The Widow's Bite
Facing our fears is good for us.
Last summer, I chopped wood with my son, David Jude, in the side yard. I swung the maul, and he took cartloads of wood and stacked it in the woodshed. Suddenly, I heard a scream. David ran past me shouting about a black widow. He isn’t fond of spiders, but black widows really scare him.
I stopped what I was doing and went inside to get some spider spray. I told David he needed to show me where the spider was hiding so I could kill it. He reluctantly agreed. We walked out back, and he pointed to one of the logs on the wagon.
I turned it over, and sure enough, there was a black widow spider. A big honking one with a shiny black abdomen like a licorice jelly bean. The thing looked like Shelob’s little sister. I sprayed it and smushed it with a stick, then brought it over to David to look at close up.
He looked at it before going inside, still too afraid to go back to stacking wood. After seeing that big thing, I found it a little hard to reach into the woodpile myself but managed to get over it.
The Brain’s Threat Detector
That night during dinner, I showed the family a couple of videos from a series that we’ve been watching by Dr. Kevin Majeres. Dr. Majeres is a cognitive behavioral therapist (CBT) who lectures at Harvard, a devout Catholic, and podcaster. He runs a website and podcast called Optimal Work, which teaches CBT principles to professionals. It’s interesting because he’s not focused on helping mental illness as much as he is teaching the way the brain functions to help his audience achieve high performance.
By kind of a divine coincidence, the videos discussed the amygdala, which functions as the brain’s threat detector. When the amygdala detects a threat, it floods the body with adrenaline, which primes the body for fight or flight. I witnessed David Jude’s amygdala in full activation when I saw him run past. 100% flight.
The interesting thing about the amygdala is that it pays attention to your behavior. If it sounds the alarm and you respond by running away from the cause of the alarm, then it will increase the threat level the next time you encounter a similar situation. So, if you run away from a big spider because your amygdala is activated, the next time around you will be even more frightened of the spider. Dr. Majeres calls this process “threat learning.”
What’s interesting is what happens if, instead of running away, you approach the source of the threat. If you can stay in the presence of the source of the threat without running away, you will slowly relax and your adrenaline will calm down. The next time you encounter the same type of threat, you won’t be as scared. Dr. Majeres called this process “Safety Learning.” By approaching the source of the threat, you are training your amygdala that it’s not a threat.
Strike While the Iron is Hot.
One point that Dr. Majeres makes is that threat learning and safety learning only happen when the amygdala is sounding the alarm. The moment when the feeling of the threat is most intense is the most potent opportunity for changing your response in the future.
He describes three core skills needed to master the amygdala threat response.
Reframing – the practice of reframing means looking at a situation and trying to find a new perspective on what is happening. In emotional situations, this practice allows you to bring your higher-order thinking abilities to bear on a problem. When you reframe your threat response, you are looking for a positive opportunity within the previously negative experience. For instance, simply recognizing that the feelings that accompany the adrenaline surge will help you perform at your best in any given situation can help your higher brain function to grab hold of the steering wheel.
Mindfulness – You don’t have to run from the uncomfortable feelings associated with your threat detector going off. Dr. Majeres recommends that you become fully aware of the sensations of your body when it is in threat mode. Mindfulness is the practice of focusing your attention on the sensations in your body as a way of anchoring yourself in the present moment. When adrenaline is flowing, some of these sensations include tightness in the front of your chest, rapid heartbeat and breathing, and sweaty hands. They might not be pleasant, but welcoming these sensations instead of running from them can rapidly turn a frightening experience into safety learning.
Challenge – If reframing helps you change the way you think about a threat, then challenge helps you approach the threat. Every difficult experience provides an opportunity for growth. Maybe it’s an opportunity to grow in courage, generosity, or patience. Embracing the challenge means seeing every threat through the lens of growth opportunities. When one fully embraces a challenge, they can say to any threat, “Bring it on, the more the better.”
I’ve been trying to integrate this mental framework into my way of thinking for a little over a year. It sounds really simple and easy, but it takes some doing. Repetition is important. My emotions act strongly on my thinking. It takes a deliberate effort to put the brakes on my emotional roller coaster and begin to engage my higher thinking powers. It takes repetition of this process to make it a habit.
Practical Example.
