S02/E26: "Instinctive Fear" - Terror That Drives Behaviour

The instinctive center is the body's physician.

Of all the centers, it alone is not permitted to make mistakes because its domain is survival.

It governs the automatic biological functions: heartbeat, breath, digestion, immune response, and the constant interior management of a living body.

And at its core, it carries a genuine alarm function, the recognition below the level of thought that something threatening is present.

Genuine instinctive fear is the body's immediate response to actual danger.

It arises before deliberation and mobilizes whatever the body requires to protect itself.

In its most extreme form, total terror, it can take over completely.

Surrounding realities disappear.

The body trembles in every tissue.

The heartbeat becomes audible.

The teeth chatter.

Every other experience collapses into a single drive.

Thought does not moderate it.

The emotional center doesn't run it.

The instinctive center runs the whole machine fully for the duration of the threat.

The rabbit sees the dog and dives into the burrow.

Its fear is proportionate and immediate, no more than the danger requires, no less.

When the dog leaves, the immediate fear subsides.

That is the complete cycle of genuine instinctive fear.

It arises from actual present danger, mobilizes the body, and diminishes when the danger passes.

There's a reason the mechanism works this way.

The neuroscientist Joseph LeDoux observed that a person is better off mistaking a stick for a snake than a snake for a stick.

A startled flinch at a stick costs almost nothing.

Missing an actual snake can cost a life.

Weighed against each other, a system biased toward the cheaper mistake is the one that survives.