Overcoming Fears
Heather explains how gradual exposure helps people conquer irrational fears by habituating the brain. Neil and Chuck discuss the difference between good and bad tolerance, using pigeons and spiders as examples. Heather delves into evolutionary and learned fears, showing how exposure can lead to fear reduction.In this clip
From this podcast
StarTalk Radio
The Science of Scary with Neil deGrasse Tyson, Mathias Clasen, & Heather Berlin
Related Questions
If the goal is to diminish the physiological response, then if the person works to change their physiological response immediately after being triggered, would that over time also diminish the physiological response and therefore break the conditioning? Am I right?
For example, if a person had a traumatic experience with a spider, but every time they see the spider or get activated through some trigger, and immediately after use breathwork to calm the body, would that work like retelling a narrative to extinguish the fear? Did I miss something?
Andrew talks about a process to erase fear and traumas, and he says that first you need to extinguish the fear or trauma by retelling the narrative. The whole point of that is to diminish the physiological response, right?