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Okay, I'm going to go a little quickly because everyone likes lunch, including me. I have a lot I want to talk about.
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The slides and presentation will be available afterwards, and I really love talking about this. If there's anything you feel like I went too fast on or didn't quite understand, please come talk to me.
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So, this is why we worry about all the wrong things. I'm Hilary Stohs-Krause, a senior developer and co-owner at 10 Forward Consulting in Madison, Wisconsin, which is a Ruby dev shop.
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I'm a coding bootcamp grad. Any bootcamp graduates here? Random fun fact: I have a Sindarin elvish tattoo, which everyone thinks is Hebrew, proving that no one knows Hebrew as they do not look the same.
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A couple of quick disclaimers: I'm not a therapist or a scientist. I just find this really interesting and have done a lot of research. There are two books in particular that were really foundational to this talk that I highly recommend.
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Today, we will talk about some common misplaced fears, the implications of having stress and anxiety in your life, where fear and anxiety come from, and finally, some strategies we can use to adapt and make our lives better.
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Some neuroscientists claim that humans are the most fearful creatures on the planet because of our ability to learn, think, and create fear in our minds. I view our imagination as one of our greatest assets, but it can also be one of our greatest liabilities.
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First, we'll look at some common misplaced fears. At this point, if anyone is really not into spiders, I want you to close your eyes, and I will tell you when you can reopen them. Okay?
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Look at this little cutie. I found a cute one. How many people here feel any kind of fear or anxiety when they think about or encounter a spider? About half the room, which is what I expected.
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We all know that this fear isn't something we need to focus on in our daily lives. What percentage of the more than 40,000 species of spider do you think are poisonous or venomous? It’s about 0.00003%. That means there are only 12 poisonous species out of 40,000.
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So, we’re very safe when it comes to spiders. In fact, in the United States, you’re much more likely to be killed by a cow than a spider. I couldn’t find global numbers on how many cows kill people each year, but in the U.S., cows kill an average of 22 people a year, while spiders kill only seven.
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Now, let’s talk about fear number two, which is flying. Who here experiences anxiety or stress when thinking about getting on a plane? Not as many people as I would have thought.
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Generally speaking, flying provides a stress response, if not outright anxiety or fear. But flying is super safe. The impetus for this talk was actually a flight I was on that experienced severe turbulence, the kind where you feel like you’re rising out of your seat and pushing against your seatbelt.
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People around me were terrified, some crying, others praying. Meanwhile, I was just sitting there trying not to giggle because it felt like being on a roller coaster. I knew that airplanes are super safe, and I just thought it was fun. But everyone looked at me like I was losing my mind.
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Statistics show that the odds of a flight worldwide resulting in a fatal incident are one in 3.7 million. You could take a flight every day for 241 years before getting into a crash. In the U.S., between February 2009 and February 2019, commercial airlines recorded zero fatalities.
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Still, we often feel more fear when flying than when walking on the sidewalk, getting in a car, or hopping on a bike. In reality, 1.35 million people die on roadways globally every year, which is about half the estimated number of COVID deaths in 2020—this is every single year.
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Your chances of dying in a vehicle in the U.S. are one in 107, so, you might be thinking, 'Great, now I'm afraid of cars and cows awesome.' But really, who cares if spiders make me squeamish or if I get nervous on flights?
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There are harmful impacts of these misplaced fears. I don't call them irrational, as that term is often thrown around. The mechanisms by which we experience fear have very sound logic behind them.
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One implication is the risk perception gap, which is the difference between what we're spending time worrying about and what actually poses a threat. This leads to wasted emotional, mental, and physical energy and blindsides us from real threats.
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Misplaced fears also lead to poor decision-making and multiple health concerns, such as a weakened immune system, damage to our hearts, ulcers, decreased fertility, accelerated aging, and premature death.
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Stress and anxiety also impair the formation of long-term memories, so now you might be feeling anxiety about having anxiety right. Additionally, we often self-select out of opportunities when we don't feel we can make good decisions due to anxiety.
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When we are in a place of anxiety, we can hold back our teams or self-sabotage. Long-term stress and anxiety impact our ability to act ethically because we become narrowly focused on ourselves.
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The tension between perfection and completion can also hold us back; we might obsess over 'what ifs' that prevent us from finishing tasks. So, where does anxiety even come from?
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The process in our brains starts with the amygdala, where we process emotions. Fear is an emotional reaction first and foremost. The amygdala also initiates our physical response to threats; it releases stress hormones, firing up our sympathetic nervous system.
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Even when we realize something isn’t dangerous, we can have a physical reaction. For example, if we’re walking down the street and someone turns the corner too quickly, we may sweat or increase our heart rate.
