One of the joys of getting really into the Halloween season is getting the chance to control when you feel afraid. Corn mazes, scary movies, haunted trains all have a set ending time. So, here are some small 2 minutes or less listening (or about 5 minutes or less reading) bursts of fear.
1) We recently featured why when people get afraid, they can experience dry mouth.
2) Have you ever been in a tight place like an elevator or a closet and started feeling afraid of suffocating? Here's an explanation for why that fear in most circumstances is probably irrational.
3) Maybe tomorrow you can try calling into work with arithmophobia, the fancy scientific name for a fear of arithmetic. We talk about why several cultures have fears of different numbers such as 13 and 4.
4) You see a rattlesnake on a path. The hair on your arms stands up, your liver is starting to break down sugars, your pupils dilate. Your body reacts in many different ways to get you prepared to fly or fight.
5) What does fear smell like to you? Gasoline? Smoke? Rot? To Zebrafish, it smells like sugar. And to mud crabs, danger (that triggers accompanying fear) smells like recently digested mud crabs.
