A Closer Look at Fear

Imagine you are sitting home late one night.  A storm is raging outside, rain is pattering against all the windows, and the wind is howling so loud it sounds like a large animal is waiting outside your door.  Suddenly, all the lights in the house start flashing, until finally the go out completely.  You're sitting in the dark....alone.  Then you hear a noise from upstairs.  Footsteps.  Someone is in the house.  You feel yourself start to panic, you start to breathe faster and heavier, you become lightheaded.  Just as you're about to run for the door, you look up the stairs and see your dog come racing down.  He had been upstairs the entire time, you simply forgot.

And yet....

Even if you had rememberd that your dog was upstairs, would you have immediatly dismissed the footsteps?  Or would you have wondered if something or someone else had found their way into your home?

What you just experienced, just for that split second, was fear.  But why?  And how?  What exactly causes us to be afraid?

According to Discovery Health, fear is a chain reaction in the brain that triggers our fight-or-flight response.  The stimulus for this reaction can appear in many forms, from a bee, to a clown, to an auditorium full of people waiting for you to speak.  Strangely enough, fear is an autonomic response, which means that we don't conciously trigger it, or even know what is going on until it has run its course.  

Additionally, fear is created in the brain and is entirely subconscious.  In the process of feeling fear, we are actually using two different paths in which to "handle" whatever it is that is scaring us.  By taking the low road, we are literally taking no chances with what has scared us.  Sure, those footsteps upstairs could belong to the dog, but then again they could also belong to someone who isn't supposed to be there.  It is much less risky for us to assume they are the footsteps of a stranger.  On the low road, one does not take the time to analyze and ask questions.  

Contrarily, the high road to fear response takes a much more methodical approach.  Your brain passes along the information of the footsteps upstairs and tries to establish context.  The brain will ask questions such as, "Have I come across this stimulus before?  Are there other possibilities?"  This all happens at a much slower pace, and yet it happens in conjunction with your reaction on the low road.  Therefore, by the time you have reacted to the footsteps as possibly being an intruder, your brain is working out the possibility that the footsteps could, in fact, be something entirely different.  The high road takes longer to travel.  This is why you can literally feel yourself calming down after a startling incident, because your brain has taken the time to tell you that no, in fact, there is nothing to fear from that particular stimulus.  

The overall purpose of fear is to promote survival.  If we weren't afraid, or better yet, didn't know what to be afriad of, we would get ourselves into all kinds of precarious situations that would ultimately lead to disasterous results.  Fear serves as a protecting agent against a number of things.  For instance, many of us have never been bitten by a poisonous snake, and yet we know that if we come across a rattlesnake we shouldn't reach down and try to handle it.  The fear of being bitten has been conditioned in us, and we have learned over time the consequences of handling poisonous snakes.  

To boil it all down, your brain is what allows you to feel fear.  Over time you learn to be more afraid of certain stimuli, and on that same note you learn how to determine if it is entirely rational to be afraid of something (i.e. the footsteps upstairs).  Of course, we will at times fear irrationally.  Sometimes we will feel afraid for no particular reason, or at least no rational reason.  This most often happens to people who are considered heavy media users.  People who are considered heavy media users consume more than 16 hours of media content in an average day.  Aside from an overall lack of satisfaction with their lives, they are also prone to irrationally fear normal, everyday situations based on the premise that something bad could happen.  The term "You've been watching too many movies," can be adequately applied to these situations. 

So, there's our lesson for today.  Now that we are all a bit more educated on the basics of fear, we can dive into the really good stuff and start exploring some of the tantalizing stimuli. 

Macabre musings

Alright, I'm just going to let the cat out of the bag and break the news to everyone out there who wasn't already aware of this.

I am a confirmed horror junkie. 

I have lived with this addiction, no, preoccupation my entire life, and there is absolutly nothing that could ever rid me of it.  You wouldn't know it to look at me, would you?  I know, I know, I'm a master of disguise.

So why the personal confession?  Well, in case you haven't looked at a calendar lately we are already halfway through the month of September.  Fall is in the air everywhere I go, which means that Halloween, the horror addicts most treasured holiday, is just around the corner.  This time of year my mind cannot help but wander over to the dark side, over to thoughts of restless spirits, haunted locales, and things that go bump in the night. 

In my opinion, there are a couple different kinds of horror addicts.  I consider myself to be of the classic breed, the kind who are naturally drawn to unexplained tales of strange happenings and cases of the supernatural.  The classic horror addict can appreciate a good campfire ghost story, and is known to partake in the original cult classic films of the horror genre (I'm thinking "Friday the 13th," "Halloween," and "Psycho" to name a few).

