I would like to everyone to take a
moment close your eyes and think about
the thing that you are most afraid of is
it does damping spiders
I get the spider one I myself am afraid
of a lot of things some of them real and
some of them totally made up in my head
so I’m going to start with a story that
includes both it was 2004 that sounds
like a really long time ago
it’s 2004 in the summer I was doing my
master’s research in a very northern
corner of California and my field site
was about an eight hour drive from where
I lived so I had to do a lot of that
field research by myself and one day I
was out in my beautiful sagebrush scrub
field site and I heard this pop of
course my fear instincts are gonna kick
in and I hit the deck and I hide under
the nearest bush and I’ve been trying to
get small hide I realize that I’m
dressed in all grey in a field full of
sagebrush which is also grey and it’s
hunting season yeah maybe not the best
life choices but it was a little too
late at that point as I turned my head
away from the bush I’m snuggled into I
noticed just maybe a couple feet away
from me is a giant fire ant hill so at
this point I need to decide which I’m
more afraid of the very real threat just
feet away from me from the fire ants or
my perceive but of the unknown hunters
were they shooting at me because they
didn’t see me were they shooting at me
because they did I didn’t know so I
needed to make a decision whether to
stay or whether to go when we think
about fear it is extraordinary complex
situation in our body of dozens of
hormones many different parts of the
brain all working together and when we
have something sparking our fear
response
a spider getting shot at something is
going to be a threat and our body
perceives that threat it’s going to do
two things simultaneously you’re going
to have a fast path for your response
and you’re gonna have a slow path for
your response the fast path is fast but
it’s not very good at taking in
information this is going to be where
our instincts are going to kick in and
the slow path is slower but it’s going
to be better at taking in all of the
information and making a better
assessment at what inappropriate
responses to keep us alive so to
illustrate let’s go back to you my story
in the Warner mountains so there was I
mean I’m small but like not that small
snuggled underneath the sagebrush trying
to decide what to do my fast path is the
reason why I was under that bush in the
first place and after a few beats my
slow path started to think about a
lifetime full of horror films and
newsreels and all of the things that you
hear you shouldn’t do like be a woman
and go out in the woods by yourself it’s
like damn I’m I was right
and it’s at this point that after taking
in all of that information I decided to
stay I decided to choose my perceived
fear being more frightening and more
terrifying than the very real threat in
front of me from the fire ants fear is
very real fear keeps us alive and it’s
not going anywhere anytime soon but fear
can also keep us trapped in a cage of
our own creation thinking about this
talk I really struggled to try to put
myself my story into it because as a
classically trained scientist that’s
just not what we do have a biology
lecture oh I just wanted to come up here
and use facts and figures and science
but if we have learned anything from our
post truth anti expert situation that we
happen to find ourselves in is that just
doesn’t work and it doesn’t work because
it doesn’t connect us to the story and
everything is about story so when I talk
about being a scientist today I wanted
to rewrite my story about what a
scientist could say and what a scientist
could be because personally I’m from a
family of secret keepers and we were
really great at just ignoring emotions
especially fear which is probably why I
got into science in the first place
because science oh it’s so good we’re
taught that emotions are liability and
as a scientist you are trained
remove yourself remove your humanity
from the research in order to get the
good data so science was a perfect place
for me and if you’re like me you
probably also never learned in school
how to deal with your emotions or deal
with fear unless it escalated into
illness and that’s really a shame
because one in eight children are
affected by anxiety disorders one in
eight and personally I didn’t even think
about fear I’m like actually scared but
I didn’t think about fear to study it
until I was in my early 30s and when I
became fascinated by it through my
research I would constantly see these
mantras being repeated and I’m sure
you’ve heard these of fight the fear and
conquer your fears and of course my
favorite was a biologist I always just
thought was the most ridiculous thing
ever because unless you have severe
damage to your medulla that’s literally
impossible you can’t be fearless that’s
just silly
that’s like telling someone who’s trying
to lose weight to just be hunger less
okay thanks that’s not really helpful so
we go through life pretty just
unprepared to deal with the fear
saturated culture that we find ourselves
in now today I am NOT talking about the
fears that are an immediate threat to
your survival I’m also not talking about
the fears that come from phobias or from
mental health challenges that many of us
face in our society I am talking about
the fears that
many of us share and that may have some
rooted in reality but most likely live
in a future that may never exist so what
do we do we have this very ancient fear
response so how do we adapt that fear
response for our modern lives well first
we need to get curious where are these
fears coming from then we need to get
creative about how we rewrite and
reframe those stories and finally get
committed to practicing that reframing
on a daily basis so it just becomes part
of what we do so I get curious about
fears we find that not all of them come
from us they come from the media they
come from our leaders they come from my
friends and family and this is important
to think about because fear is at the
root of many of our world’s problems
