Extreme Fear

The Science of your mind in danger

Fear is a mysterious force. It sabotages our ability to think clearly and can drive us to blind panic, yet it can also give us superhuman speed, strength, and powers of perception. Jeff Wise is a science writer, outdoor adventurer and pilot. In this extract from his new book Extreme Fear: the science of your mind in danger, he explains why he became interested in what happens when you find yourself in the grip of true terror.

I first became interested in the subject of extreme fear when the focus of my career as a magazine journalist gradually shifted toward adventure travel. One adrenaline-cranking assignment led to another, increasing each time in danger and intensity. A heli-fishing article in British Columbia led to a fly-in fishing camp in Alaska, which led to an Alaskan bush-flying story, which led, eventually, to my getting my pilot's license. Then I got my glider license, which led to a story about flying powered hang-gliders low over the New Mexico desert, which led to another that involved aerobatics in a World War II fighter. Along the way, I swam down whitewater rivers, slept in snow caves, rode in homemade submarines, and rapelled down cliffs. The more I demonstrated my willingness to take on extreme adventures, the more editors called on me for that sort of assignment.

As my work life took me ever more frequently into hair-raising situations, I found myself ever more often at the limits of what I could handle. And then one day an assignment brought me to the Bungy Zone, a bungee operation near Nanaimo, British Columbia. The jump-off point was a bridge 150 feet above a rocky, deeply shadowed gorge. As I watched, an enthusiastic daredevil spread his arms and made a swan dive into the abyss. Next it was my turn. Even though I knew rationally that I wouldn't be hurt physically, I felt sure that I couldn't leap into that void without something in my mind snapping. But I had a job to do, so I stepped up onto the bridge. The feeling of dread grew ever more intense as I walked to the jumping off platform, and then as I sat while the operator strapped the bungee cord around my ankles. The looming loss of control was palpable and terrifying – more terrifying, at that moment, than the physical act of jumping. I was more afraid, I realized, of what was going to happen in my mind than what was going to happen to my body. I had the overwhelming feeling that some strange, intense kind of madness was struggling to take over my mind. What, I wondered, inside my brain was creating this sensation?

When I got home I began researching the science of the fear response and found that the field was in the midst of a golden age. New tools were coming on line that revealed the workings of the brain in unprecedented detail. One of the most important was functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI, a technique that allows researchers to directly visualize mental activity as it takes place deep within the brain.

As it turned out, of all the human emotions, fear is the one that has been studied in the greatest detail. As emotions go, it's perfectly suited for investigation. Conceptually, it's uncomplicated: a system that detects danger and responds so as to maximize an organism's probability of survival. Ancient in origins and ubiquitous in daily experience, fear can easily be generated in a laboratory setting in both human and animal subjects.

Fear can manifest in many ways, but all rely on the same underlying neurological system, a collection of processing centers that range from simple structures that first appeared hundreds of millions of years ago to sophisticated regions of the brain that evolved quite recently. These centers work together to coordinate our response to danger.

Because many of the brain regions work deep beneath the surface of consciousness, their workings remain hidden, mysterious, and often surprising. Fear can strike without warning, seeming to pop out of nowhere to hijack the mind. And attempting to control it can lead to paradoxical effects: the harder you try to suppress fear, the worse it can get.

Understanding how fear is generated in the brain is important not just for those who regularly risk their lives, but for all of us. We all have to deal with threats of one sort or another in our lives, whether it's a meeting with an angry client, finding yourself at the top of a triple-black-diamond ski run, or asking your girlfriend to marry you. No matter how you live your life, there are going to be times when your heart is pounding, your mouth is dry, and your hands are shaking.

In an ideal world, our nervous system would respond with perfect efficiency every time we're under pressure, jumping instantly into high gear whenever danger looms and lying dormant the rest of the time. But it doesn't work like that. Often, the response initiated by our fear centers is just as dangerous as the threat that spurred it in the first place, if not more so.

People in the grip of true terror can feel utterly hijacked. Soldiers throw down their guns and run away. Pilots lose control and crash their planes. In such cases the grip of fear feels like possession by some implacable alien force. Indeed, the word 'panic' comes from the Greek god Pan, whom the classical Greeks believed could overtake travelers in lonely spots and send them suddenly running in blind terror. To the ancient mind, possession by a malign deity seemed the only plausible explanation for such behavior.

Few of us, hopefully, will have to endure such extreme fear. But even mild stress can affect our performance, as anyone who has ever stammered and sweated through a job interview can attest. When we're gripped by fear, we generally have two problems to deal with: the thing that we're worried about, and the fear that goes along with hit.

Or to look at it another way: If we can learn to deal with our fear, we've instantly cut in half the number of things we have to worry about.

The good news is that we can do just that. By better understanding how our fear response works, we can take more effective steps to counter it... Fear isn't all bad. Just as it can be the most intensely awful experience, it can also leave us feeling more exhilaratingly alive than ever before. By taking steps to prepare ourselves, we can do more than just hope for the best. Combining the latest research findings with time-proven techniques, we can train ourselves not only to hold up under pressure, but to excel.

Extreme Fear: The science of your mind in danger by Jeff Wise is published by Palgrave Macmillan. It is available through Amazon.