For some it’s the roller coaster, for others a horror film – what triggers fear often has a very personal background. But do we all feel fear in the same place in the body? An expert explains.
Fear is essential for human survival. It triggers a warning signal, telling the brain to act now because life is in danger. “Every feeling has a purpose,” said Udo Baer, ??author and psychologist ntv.de. “And fear means that we have to be careful of wild animals.” Today, the fear of being run over by a car is more feared than being attacked by a saber-toothed tiger. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a saber-tooth tiger or an SUV – does everyone have the same fear?
According to a study, people often feel emotions in the same parts of their body – even if they come from different cultures. For example, scientists from Finland have studied where people locate certain emotions in the body. As the “Spiegel” reports, the study participants from Finland, Sweden and Taiwan located fear primarily in the area of ??the upper body, most strongly in the vicinity of the heart.
As a therapist, Baer often asks his patients where the fear is. According to them, the feeling is often in the chest, heart or even stomach – similar to the results of the study. But not always. According to the therapist, there have also been people who felt their fear in the soles of their feet or in their earlobes. This is because fear always has something to do with one’s own experiences. “The context of the experiences plays a big role in how the fear is experienced,” says Baer.
Neurologically, fear always triggers a similar response. The brain has a total of 700 major regions that Baer says can be visualized in a brain scan. That is, they become differently active in different actions and feelings. In the case of anxiety, about 22 regions show increased activity – depending on the person, there can be between 18 and 25 regions.
But it is difficult to say whether there are other similarities in the feeling of fear. “You can see accumulations,” for example that people often get palpitations or high blood pressure when they suffer from existential anxiety. But “it’s important to take into account the individual characteristics of people,” said Baer. Fear is something very personal and can therefore be perceived in very different ways.
By the way: When you are afraid, you often get palpitations because the blood circulation is concentrated on the vital organs. The brain switches to survival mode and tries to secure the blood supply to the heart and lungs.