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After that, our brain then references our memory in the hippocampus to contextualize what we find frightening. If we’ve been in an accident before, our brains can trigger a physical reaction when we encounter a similar situation.
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Finally, the prefrontal cortex processes the complex cognitive behavior and makes decisions based on our fear response. This is our analytical brain at work, which reassures our emotional, reflexive brain.
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There are three main types of fear: anticipatory fear, biological fear, which is innate, and fear based on lived experiences. For instance, we often develop a fear of something based on a past traumatic event.
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Additionally, factors can amplify our fears. A professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison identified three themes in films that people fear most: disturbing visual images, imminent threat, and a lack of control. A lack of control may be one of those innate fears.
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Other people can also increase our fears. This phenomenon relates to emotional contagion, where we can actually smell fear through sweat and detect when someone is afraid.
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Moreover, the scarier we feel, the scarier things seem. For example, if you’re watching a documentary on spiders and feel a breeze, you might think a spider is on your neck, but if you’re barbecuing and feel the same breeze, you likely won't think twice.
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There are specific factors that cause us to overestimate risk. Catastrophic potential, for instance, makes us fear situations that could harm many people rather than just a few. Familiarity plays a significant role as well—if something is unfamiliar, we often associate it with higher risk.
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This overestimation of risk often happens with man-made problems compared to natural disasters. We are more scared of human-created situations than the world around us. Change in our risk assessment processes is necessary due to these outdated perceptions.
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For example, evolutionary processes taught us to react instantly to immediate threats, such as potential predators. However, in today's world, we often struggle to evaluate the dangers of abstract threats like climate change.
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As Sandberg, a computational neuroscientist, points out, modern dangers are incredibly abstract. There’s little immediate benefit to being scared of these threats, unlike the clear survival benefit of fearing a wolf.
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As such, we might know something could hurt us, but if we don't have an immediate reward from fearing it, we underestimate the risk associated with that situation. To overcome this misfocusing on risk and emotional responses, we can’t blame ourselves for having outsized reactions.
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When we make decisions that seem sound but lead to bad outcomes, we often reflect on what we did wrong. We are uncomfortable with the impact of luck in our lives, often leading to second-guessing ourselves.
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In her book, 'Thinking in Bets', the author highlights that the quality of an outcome doesn't equal the quality of a decision. It’s important to reframe what success looks like and focus on what we can control while letting go of what we can’t.
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To manage our anxiety, we need to work within the limitations of our brains. One effective way to do this is to be prepared. For example, although many expressed concern about natural disasters, only about a quarter have taken action to prepare an emergency kit.
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This demonstrates that planning doesn’t equate to execution. We should take ownership of what we know and admit what we don’t. In our work lives, we often admit our ignorance, but in personal matters, we can struggle to grant ourselves that same grace.
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Every decision we make is a prediction, involving both what we know and what we don’t. It’s easy to focus too heavily on one side of that equation. Now, let’s look at some algorithms that might help us with evaluating our thoughts.
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One method is the optimal stopping rule, which reminds us to wait longer when we have more options available. We often pick too early. The opposite applies when options dwindle—then it’s better to simply choose a decent option than hold out for perfection.
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The 'Explore-Exploit' concept teaches us to take chances when we have time to explore, while exploiting options when it's beneficial to do so. Similarly, the 'Shift is Better than Perfect' principle encourages choosing an option at random rather than aiming for perfection.
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The 'Last Recently Used' structure is interesting; items accessed recently are likely to be needed again, similar to how we search through junk drawers for needed items rather than attempting to organize everything immediately.
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'Constraint Relaxation' is about addressing large problems by breaking them down into manageable chunks. By imagining the perfect solution without constraints, we can map a path towards solutions despite these constraints.
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Finally, there's 'Information Cascades', where we misinterpret actions as beliefs. We often assume that others know more than us and ignore our doubts based on outward appearances, which can lead to anxiety.
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Reframing the underlying thought patterns is a crucial strategy in cognitive behavioral therapy. We shift from viewing situations as losses of control to seeing them as growth opportunities.
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It’s essential to specify what we aim to achieve, identifying specific issues to address. The steps to reshaping those thoughts include identification, awareness of patterns, and reset through practice, which can be difficult but becomes easier over time.
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Finally, asking for help is crucial when dealing with indecision or anxiety. Sharing fears with others can lessen their weight, provide new perspectives, and help us to think logically instead of emotional.
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So, remember, perfect is the enemy of good. Accepting solutions that are close enough can help us tackle even the most challenging problems. Thank you for sticking around despite the technical difficulties.
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I have references available for those interested, but I don't think we have time for questions as everyone wants to go eat, myself included. However, I truly enjoy discussing this topic, so feel free to connect with me through social media or come chat afterward.