Consider for a second how powerful positive memories can be. Can you think of a winning moment, even one that happened in early childhood, that has nurtured your confidence over the years? I’ve never been a great athlete, but the summer I was ten I joined the local swim team and won a ton of breaststroke blue ribbons. Those tapes, along with my decade of ballet lessons, left me with the conviction that I am a good swimmer and a very good dancer. It doesn’t matter that I probably can’t do ten laps of breaststroke today or that the last time I danced on the dance floor was at a Bar Mitzvah three years ago. I remain unswervingly convinced of my talents.
Now consider the negative power of fear and anxiety-based memories. As part of our natural defense system, memories of fear have such a strong and lasting impact that many of us create entire mythologies around the time we almost drowned in a neighbor’s pool or were bitten by a stray dog. Humiliation, another holdover from our ancient survival system in which not being part of a tribe meant rapid extinction, also makes a compelling contribution to feelings of fear. See if you can remember a time when the popular kid in class ridiculed you or got into a fight with the neighborhood bully. Most likely, you can remember every detail. Just thinking about it now can bring you feelings of discomfort or even embarrassment.
However, even when physical danger is long gone or we are mature enough to deal with any emotional unrest, we may unknowingly remain fearful of situations that reflect those memories. Perhaps we refuse to venture out into the ocean with our children, avoid making presentations at the office, or refuse to invite someone we are drawn to on a date because of similar past experiences. When we generalize fear and pain from the past and unconsciously apply those negative feelings to our present life, it makes it difficult, if not impossible, to take the kinds of risks that are necessary to create the personal and professional life that we so desperately desire. . Thus, we repeatedly rob ourselves of the joy, pleasure, and rewards that we would otherwise get if we could conquer our outdated fears. To make matters worse, if left unchecked, those negative memories can grow over time due to the way we process and consolidate memories.
This process is called fear memory consolidation. Powerful memories, such as pain, rejection, humiliation, and failure, remain lodged in the amygdala region of the brain, where they can be retrieved in appropriate situations, a bit like scanning our computer’s random access memory to find the file we need. Those memories were once instrumental in helping us remember that crocodiles are dangerous and therefore we must avoid them so they don’t take a piece from us. We are now processing more data and less danger, but the intensity of fear memories still makes us react emotionally rather than rationally. It’s good too, as we would never have survived if we had stopped to think about everything we knew about crocodiles and then acted on the information.
Also, because of what scientists now know about the memory consolidation process, it seems that we actually grow our fears over time, often mistakenly attributing them to situations where the fear response is no longer relevant or useful. The traditional view on fear memory consolidation was based on the idea that our brain stored these powerful memories and every time we retrieved the information, we were retrieving the initial memory. But now most researchers in the field believe that we learn, store, and retrieve not our initial memory, but the last memory formed. In other words, we keep breathing new life into old fears, expanding and embellishing them without even realizing it. When we then globalize those fears, taking them into environments where they are distracting or downright destructive, we set ourselves up to get stuck.
Take the case of Rene, who worked in marketing at a major technology corporation. Completely out of his element in the fast-paced high-tech environment, Rene longed to work for a company that was smaller, more relaxed, and better suited to his personality. Although she was miserable, the thought of leaving what was considered a prestigious job put her in a panic. As he grew increasingly unhappy, Rene fantasized about finding a new job, but couldn’t seem to move despite having great skills and connections. Four years later, Rene was still fantasizing about a job change. So what was the problem?
That is exactly what we needed to find out. As with most of the people I guide through career transition, Rene drew up his CSE profile, noted his underlying fear of failure (both failing in his old job and the one he didn’t have yet) , but clearly there was something else holding her back. back. Before she went through the paperwork to update her resume, informational interview, or job search, we needed to identify the memory of fear that was keeping her frozen in place.
IS IT REAL OR IS IT MEMORY?
If you are old enough, you may remember the TV commercial where you saw an opera diva or pop singer, then heard her play a high note or sing a signature riff. The question posed in the ad was: Is it real or is it Memorex? I mean, were you listening to the singer live or listening to her on tape? The point was, of course, that it was impossible to tell the difference. Like René, with his inexplicably exaggerated anxiety to change jobs, feelings of fear can seem so real that we believe they are authentic.
But in truth, they are recordings of our past, of what we used to feel, enhanced over time through our brain’s memory consolidation process. So our behaviors, which eventually become habitual patterns, are reactions to memories of fear rather than choices based on feelings in the present.