fear scarcity leads to overconsumption
of resources fear of failure doesn’t
allow us to take risks and create
innovative solutions and fear can create
political instability and violence so
what do we do about these things it’s
saturated within our culture
fear is a powerful persuasive tool fear
can counter tension and motivate us to
think or act in a different way and of
course get us to buy when you look in
marketing literature you’re gonna find
something called fear appeal that is
found in lots and lots of papers and
fear appeal give you a little example so
we are designed we have an evolutionary
adaptation for survival to want to
belong to a tribe because before the
very recent ability to just pay some
for food and shelter and water if we
were rejected from our tribe we would
most likely die so we have a deep-seated
fear of rejection from our tribe from
the society how does that work with
marketing well you take a product let’s
say a beer or a fancy handbag and you
frame it in a way that people think that
if you purchase that you will be better
accepted into the tribe or maybe
increase your social standing in the
tribe and deeply psychologically that
means a good thing to us because that
used to mean survival until now fear is
also a powerful motivator when we look
at our political leaders society is more
quick to react if there’s an immediate
threat and especially if that threat can
be rolled into a story with a clear hero
and an evil villain yet the stories that
we get from our media and our leaders
and our friends and family they’re not
the strongest stories we have the
strongest stories come from us and the
ones that we’ve been telling ourselves
over and over again for many years to
our entire lives so like I said I’m from
a family of secret keepers where we
didn’t talk about emotions we didn’t
learn how to deal with emotions that’s
just not what we did until a few years
ago when I found myself standing in an
emergency room talking to a doctor I had
just met you see before that point
rewind
two years I had been the primary and
really the only caretaker for my mom
I felt enslaved by the level of care
that she needed that my life and my time
had been sacrificed in order to be her
caretaker and when I walked into that
emergency room it wasn’t the first time
probably dozens at that point I figured
this is just yet another inconvenience
on my time but I was wrong
minutes past midnight standing there
with the emergency room doctor that I
had just met I was being asked to make a
decision no one should have to make
whether to let my mom live on life
support or let her die a natural death
at this point fear swept over me through
my head and my heart down through my
toes do about everything fear about loss
fear about death at this point I’d never
even been around anyone that had died so
I had no idea what to do and of course
we never talked about it because you
know family of see friends so I didn’t
know what she actually wanted and if I’m
standing there petrified not knowing
what to do something finally clicks and
my science training takes in because in
science if we have an insurmountable
problem we’re going to look at it in a
different way we’re going to use a
different lens to try a see how we can
solve it and in that moment I refrain
the question do you want your mother to
die too
what would you want if it was you and
then of course I knew because if it was
me I would want an end to suffering I
would want to go home to die in my own
bed in my own pajamas surrounded by love
and so that’s what we did
but like many things in the world life
doesn’t happen like it does in the
movies so after I took my mom home a
natural death or her took about a week
and during that week I got to wrestle
with all of those same fears and as I
was holding her hand for her last breath
I made a bow not a bow to make her proud
or do right by the family name but a vow
to not live in fear like she had her
entire life and instead to be curious
about fear and see fear as an
opportunity not an obstacle so I wanted
to take a moment go back to that fear
that you were thinking about earlier how
did that feel and make you feel so for
me when I get scared I got like hunch my
shoulders get like shortness of breath
like kind of gets queasy stomach
everyone has a little bit different
reaction and when you’re in fear what do
you do it’s probably one of these poor
things for me I’m an avoider
I will avoid it and pretend like it
doesn’t exist until the last possible
moment when I have no choice but to face
it but the problem is is that just
because I ignore it doesn’t mean it goes
away how we think about fear matters
because when our brain is focused on
fear it’s only concentrating on the
threat and can’t do anything else
to make us successful so all of us in
this room want to be successful so
playing around with those fears and
rewriting those fears stories and
reframing them is going to help get us
there I want to go ahead and play around
with this today this rewriting of a fear
story a lot of people are afraid of
strangers right so what I want you to do
is that fear that you thought about get
it down to one or two words and go ahead
and share that with a neighbor
preferably a stranger right now
go on oh wait I know I’m the worst just
turn around someone you don’t know and
tell them your biggest deepest darkest
fear
so what some of our theories maybe some
of these do we share any any same fears
with each other
so I love the fact that this is the top
13 fears because the Gallup Organization
that did this list of top 13 had to have
known that there’s actual clinical
phobia of 13 the number 13 so it’s just
really mean that they made the top 13
adult fears but see we shares so many of
these fears and I hope that we can start
to come together and see that fear
itself is something that should be
shared as a community and is not an
inevitable destination and that fighting
and struggling against ourselves trying
to be fearless is exhausting so instead
let’s reframe because each one of us is
one rewrite away from changing our lives
thank you
[Applause]
[Music]
