Employing Differences

Employing Differences, Episode 154: What can this fear tell us?

April 25, 2023 Karen Gimnig & Paul Tevis
Employing Differences
Employing Differences, Episode 154: What can this fear tell us?
Show Notes Transcript

"Fear is one of those emotions that we often don't like to feel. We often want to try to get away and get it marginalized. So even if we are open to, 'Hey, we are going to make decisions not purely based on logic, so we are going to listen to some emotions,' fear is often not one of the ones that we want to get snuggly with."

Karen & Paul talk about how to unwrap wisdom that's tied up in fear.

Karen: [00:00:06] Welcome to Employing Differences, a conversation about exploring the collaborative space between individuals.

Paul: [00:00:13] I'm Paul Tevis.

Karen: [00:00:14] And I'm Karen Gimnig.

Paul: [00:00:16] Each episode we start with a question and we see where it takes us. This week's question is, "What can this fear tell us?"

Karen: [00:00:26] So often in the spaces where we work, we want to be logical and clear and not emotional. And certainly there have been any number of episodes where we have said, 'be careful of your fears driving a narrative' or especially, 'unconsciously driving decisions'.

Karen: [00:00:44] But we wanted to take some time today to acknowledge that fear is there for a reason. It's not a mistake of evolution that humans experience fear. And that very often there is useful information to be had. If we pay attention to the fearful feelings, or anxious feelings for that matter that we have, and think about 'where are they coming from?' and 'what do they tell me?'

Paul: [00:01:13] Fear is one of those emotions that we often don't like to feel. We often want to try to get away and get it marginalized. So even if we are open to, "Hey, we are going to make decisions, you know, not purely based on logic". "We are going to listen to some emotions. We're going to live in that space."

Paul: [00:01:31] Fear is often not one of the ones that we want to get snuggly with. And as we point out, it is often useful if we can learn how to listen to it. And so what Karen and I are kind of exploring here is I think one of them is like, "Why do we tend to push away fear?" 

Paul: [00:01:51] When someone speaks from a place of fear. When someone says, "Well, I'm worried this is going to happen." Do we have this strong tendency to say, "Oh, you shouldn't be worried about that!" Because that totally happens.

Paul: [00:02:01] But then also they're like, how can we, without marginalizing it, and with listening to it, how do we not let it run the show? Because what we think is fear can have really useful things to tell us if we know how to listen to it.

Paul: [00:02:14] And to do that, I do think one of the first things to recognize about fear, from an evolutionary standpoint, we know that fear is very powerful and very useful. But we also know, from a lot of results in cognitive psychology, that humans, like all creatures, have a negativity bias.

Paul: [00:02:32] We actually tend to overestimate and over index on things like loss, and worry, and concern. That we will tend to weight those things larger in our minds than they actually are in reality.

Paul: [00:02:49] And there's an evolutionary benefit to that. This is the whole "If I see a stick and I think that it's a snake, I'm way safer than if I see a snake and think it's a stick." So that negativity bias is useful to us. But it's always at work.

Paul: [00:03:04] And so I think one of the things we need to be aware of is that inevitably when we are afraid of something, we are almost always overstating the likelihood, the cost, the impact of the thing that is going on. Just because of how our brains work.

Karen: [00:03:21] And another piece of how our brains work that I think is really useful here is fear is almost always unconscious in its origin. The fear arrives before we have cognitive awareness of the thing that caused it. That's actually how our brain works. That the "Danger! Danger! Danger!" comes through, and then we process the visual cue and go, "There's a stick" or "There's a snake", or "There's a long squiggly thing on the ground over there" even. That the the emotional cue for danger, for fear, comes first.

Karen: [00:03:52] And so what it tells us more than anything else is that we're in the presence of something, that in some way, is bringing up a memory of an experience; of pain, or danger. Doesn't mean we're in pain or danger now. It just means that there's something here that is similar in some way to something that has been damaging in the past.

Karen: [00:04:19] And so if we can recognize both the thing that's useful about that, which is that thing may actually still be here. Or an element of it may still be here. And also it may just be some element. It may not be the whole thing, it may not be the whole package. So we can just hold those things together and acknowledge that fear shows up faster than logic, faster than cognition. And so if it's there, it is telling us something, but it isn't a processed kind of feeling.

Paul: [00:04:49] Yeah. And in fact, what we, current theories of cognition, tell us that the human brain operates on 'first fit pattern matching'. Not 'best fit pattern matching'. But the first thing that we have at hand that seems to resemble whatever it is that is in front of us right now is the thing we'll latch on to. And so that kind of points to, you know, as you said, this is not a fully processed thing that shows up.

Paul: [00:05:14] One of the things that can be really useful to do is go, "Okay, hold on. Let's stop and process this a little bit more." Rather than telling someone that their fear is irrational and that they, you know, need to throw it away. I think we can stop and go, "Okay, what is it about this current situation that is reminding you of something? Or that's making you think of something? That tells you that there might be some danger here?" 

Paul: [00:05:37] And get curious about what it is that is causing that pattern match, or causing that trigger, or that thing, to come up. Because then we can actually start to look at the thing and go, "What are the salient features of this, in this current situation, that we might need to worry about? That we actually might want to pay some attention to? Because there may be some real danger to us in this situation."

Karen: [00:06:03] And in order for that to happen, we need to develop a culture where it's okay to say "This doesn't feel right to me." "I don't know why yet. I've got to figure that out." Because the feeling comes first, right? And if we can't, if we're not allowed to speak it, or process it, until we have the cognitive to go with it, then we lose it. And we probably don't, we probably lose the positive. And without losing the negative parts. Because fear is pretty tenacious.

