Fear, The Great Enemy Part II

An anonymous follower of my blog mentioned something about my last post. This person thought that fearful defecation is more about what skunks and cats do than about getting rid of "excess baggage." Good point. A very evolutionary thought and now we know why poop stinks!

He, he.

But let's get back to fear.

Eleanor Roosevelt said that we must conquer our fears, attain the courage to go on to the next. Only then are we truly free.

I agree.

Think about your own life and the progression of your fears. At young ages, we have more imagined fears than real fears. A couple weekends ago my six-year-old nephew stayed with us. There were two instances in which he was fearful. The first: at 1:30am he came knocking on our door to explain that he was afraid. The second: he would not go downstairs into our basement by himself. I'm not certain what exactly he imagined was lurking in the bedroom he slept in or what harbored in the basement, but at some point, as he gets older, he will face those fears, conquer them and will be set free from the monsters he imagines are there.

Each time we beat a fear, the reward is confidence and strength. When we overcome a fear, we are ready to meet the next one. And let me tell you. They are everywhere you turn. Fear of getting H1N1, fear of terrorism, fear of losing your job.

But how do we beat these fears? What is the strategy?

Courage and discipline.

You can't go pussy-footing around. You have to trust yourself. Know that if that thing happens that you are fearful of, you will be able to handle it. Courage makes you alive and it will set you free.

Fear, The Great Enemy

We all fear something and I'm certain my fears are different than yours. And even if we do fear the same thing, it's probably for two completely different reasons.

Over the weekend I found out why my husband fears amusement rides. Being an engineer, he fears mechanical failure of the system. Derailing of a car because of some mechanism not being properly maintained, which he is sure would result in instant death. I on the other hand have a different problem. See, I'm not fearful of rides like the octopus or the tilt-a-whirl, of which many people don't like the motion. I think it is the large scope of the roller coaster that I fear. Standing in line, I can't get a clear picture of what the ride is going to do to me. It's just too big. While the octopus is small, I clearly can see what it will do.

Regardless of what it is that we fear or why we fear it, what we all have in common is how our bodies respond to the stimulant that makes us fearful. Daniel Goleman in Emotional Intelligence calls it the biological signature of the emotion. We writers call it visceral feeling and this is how we must show emotion in our characters because every human understands or relates to these signature triggers.

From an evolutionary perspective, the biological changes we get from feeling an emotion prepares our bodies to respond in certain ways. When we feel fear, the behavior needed is protection and this can be achieved either by hiding or fleeing. First, the body freezes and fixates on the threat, giving us a moment to determine the best action. Is it to stand still, hide or is it to flee? This is why we might crouch, shrink, stiffen or freeze. Then our blood concentrates into the muscles that provide us with mobility so we can flee. Like the legs. Our heart pulses rapidly, our faces turn white.

The one biological instinct triggered by fear that has puzzled me is bowel excrement. Yes, you read that correctly. Defecation. But then I read somewhere that if we need to flee or to fight, our body considers digested food or drink to be "excess baggage." Okay. Maybe.

The Eight Basic Emotions

In my last post I failed to mention one tiny thing. I hate roller coasters. Actually, theme parks in general are not my idea of a fun way to spend my afternoon. It’s been this way for me since I was a kid. While everyone else is having a blast, I’m tortured. And I’ve always hated myself for feeling this way—until I found my husband. He hates them too. There’s comfort in knowing that I’m not alone in this.

Before I sort out my emotions regarding roller coasters, let’s look at our first lesson in emotion training. Daniel Goleman in his bestseller Emotional Intelligence tells us that emotions are impulses to act, “the instant plans for handling life that evolution has instilled in us.” Robert Plutchik’s emotion theory proposes that there are eight primary or basic emotions derived from eight basic behavioral patterns, which do not depend on introspection (i.e., the rational brain.).

Remember the color wheel from art class? The wheel showing the relationships between hues? On the color wheel there are three primary colors: red, yellow, and blue. Like the color wheel, the emotion wheel also has primary emotions, but instead of three there are eight and they are: joy, trust (or acceptance), surprise, fear, sadness, disgust, anger, and anticipation. Of these eight, some can be considered positive emotions and some negative emotions. In the above wheel, warm colors (red, orange, yellow) represent emotions thought of as being positive and cool colors (blues) represent emotions thought of as being negative. Greens and violets could belong to either.

So, you’re standing in a 30 minute line to ride a roller coaster. You see the cars returning. The people’s hair mussed from the wind, smiles plastered across their faces. The train of cars comes to a screeching halt and bodies exit stumbling over each other, giggling. Voices are raised in excitement and you hear one describe the thrill of the last loop on the track.

Let’s look at the emotion wheel. These riders are feeling joy in reaction to the ride. Logically, then, us in the queue line should be feeling anticipation, and more particularly, anticipating the joy we will experience based on others reactions. Not me. Although I am feeling anticipation, my second emotion on the wheel is different. It’s fear. Why? Because my emotional brain has taken over my rational brain.

The reason I hate roller coasters is because when I stand in line waiting to go, the fear overtakes me and I hate it. But why do we feel fear? What does fear feel like? How can a writer describe a character’s feeling of fear?

Emotion Training

The responsibility of any writer or author is to take a reader on a roller coaster of emotions until the ride ends at the bottom of the last hill. Just as a roller coaster isn't a roller coaster without a track of hills, turns, loops, and inversions, a story isn't a story without emotions. It might be well plotted, but without emotion it rides flat and uninteresting.

This blog endeavors to train us to recognize human emotion. To show how important it is, and more importantly, how to get it right. So please, you've been standing there long enough. Hop into the next car, clip yourself into the restraints, and let's learn how to make fiction thrilling or maybe just learn to recognize what makes us human.