Even with this new knowledge, Rene still felt paralyzed about finding a new job. So we decided to dig into her fear memory bank to see if we could locate what was keeping her stuck. This doesn’t require agonizing hours of delving into your past or years of psychotherapy, although both can be helpful. It just requires you to ask the right questions, the correct answers are generally not far behind. Here’s how Rene connected his questions to the CSE framework:
Clarify (fear): What does this fear of changing jobs remind me of?
Simplify (memory): What exactly were the circumstances of that negative experience?
Execute (the change): What behavior changes can I implement to lessen or alleviate this fear?
It didn’t take long for Rene to point out the fear that kept reviving. He recalled that when he was young, his father was an Air Force pilot and his family constantly moved from place to place. Every two years during his childhood and adolescence, Rene found himself starting over at a new school, trying to make friends and adjust to a new neighborhood or military base. Although some people thrive in this ever-changing environment, for Rene it was torture.
Although he was acutely aware that he preferred constancy to change and knew that he did not want to raise his own children as he had grown up, Rene had never linked his desire for job security to his old fears of packing up and leaving everything. that was familiar to him. As he examined his fear memory, he began to see how he had expanded the experience and transferred the anxiety to other areas of his life, particularly his career.
Although we often refer to overcoming fears, there is growing scientific evidence that what really happens is that once we begin to react to the same stimulus without feeling fear, the effect is cumulative. “The available data indicate that one does not unlearn fear, but rather learns not to fear the threatening stimulus in particular contexts,” says Dr. Denis Paré of Rutgers University in New Jersey, who has been working to isolate cells. critical to overcome fear response.
Like soldiers who learn to fear loud noises on the battlefield (another survival instinct), once they get home and re-acclimate to loud noises, over time they learn not to fear, or at least to minimize your fear of those sounds. Obviously, PTSD is nothing to take lightly. My point is that even something as serious as PTSD can be unlearned, if it gets the right treatment and care.
Just as memories of fear consolidate over time, unlearning memories of fear also becomes a cumulative exercise. It’s like the Old West wisdom of getting back on the horse after being thrown, the idea is that eventually you will no longer be afraid of being thrown. Over time, by making small changes in his life, like remodeling his apartment and joining a new gym, Rene learned not to equate change with fear. Finally, after a large-scale search, he found a position in nonprofit marketing that was a much better fit for his skills and temperament.
TOOL FOR RISK TAKERS: Minimize Fear Memories
Let’s explore your memory banks to see what fears or anxieties you may be allowing to affect your current behavior. Take a look at the list below and see if any of these situations remind you of events in your own life.
Being in a severe accident or car collision
Losing a loved one to divorce or death
Experiencing a serious illness, your own or someone else’s
Panicking because you are out of control in a potentially dangerous situation such as skiing or boating
Surviving a natural disaster such as a hurricane or earthquake
Feeling humiliated in front of classmates, friends, or colleagues.
Suffering the pain of rejection in a romantic relationship.
Being forgotten, ignored or ignored in important moments.
Failing a competition, election, or exam
Being victimized by crime or violence.
If none of the items on the list apply to you, thank goodness. Just think of one that feels most applicable to your life. Now, without connecting too deeply with the intensity of that moment, take a few minutes to visualize the past event. Then write a paragraph about your fear / anxiety memory, trying to recall the details of the event as objectively and objectively as possible. As you write down your scary memoir, ask yourself the following questions:
Am I remembering the memory rather than the event itself?
Is my memory objective? True? Relevant?
Have I embellished or expanded my memory over time?
Did I build the memory on some kind of personal story or mythology?
Have I used the event or memory as an excuse to avoid taking risks or challenges in my career or relationships? In other areas of my life?
Now, going back to our initial concept of fear as an evolutionary gift to keep us safe, ask yourself how that fear-inducing event, and the memory itself, has been a blessing in your life. While I don’t believe that all bad things happen for a reason, I do believe that you can make the most of them. What lessons did you learn? What are you grateful for regarding that situation? Now write another paragraph, even a line or two, describing how that terrible event has turned into a blessing for life.
RISK REINFORCEMENT: Now that you have identified a core fear memory that has limited your life, be on the lookout for it to appear in different disguises. List all the ways your fear has manifested and can manifest itself and make the decision to overcome that fear from now on!