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Fear is good – it plays an important role in our survival. But too much fear is a problem. Freud used psychoanalysis to unearth deep-seated fears so that patients could address them head-on. These days, the treatment for a phobia – such as an irrational fear of spiders or dogs – is more likely to involve gradually increasing an individual’s exposure to the feared object, while they learn techniques to reduce their anxiety.
But in the future, psychologists may directly tap into the unconscious mind to treat phobias without traumatising people. That at least is the hope of a team of researchers in Japan and the US. They identified a distinctive pattern of brain activity associated with a fear they had induced in volunteers, and found that it could be reduced simply by rewarding them when their brains displayed it – and all the while the subjects were not conscious of this brain activity.
Hack your unconscious
Your unconscious mind is not a black box of fears and desires working to undermine you, but a powerhouse of thought. Discover how you can take advantage
What about modulating our own irrational fears and anxieties? Whether it is triggered by a tiger or a spider, fear, like any emotion, is underpinned by physical signals in the body. These include a stronger and more rapid heartbeat as well as changes in patterns of blood flow. Such bodily signals are critical to the experience of fear, even though they are usually registered unconsciously.
Lowering their intensity will reduce the intensity of the emotion. When you are stressed, you can do this by slowing your breathing rate. This…