moment close your eyes and think about
the thing that you are most afraid of is
it does damping spiders
I get the spider one I myself am afraid
of a lot of things some of them real and
some of them totally made up in my head
so I’m going to start with a story that
includes both it was 2004 that sounds
like a really long time ago
it’s 2004 in the summer I was doing my
master’s research in a very northern
corner of California and my field site
was about an eight hour drive from where
I lived so I had to do a lot of that
field research by myself and one day I
was out in my beautiful sagebrush scrub
field site and I heard this pop of
course my fear instincts are gonna kick
in and I hit the deck and I hide under
the nearest bush and I’ve been trying to
get small hide I realize that I’m
dressed in all grey in a field full of
sagebrush which is also grey and it’s
hunting season yeah maybe not the best
life choices but it was a little too
late at that point as I turned my head
away from the bush I’m snuggled into I
noticed just maybe a couple feet away
from me is a giant fire ant hill so at
this point I need to decide which I’m
more afraid of the very real threat just
feet away from me from the fire ants or
my perceive but of the unknown hunters
were they shooting at me because they
didn’t see me were they shooting at me
because they did I didn’t know so I
needed to make a decision whether to
stay or whether to go when we think
about fear it is extraordinary complex
situation in our body of dozens of
hormones many different parts of the
brain all working together and when we
have something sparking our fear
response
a spider getting shot at something is
going to be a threat and our body
perceives that threat it’s going to do
two things simultaneously you’re going
to have a fast path for your response
and you’re gonna have a slow path for
your response the fast path is fast but
it’s not very good at taking in
information this is going to be where
our instincts are going to kick in and
the slow path is slower but it’s going
to be better at taking in all of the
information and making a better
assessment at what inappropriate
responses to keep us alive so to
illustrate let’s go back to you my story
in the Warner mountains so there was I
mean I’m small but like not that small
snuggled underneath the sagebrush trying
to decide what to do my fast path is the
reason why I was under that bush in the
first place and after a few beats my
slow path started to think about a
lifetime full of horror films and
newsreels and all of the things that you
hear you shouldn’t do like be a woman
and go out in the woods by yourself it’s
like damn I’m I was right
and it’s at this point that after taking
in all of that information I decided to
stay I decided to choose my perceived
fear being more frightening and more
terrifying than the very real threat in
front of me from the fire ants fear is
very real fear keeps us alive and it’s
not going anywhere anytime soon but fear
can also keep us trapped in a cage of
our own creation thinking about this
talk I really struggled to try to put
myself my story into it because as a
classically trained scientist that’s
just not what we do have a biology
lecture oh I just wanted to come up here
and use facts and figures and science
but if we have learned anything from our
post truth anti expert situation that we
happen to find ourselves in is that just
doesn’t work and it doesn’t work because
it doesn’t connect us to the story and
everything is about story so when I talk
about being a scientist today I wanted
to rewrite my story about what a
scientist could say and what a scientist
could be because personally I’m from a
family of secret keepers and we were
really great at just ignoring emotions
especially fear which is probably why I
got into science in the first place
because science oh it’s so good we’re
taught that emotions are liability and
as a scientist you are trained
remove yourself remove your humanity
from the research in order to get the
good data so science was a perfect place
for me and if you’re like me you
probably also never learned in school
how to deal with your emotions or deal
with fear unless it escalated into
illness and that’s really a shame
because one in eight children are
affected by anxiety disorders one in
eight and personally I didn’t even think
about fear I’m like actually scared but
I didn’t think about fear to study it
until I was in my early 30s and when I
became fascinated by it through my
research I would constantly see these
mantras being repeated and I’m sure
you’ve heard these of fight the fear and
conquer your fears and of course my
favorite was a biologist I always just
thought was the most ridiculous thing
ever because unless you have severe
damage to your medulla that’s literally
impossible you can’t be fearless that’s
just silly
that’s like telling someone who’s trying
to lose weight to just be hunger less
okay thanks that’s not really helpful so
we go through life pretty just
unprepared to deal with the fear
saturated culture that we find ourselves
in now today I am NOT talking about the
fears that are an immediate threat to
your survival I’m also not talking about
the fears that come from phobias or from
mental health challenges that many of us
face in our society I am talking about
the fears that
many of us share and that may have some
rooted in reality but most likely live
in a future that may never exist so what
do we do we have this very ancient fear
response so how do we adapt that fear
response for our modern lives well first
we need to get curious where are these
fears coming from then we need to get
creative about how we rewrite and
reframe those stories and finally get
committed to practicing that reframing
on a daily basis so it just becomes part
of what we do so I get curious about
fears we find that not all of them come
from us they come from the media they
come from our leaders they come from my
friends and family and this is important
to think about because fear is at the
root of many of our world’s problems
fear scarcity leads to overconsumption