On the other side of the spectrum, there is the shock horror addict.  A more modern breed, this is the addict who needs the blood and guts factor in order to appreciate a thrilling tale or movie.  The shock addict thrives on the gore, demanding something even more outlandish and outrageous with each viewing.  The shock addict mainly sticks to movies, as the visual appeal of blood and guts is usually too tempting to pass up.  For this addict, the story does not matter nearly as much as the special effects.  

Of course, there is usually some overlap between the two breeds.  One does not have to be completely one or the other, but more often than not a person will fall into one category a bit more than they do the other.  I am not here to say that one addict is necessarily "better" than another; we can't help what we're drawn to.

Being of the classic breed of addicts, I am currently fixated on the subject of urban legends.  Tales passed down, often as warnings, meant to scare and to educate an audience.  I'm not yet prepared to delve into the subject on this post, but you can expect one in the coming days.

For now I will leave you with this dislcaimer. For the next month (possibly longer) the posts on IMW will have a darker edge.  There will be noticably less light shining through the windows as we close the blinds and prepare ourselves to explore the unexplained.  We will be delving into the subjects of fear, of monsters real and imagined, and trying to get to the bottom of what we're really afraid of. 

I think this is going to be an interesting ride. 

Starting the Process

You may recall a few posts back I made the conscious decision to abandon my fears and insecurities of my writing being nothing but garbage, and finally set out to do the thing I have been talking about doing for months (maybe years).



Write.

I made a huge step the other night in this process. I sat down at my desk. I turned on my computer. I inserted my thumb drive and scrolled down through the list of unfinished stories. At random I chose one of the documents, opened it up, and read through five pages of the infant manuscript.

Wanna know a secret? It wasn’t half bad.

I was instantly energized, somewhat impressed with myself, and excited about the possibilities that lay before me with this as of yet unfinished work. But despite my excitement, I knew I couldn’t just dive right in and expect the words to pour forth like water from a stream. No, first I needed a game plan.

Therefore, like any good writer and mater of organization, I proceeded to make an outline. An outline of my story.

I detailed my characters, setting, background, potential plot twists. I thought of potential problems with the plot, then thought of ways to get around those problems. I wrote, and underlined, and crossed out, and circled, and after about 45 minutes I had in my hands an almost complete outline. (Because really, when is any piece of writing totally complete?)
I felt so good, but rather than let myself rest on this accomplishment I kept going. Four pages later I was actually starting to see things happen. I could feel characters taking shape, I could see the end of my story tying back in with the beginning, and for the first time in a long time I felt like I had direction.

Now for the bad news.

I am not anywhere near the end of this process. In fact, I am barely scratching the surface. There are a lot of things that need to happen between the first draft, the second draft, the third draft, and who knows how many after that. There is also no guarantee that the end product will be as exciting, as promising, as those first five pages. There is also no guarantee that I will finish.
I promise I’m not trying to sabotage myself. If anything, I’m trying to force myself to keep things in perspective. Writing is such a solitary activity. You have to completely lose yourself to the people and things around you and just live in your own thoughts, your own ideas, until everything of every possible meaning is finally down on paper. If you can’t do this, it will show in the writing. If you can do this, it will show in the writing. In this game, the words rule.

For me, writing is a lot like warming up for a softball game. I kind of have to ease into it. I have to sit down, read through a few pages of what I last wrote, and sort of digest it. That’s like my warm-up jog. Then it’s time to test the waters with a few paragraphs, see if I can figure out what’s going to happen next. You know, like stretching one’s muscles.

Then there will be periods where I just have to sit and stare. Not necessarily at my computer screen, but at the room around me, the pictures and books on my shelves, anything at all. I just have to look and think before proceeding, because maybe I’m in danger of losing focus and taking the story somewhere it doesn’t need to go. Sort of like sitting and listening to your coach before taking the field.

After all this, I can usually get in the zone and keep the story afloat. This would be like taking outfield and finally feeling ready to go after a dozen or so fly balls. Writing is a major exercise for your mind, your imagination. I envy people who can just sit down at the computer and without a moment’s hesitation start pounding away at the keyboard. Of course, these might also be the same people who get a side ache while running around the bases because they didn’t take the time to warm up.

Writing is a process. It is also a craft that can’t be taught out of a textbook (well, certain kinds anyway). For some, writing can be one of the biggest gambles ever because there is no guarantee that anything you write will ever see the light of day. This is a gamble not only of your personal time, but also your self esteem.


I used to think I could get everything right on the first try. I used to think that editing, and multiple drafts, and drastic changes to the plot were nonsense and time consuming. But it was this frame of mind, this pressure I put on myself to be perfect and get it right the first time, it was this pressure that was really holding me back.

So. I have started the process. I have committed myself and no matter how long the commitment I will stay the course until the final word in typed. I am crawling inside my mind, looking for direction and trying to figure out what these characters are saying to me.

I hope they speak loudly.