Karen: [00:06:30] But if we can have a culture where it's okay to say "Something doesn't feel right to me about this", and then, by the way, that it's okay to say, "Oh, I figured it out". It, the thing that was, this reminded me of actually isn't relevant here. I'm good now.

Karen: [00:06:44] But that also, "The last three times we moved this quickly, there were some downsides. And I don't think we've talked through the downsides well enough" or "I got a gut feeling about this that, you know, I don't trust that person we're about to make a deal with". Or, "Are we confident?" 

Karen: [00:07:01] That kind of emotional knowledge, that emotional wisdom is really real. And can be really useful if you can then unpack it enough. So, "I've got a really uneasy feeling about this guy. Well, is it because he looks like somebody who hurt me in the past?"

Karen: [00:07:18] Physical appearance triggers the fear, first pattern match, but probably doesn't predict the behavior. Or is it "Because he's using language or doing things that are very similar behavior patterns to where I've seen it go badly before"? And maybe we do want to pay attention to that.

Karen: [00:07:35] So if we can unpack where is it coming from, then we can discern whether it's something we need to pay attention to.

Paul: [00:07:43] Yeah. What you're pointing to in that that I really like, right, is that we get both sides of it. We get to see what are the pieces of this that are salient, that are relevant, you know. That can actually help the group to make a better decision. Because it may be that there's only one person in the group that's had a bad experience like this before, and so they're able to, like, flag to the rest of the group. "Hey, this is something we should pay attention to." And so they're able to bring that out.

Paul: [00:08:10] But it also, in the process, allows that person to potentially go, "Oh, never mind, this is a false positive." Like, "I can actually see this is the part of the thing that I'm latching onto and I can see how that that actually isn't relevant in this situation".

Paul: [00:08:25] It makes the space for both the group to access the wisdom of its members, but also the individuals, to come to realize that that initial hit of fear that they had was not ill founded, but also does not completely apply. It helps us to see these things a little more actual size.

Paul: [00:08:46] If we talk about how negativity bias kind of blows up these things bigger than they actually are, then actually being supported in a group that has a culture of being able to sort of speak about your fear, about the thing that worries you, and then kind of work through it, even if it's not fully formed yet.

Paul: [00:09:03] Being in a space like that helps you to, as the individual having that experience, to kind of work through it. To see those things instead of how big you've blown them up. To see them a little more actual size, to see where this is a situation where that pattern doesn't apply. But in the situations where it does, it means the group has access to your experience.

Karen: [00:09:25] Yeah, and I think that this points to that concept of group safety. And where can we have that kind of safety. And I will say some groups or some situations, taking the time for those kinds of conversations, doesn't actually work. So you have to kind of use a lot of discernment about 'what is useful?', 'how big is the decision?'. 

Karen: [00:09:46] It is absolutely possible to insist on too much of that processing. And you could see our, our episode a few back, about talking about trying to make everything perfect. Which can be a piece of this. But that if we can really discern both a piece about 'where is our fear coming from?', but also a piece about 'is this something that is a good use of the group's time to work through?' Or, 'is it my own thing that I need to work through?'. 

Karen: [00:10:14] We can really set up a culture where we get the efficiency that we need to function at the thing that we're trying to do. And also really get the benefit of what our emotional wisdom can tell us.

Paul: [00:10:25] And I would just add that from my experience, it's never a bad idea to ask. So, "What could go wrong with this?" Like, if we are spending no time at all thinking about the downsides of something, then we are probably setting ourselves up for failure.

Paul: [00:10:43] And so I advise any group that's making any sort of decision, you know, even if it's "We're just going to spend five minutes going, 'What could go wrong?'" Like, I think we just, it's so funny that we have this negativity bias. And yet in so many cases, we fall prey to what psychologists call the 'planning fallacy'. 

Paul: [00:11:02] Which is, "Well, our situation is different. So it's definitely going to succeed because we're invested in it. Because we're already in there." Like, we don't actually listen to. We don't take the time to dig up what are the things that could go wrong so that even then we can come up with plans for how to deal with them.

Paul: [00:11:18] So I think we should always make at least a little bit of space. And to your point, we don't necessarily need to spend five days going over all of the things that could go wrong with this thing that really is only going to take us about 45 minutes to do.

Karen: [00:11:33] Absolutely. So to cover where we've been. Looking at fear and really recognizing that it can be valuable and useful. And that it doesn't show up in a really obvious logical way to get us to that clear direction forward. It is an evolutionary piece handed down. And it's fast, and it's immediate and strong, but it's not logical.

Karen: [00:11:59] And so if we can get curious about 'where is it coming from?', 'what's the source of it?' What is it about the current situation that is reminding me of something that I have learned is dangerous in the past? And is that thing actually dangerous here? Is it relevant in this case?

Karen: [00:12:16] So if we can have a culture of safety where people can say, "Hey, I don't feel right about this", and then explore that a little bit. And even have the safety to say, "Oh yeah, never mind, I figured it out. I'm good now". But also have the safety to say "It feels an awful lot like this other situation. And you know, I'm not comfortable going forward." 

Karen: [00:12:37] And so taking time to think about what could go wrong. And then tempering that with an understanding that we have negativity bias. That we do need some efficiency and some things. That we may sometimes want to try things. And really just pull all of that together and let it be present in our decision making. That we really can learn a lot from the fearful pieces that we bring. And at the same time, have the efficient decision making that we want.

Paul: [00:13:03] That's going to do it for us today. Until next time, I'm Paul Tevis.

Karen: [00:13:07] And I'm Karen Gimnig. And this has been Employing Differences.