function to enhance fear and messaging to engage the stress response in the brainstem or to engage the prefrontal cortex for behavioral control and resilience coping (Sinha et al. 2016). Sitting next to the amygdala lies one of the oldest brain structures; the hypothalamus. It relays fear-related information to the amygdala and prefrontal cortex and is a critical structure for learning, memory, and fear behavior (Hasan et al. 2019). Oxytocin, a neuropeptide produced by the hypothalamus and released by the pituitary gland, plays a role in the behavioral response to fear, specifically freezing as an expression of fear (see Appendix B). It's commonly known as a bonding hormone after childbirth and may explain why women when stressed will “tend and befriend” bringing others close by in response to threat.
The hippocampus is a brain structure that arches over the amygdala and hypothalamus. It is a part of the limbic system and regulates motivation, emotion, learning, and memory. Fear is associated memories and the hippocampus stores long-term memories, making them harder to forget. People who have PTSD, OCD, or depression may have dysregulated limbic systems that make fear extinction or lessening the trauma of memories much harder.
Fear, whether learned or acquired, triggers a fear response. The fear response triggers adaptive behaviors including activating the amygdala and the autonomic nervous system through the vagal nerve and the Hypothalamic-Pituitary-Adrenal (HPA) axis that controls the stress reaction or stress response. The stress response is generated by any potential or real threat or stress and triggers the HPA to release cortisol throughout the body. As a result, the brain and body focus resources on survival: release fats and glucose into the bloodstream for energy; increase the heart rate; inhibit digestion; suppress the immune system; and slow down reproductive hormones. Acute stressors, if resolved, allow the body to recover but chronic stress contributes to cardiovascular disease, anxiety, depression, diabetes, and impairments in learning and memory. When stressors are removed, both brain, body and psychological impairments can be reversed.
The prefrontal cortex, a part of the cerebral cortex covering the frontal lobe allows us to understand, process, and behave in a way that integrates our fear and stress into thinking and behaviors to regulate our stress and fear response. Our prefrontal cortex has two lobes: the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and the medial prefrontal cortex that play a big role in coping, resilience, memory, and how we think about our circumstances that can help overcome, learn from, and extinguish fear. Using our cognitive thoughts to reframe and reappraise, listening and watching how others process fear and tapping into our courage to persevere through fear begins and ends in our brain.
Our brain wants us to be safe but not afraid. We have the cognitive tools to switch from fear to courage and adapt to fearful circumstances.
In a classroom setting with high levels of anxiety or stress, you can see how learning may be impacted based on the outside environment and internal perception. Our ancestors were masters at changing environments and solving problems under unique and new circumstances to allow us to survive and thrive. Students and educators can utilize the same advantage with awareness and training, if we use our head and heart.
Another evolutionary asset that is on our side is our tendency to form close bonds. As we said above, our fear-learning unfolds over the course of our life in relation to our caregivers. After a baby is born, its brain is dependent on sensory stimuli to grow, adapt, and change structure and functioning. The length of time for this development is longer in humans and necessary for social bonding. The human brain takes the longest for maturation and is impacted by structural factors like environment, stressors, economic resources, genetics, and social stability. Humans' extended infancy and childhood mean we have a multitude of influences on brain and body development. At birth, our brains are 30% of the size they will grow to as we mature into adults. By the age of three, the brain is 80% of adult size, and 90% by the age of five. That means childhood influences, exposures, and resources from birth to five can have a long-lasting impact on brain functioning.
Fear Becomes Courage
Our mind is fear-based because our primitive, lizard brain wants to control our reality and keep us safe. When we are faced with a situation that makes us confused, on guard or afraid, our lizard brain takes over. Although fear itself is not an emotion, it can push us into a river of feelings. However, we have the power to control fear and use our physical and mental response to a fearful situation to our advantage by engaging our wizard brain, which is responsible for executive functioning, in other words, “thinking about thinking.”
When we are traumatized or have a terror event, our brain combines all of our sensory material, thoughts, feelings, beliefs, and creates a semantic memory (events and facts). Semantic memory imprints on the brain like indelible ink; it never goes away. Since we can't erase a semantic memory, we can use our courage to face our fears and create a new more powerful memory that incorporates our purpose, strength, resilience, and healthy coping skills to overcome events that happen in our life.
Keanon Lowe did just that.
On a crisp, but gray spring day in Northeast Portland, ex-pro football star Keanon Lowe calmly drove his dented red Cherokee to work at Parkrose High School not too far from his modest home. As he bit into his apple and gulped his coffee his mind undoubtedly was on his part-time job as the school security guard, but also, on his double-coaching duties as the head coach of the football and track teams. Keanon had two jobs at Parkrose. Neither were easy nor left him financially comfortable, but he chose to be there because, for him, being a positive role model for teenagers was invaluable.
Parkrose High is not unlike other city schools across the nation. Almost three-quarters of the diverse student body at Parkrose qualify for a free lunch because of their families' financial status. The grim brick on the outside in no way reflects the emotions and relationships – positive and negative – swirling inside. Keanon came to the school to make a difference after losing a childhood buddy to a devastating drug overdose. He brought to the job his life experience and knowledge of sport and competition. Lowe says of the school, “I've always known that Parkrose, they didn't win at anything … it's a small forgotten school.” He continues, “That's what attracted me to the place” (Bishop 2019).
Growing up a stone's throw away from Parkrose in a suburb eight miles away, Lowe was raised by a single mother. Taking responsibility for his siblings at a young age, he had a great ethic and set an example for others. As a college star at the University of Oregon he played fearlessly, undersized but very determined on special teams, both defensive and offensive, a testament to his skill. His teammates and coaches describe him as unselfish but tough, as well-known as much as a leader as he was a player. Keanon Lowe was a first-year coach at Parkrose when he got a call to escort a depressed student from another building to the guidance officer. Leaving his cramped office that he shared with another security guard, he willingly complied.
Walking on the concrete walkway bordered by sparse grass, he joked with students as he passed them. The sun had come out in full force and felt good. As he reached the classroom where the students were learning about government, he heard screams bounce off the cement hallway walls. The shrill screams were soon replaced by the sounds of a human stampede of panicked students rushing out of their class because one of their classmates had a weapon, a shotgun partly sticking out from under his black trench coat.
That student was the same one that Keanon Lowe had been tasked to get. Awkwardly face to face, the black metal of the long gun served as a blistering ruler; the distance between them measured by the shotgun squarely placed in the upset student's trembling hands. Looking directly into the teenager's eyes, Lowe saw confusion, anger, desperation, and tears. As the distressed young man suddenly lifted the shotgun to turn it on himself, the remaining students ran for their lives.
Lowe could have too.
He did not.
Keanon Lowe