of resources fear of failure doesn’t
allow us to take risks and create
innovative solutions and fear can create
political instability and violence so
what do we do about these things it’s
saturated within our culture
fear is a powerful persuasive tool fear
can counter tension and motivate us to
think or act in a different way and of
course get us to buy when you look in
marketing literature you’re gonna find
something called fear appeal that is
found in lots and lots of papers and
fear appeal give you a little example so
we are designed we have an evolutionary
adaptation for survival to want to
belong to a tribe because before the
very recent ability to just pay some
for food and shelter and water if we
were rejected from our tribe we would
most likely die so we have a deep-seated
fear of rejection from our tribe from
the society how does that work with
marketing well you take a product let’s
say a beer or a fancy handbag and you
frame it in a way that people think that
if you purchase that you will be better
accepted into the tribe or maybe
increase your social standing in the
tribe and deeply psychologically that
means a good thing to us because that
used to mean survival until now fear is
also a powerful motivator when we look
at our political leaders society is more
quick to react if there’s an immediate
threat and especially if that threat can
be rolled into a story with a clear hero
and an evil villain yet the stories that
we get from our media and our leaders
and our friends and family they’re not
the strongest stories we have the
strongest stories come from us and the
ones that we’ve been telling ourselves
over and over again for many years to
our entire lives so like I said I’m from
a family of secret keepers where we
didn’t talk about emotions we didn’t
learn how to deal with emotions that’s
just not what we did until a few years
ago when I found myself standing in an
emergency room talking to a doctor I had
just met you see before that point
rewind
two years I had been the primary and
really the only caretaker for my mom
I felt enslaved by the level of care
that she needed that my life and my time
had been sacrificed in order to be her
caretaker and when I walked into that
emergency room it wasn’t the first time
probably dozens at that point I figured
this is just yet another inconvenience
on my time but I was wrong
minutes past midnight standing there
with the emergency room doctor that I
had just met I was being asked to make a
decision no one should have to make
whether to let my mom live on life
support or let her die a natural death
at this point fear swept over me through
my head and my heart down through my
toes do about everything fear about loss
fear about death at this point I’d never
even been around anyone that had died so
I had no idea what to do and of course
we never talked about it because you
know family of see friends so I didn’t
know what she actually wanted and if I’m
standing there petrified not knowing
what to do something finally clicks and
my science training takes in because in
science if we have an insurmountable
problem we’re going to look at it in a
different way we’re going to use a
different lens to try a see how we can
solve it and in that moment I refrain
the question do you want your mother to
die too
what would you want if it was you and
then of course I knew because if it was
me I would want an end to suffering I
would want to go home to die in my own
bed in my own pajamas surrounded by love
and so that’s what we did
but like many things in the world life
doesn’t happen like it does in the
movies so after I took my mom home a
natural death or her took about a week
and during that week I got to wrestle
with all of those same fears and as I
was holding her hand for her last breath
I made a bow not a bow to make her proud
or do right by the family name but a vow
to not live in fear like she had her
entire life and instead to be curious
about fear and see fear as an
opportunity not an obstacle so I wanted
to take a moment go back to that fear
that you were thinking about earlier how
did that feel and make you feel so for
me when I get scared I got like hunch my
shoulders get like shortness of breath
like kind of gets queasy stomach
everyone has a little bit different
reaction and when you’re in fear what do
you do it’s probably one of these poor
things for me I’m an avoider
I will avoid it and pretend like it
doesn’t exist until the last possible
moment when I have no choice but to face
it but the problem is is that just
because I ignore it doesn’t mean it goes
away how we think about fear matters
because when our brain is focused on
fear it’s only concentrating on the
threat and can’t do anything else
to make us successful so all of us in
this room want to be successful so
playing around with those fears and
rewriting those fears stories and
reframing them is going to help get us
there I want to go ahead and play around
with this today this rewriting of a fear
story a lot of people are afraid of
strangers right so what I want you to do
is that fear that you thought about get
it down to one or two words and go ahead
and share that with a neighbor
preferably a stranger right now
go on oh wait I know I’m the worst just
turn around someone you don’t know and
tell them your biggest deepest darkest
fear
so what some of our theories maybe some
of these do we share any any same fears
with each other
so I love the fact that this is the top
13 fears because the Gallup Organization
that did this list of top 13 had to have
known that there’s actual clinical
phobia of 13 the number 13 so it’s just
really mean that they made the top 13
adult fears but see we shares so many of
these fears and I hope that we can start
to come together and see that fear
itself is something that should be
shared as a community and is not an
inevitable destination and that fighting
and struggling against ourselves trying
to be fearless is exhausting so instead
let’s reframe because each one of us is
one rewrite away from changing our lives
thank you
[Applause]
[Music]
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