Michael Merzenich, Ph.D., and Henry Mahnke, Ph.D.

We are in a season of fear. We’re facing election scares just five days after Halloween. The quadrennial political elections have become a battle that appears to threaten our very existence.

People ask: what happens in our brain? Why do we experience so much fear?

The answer is simple: scary things activate the brain.

When you encounter scary things, your brain kicks into gear to figure out how to survive.

How the brain reacts

When your brain goes into the fight-or-flight response, it takes control of your body and increases your heart rate to pump blood at higher pressure to your muscles (and less to areas that are less important). You must be ready to fight or flee.

Fear heightens your alertness while shutting down your thinking brain because you will react. The amygdala, the almond-shaped part of the brain that processes emotions, lights up, recognizing that survival may be at stake.

In general, scary things capture our interest like nothing else.

Context matters

Of course, context matters in all of this. How real and imminent is the danger?

That’s why we love watching scary movies. Such experiences are designed to be frightening, and we should be afraid of them – if they were real. But your thinking brain overcomes this by recognizing the context of the situation and controlling your response—just enough to get the adrenaline rush of feeling fear without having to run.

This explains why we like Halloween.

However, the elections became very scary. Has the world become scarier? Is the 2024 election worse than, for example, the 1940 and 1944 elections (World War II) or 1968 (riots and murders)? Or have political parties figured out how to motivate us to vote and donate by painting a picture of a coming apocalypse?

It’s hard to say, and the stakes certainly seem high. And, of course, there is something to be afraid of. We just had several terrifying storms that reminded us of climate change, we hear daily about existential threats to humanity from AI, and the daily news is filled with war and fear.

Counteract fear and stress

In this age of fear, it is important to remember to reward the brain and balance out the negativity.

Develop a reboot strategy. Take time each day to balance your over-reactive amygdala. Find regular healthy activities to reset the happy side of your neurological responses.

Engage your “thinking brain” as a habit to overcome the fears that may have become such a hard-to-swallow part of your daily emotional appetite. And consider actively working to change our world for the better as an alternative to all fears.