fear and more about building confidence.
Not the type of confidence where you say:
"I KNOW nothing bad will happen."
That isn't confidence.
That's certainty.
And life rarely gives us certainty.
The kind of confidence we're trying to build sounds more like:
I feel afraid, but I can handle feeling afraid.
That's a very different relationship with fear.
You aren't waiting for Amy to stop sounding the alarm before you live your life.
You're showing Amy:
We can hear the alarm and still keep moving.
And every time you do that, both you and Amy get new information.
You discover that fear rises.
Fear gets uncomfortable.
Sometimes fear gets extremely uncomfortable.
And then something happens.
You survive it.
IXSometimes the Best Response Is No Response
One of the hardest lessons in anxiety treatment is that sometimes the most effective response to fear is doing much less than you think you should.
The heart starts racing.
Amy says:
"Something is wrong!"
And instead of launching an investigation, you allow the sensation to exist.
The thought appears:
"What if something terrible happens?"
Instead of debating it for twenty minutes, maybe you let the question sit there unanswered.
A dog barks.
Instead of immediately backing away, maybe you stay where you are for a little longer.
This does not mean ignoring real danger.
Amy still has an important job.
If a dog is actually charging toward you aggressively, please don't stand there trying to teach your amygdala a lesson.
The point is learning to distinguish between danger and the feeling of danger.
Those are not always the same thing.
XLearn Amy's Language
If we spend our entire lives fighting fear, we can accidentally teach ourselves that fear is something we cannot handle.
Every escape says:
I couldn't tolerate that.
Every avoidance says:
That was too dangerous.
Every frantic attempt to make the feeling disappear can reinforce the idea that the feeling itself was the emergency.
But we can teach Amy something different.
Not through lectures.
Not through debates.
Not through endlessly trying to convince ourselves that everything is okay.
Through experience.
We slow things down.
We approach what scares us in ways we can realistically tolerate.
We reduce the behaviors that are only there to make us feel artificially safe.
We allow fear to speak without automatically obeying everything it says.
And eventually Amy begins learning a new language:
I can feel danger without actually being in danger.
I can be uncertain and still move forward.
I can feel fear without immediately doing anything about it.
Amy doesn't need to be defeated.
Amy doesn't need to disappear.
Amy just needs better information.
Like any relationship, the goal isn't to scream louder until the other side finally understands you.
It's to learn how they communicate.
And sometimes the best way to communicate with Amy is to stop explaining and start showing.
— Sasha Feldman, LMFT