While we were watching the videos, I saw the gears turning in David’s head. When the first one finished, he asked to watch another one. He saw the connection between his experiences at the wood pile and the videos about safety learning.
I didn’t force him to kill the spider on his own, because I didn’t think that was prudent given how freaked out he was. I didn’t want to further traumatize him. One of the videos talked about an experience called “thwarted escape” which produces the most rapid and intense threat learning. It happens when you try to escape but can’t. I didn’t want to do that to him.
He also didn’t go through the whole process of reframing, mindfulness, and challenge. Before he watched the videos, he didn’t know what any of that meant. But when I asked for his help (firmly) so I could kill the spider, he came. He faced his fear as much as he could in the moment and experienced some real relief by seeing the threat smushed with a stick.
Be Careful with the Two-Edged Sword.
I talked with him about it afterward, and he could see how his experience mirrored the content of the video. He asked some good questions. We also talked about the fact that intentional safety learning is so effective that you can even do it to your own harm.
You can train your mind to view some things as safe that it really SHOULD view as threats, like sharks. We saw this video a few summers ago where a biologist was trying to demonstrate that sharks are safe by wading in waist-high water with a bunch of bull sharks. One of the bull sharks decided to take a nibble and bit the dude’s calf off. He almost died of blood loss. He should have known better, but he had trained his mind to ignore the threat.
The amygdala also doesn’t have a moral sense. It can’t tell what’s right and wrong. Practicing a vicious act like theft might produce safety learning to the amygdala so that it doesn’t sound the alarm. It probably SHOULD sound the alarm in that case, because theft is evil. Doing any evil thing is a threat to our spiritual well-being.
What About the “Fight”?
It’s also good to know that anger, the “fight” part of the “fight or flight equation”, is also strongly connected to amygdala function. But instead of needing to approach the threat for safety learning to occur, as is the case with fear mode, anger requires restraint for safety learning. If you go in all guns blazing, yelling at the top of your lungs, you’re reinforcing to the amygdala that the threat is best dealt with by using full-adrenaline aggression.
Safety learning for anger means practicing patience in the moment that the internal alarm sounds. Exercising patience and restraining the aggressive response provides the safety learning that the amygdala requires to recalibrate its threat response. This is important for me to know because I’m much more prone to anger than fear.
Growth Over Time
As I wrote this post and prepared the picture, I asked for David’s help. He looked at a bunch of AI-generated pictures of boys fighting off giant spiders. This is one way to approach the threat that provides safety learning. He came by one afternoon and told me, “You know, Dad, black widows aren’t actually aggressive. They won’t bite unless you’re messing with them.” He’d been doing some research, getting a new perspective on the source of the threat. He is taking this lesson to heart.
In a time and culture where fear and anxiety have such a hold on the public discourse, it’s important to understand how fear works. Our brain’s threat response was designed for a good reason, to keep us out of harm’s way. But it can become over-vigilant and produce anxiety that robs us of our peace of mind.
The triple practice of reframing, mindfulness, and challenge is not a way out of fear. It’s a way through. By intentionally approaching the source of the threat, or exercising patience in its presence, we master the threat. It no longer has power over us. There’s science that backs this up.
I find it very beautiful that St. Ignatius of Loyola anticipated these scientific discoveries and understanding of the process of threat and safety learning in his 13th rule for discernment:
“The enemy conducts himself as a woman. He is a weakling before a show of strength, and a tyrant if he has his will. It is characteristic of a woman in a quarrel with a man to lose courage and take to flight if the man shows that he is determined and fearless. However, if the man loses courage and begins to flee, the anger, vindictiveness, and rage of the woman surge up and know no bounds. In the same way, the enemy becomes weak, loses courage, and turns to flight with his seductions as soon as one leading a spiritual life faces his temptations boldly, and does exactly the opposite of what he suggests. However, if one begins to be afraid and to lose courage in temptations, no wild animal on earth can be more fierce than the enemy of our human nature. He will carry out his perverse intentions with consummate malice.”
There’s no inherent contradiction between sound spiritual practices and scientific mental disciplines. They examine the same thing from different perspectives and are mutually enriched. Whether the truth is discovered by the scientific method or revealed in scripture and the teachings of the Church, it is the truth that sets us free.
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Love that Optimal Work -good stuff!