Think Different Nation
5 min readMay 10, 2021

Is Fear embedded in our DNA?

Sometimes, fears are as part of our psyche that we feel, there is something embedded in our basics, present at the core of our existence. In dark nights, we all are almost frightened of darkness and feelings of coming across any venomous or harming animal as a snake. Some people are more fearful than others; they are even horrified by the whispering of air in pin drop silence. In the same way, we experience different fears in different phases of our lives, whether it’s financial concerns or the fear of what could happen, or the fear of the worst case possibility. Fears also vary from person to person, then man wonders if fear is present in his genes.

TDN Podcast Episode 5: Is Fear embedded in our DNA?

All human beings experience different types of fears & at different stages of their lives, but things get hanky when we are scared of those things….

https://thinkdifferentnation.com/podcast/is-fear-embedded-in-our-dna

Fear is one of the most important systems in the body that alarms us about threats and misshapes, and prepares us to respond in ugly situations by triggering physiological processes in the body as an increase in heartbeat. It is considered a necessary evil for the very existence of the individuals. It works like a defensive mechanism in the body. When we say, we all are fearful of darkness, it seems our early forefathers were at their greatest risk during darkness and everything with the passage of time got imprinted in our DNA and now we own it. To understand how fear gets imprinted in our DNA, let’s explore the Biological components of fear because we can’t feel fear without the biology. The bowels of fear tell us what happens in our body.

TDN Podcast Episode 5: Is Fear embedded in our DNA?

All human beings experience different types of fears & at different stages of their lives, but things get hanky when we are scared of those things….

https://thinkdifferentnation.com/podcast/is-fear-embedded-in-our-dna

we see something frightening such as a spider, or while watching a horror movie. We experienced that increase in that heart rate in the breathing and the passing of the cold wave across our body or the dilation of the brain; pupils with a flight or freezing response. It’s all conditioned within us. A frightening experience generates a chain of processes within a body. Either we feel the potential of harm to our parent five senses of sight, sound, touch, smell, or taste, or perhaps through that intuition, that sixth sense that we all know actually exists. When such a message reaches the brain, then the limbic system in our brain is responsible for the sensation and the response to the fear. So think of it this way. Think of it as an army, or battle systems to deal with the threat.

The hypothalamus and the amygdala are your intelligence agencies, your defense intelligence in your central intelligence agencies. They’re the processing centers generating the feelings of fear, they make them routinely. ;listens for messages from other parts of our brain, they listen for those messages. The communications are coming into it through the stimuli, because it’s our brain that controls every type of information that we receive. Now, this is done through chemicals called neurotransmitters and they’re just like more or less the foot soldiers, They’re released at the end of our nerve fibers and when stimuli exists, they’re received through nerve fibers in the form of impulses. So they’re like those feel soldiers in the field, communicating to the magnet that all is good or be careful for threat. During a fear, those field radio operators send alerts to the central command or radio operators in the amygdala called the receptors. The amygdala then processes the alerts and sends out chemical messages to the other parts of the brain, kind of further preparing for that impending situation if it were to happen.

So one message then goes to the periaqueductal, which prompts us to freeze while we’re assessing the situation. So you think about it this way. Think about man’s earlier existence when we were primarily prey. That message to freeze might save us from the detection of a predator and we’ve all seen a rabbit or perhaps a bird in a field and we’ve seen how when you approach it, it may stay perfectly still trying to avoid detection; and it won’t move until it feels it has to. That message also goes to the hypothalamus. This activates the endocrine system. And remember, we don’t know what the situation is yet. We’re just preparing for what could be. And this happens instantaneously within us. But we’re also automatically preparing ourselves for a series of answers to those situations. What should we do if a B or C were to arrive? The hypothalamus produces a hormone called ACTH, which acts as an adrenal glands to start production of the two hormones both of which creates conditions of stress bite in flight. Now remember, in order to prepare for a threat, our bodies must prepare itself for our response.

So in other words, if we’re going to prepare for a threat, a body has to

  • first heart rate has to pump.
  • Our adrenaline has to soar in order for us to be able to react appropriately. Do we run or do we fight?
  • Now, while all of this is gone, we’re also producing a series of other chemicals because that stressful situation or potential peril, in threat has side effects, creating fear. So it’s not just a matter of preparing us for the fight or flight, but also the side effects. Something that we don’t necessarily want is the actual fear that is created as a result.
  • As that result, there are four chemicals that are produced within us, serotonin, glutamate, cortisol, and that for napping, the serotonin and the glutamate. They are again those foot soldiers those neural transmitters that are made in the afternoon gotta. But the cortisol, that’s our body’s real alarm system; it’s a system telling our body that a threat is present. And as preparing for the response while the effort and effort is kicking in. So we’ve all heard it mentioned that thousands and thousands of times again on Grey’s Anatomy that it prompts us to increase the heart rate, crease, the muscle strength, it’s preparing for the battle, increase the blood pressure, while the endocrine hormones, they produce something else that we’ve all heard on in his Grey’s Anatomy shows called adrenaline. It’s in the body, and it’s another prepare to respond to that perceived threat.

📝Read the full article over at:

Is Fear embedded in our DNA? — Think Different Nation

How the sensation of fear starts in our brain and then the brain spreads the message to all other parts of the body.

https://thinkdifferentnation.com/2020/04/is-fear-embedded-in-our-dna/

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Written by Think Different Nation

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