Tomorrow, I’ll be in Canada’s Glacier National Park, hoping to see grizzly bears in the wild. Grizzlies are a legitimate threat and for most people will trigger a fear response. My companions and I, on the other hand, are very excited.
What’s interesting is that fear and excitement are almost the same thing in the body. Both of them activate the sympathetic nervous system, the “yellow” state in Polyvagal Theory. My heart rate climbs, adrenaline rises, and my body gets ready to move, and that’s true whether I’m afraid or excited. The physical arousal is nearly identical.
So if the body is doing much the same thing in both cases, what makes one of them fear and the other excitement?
The difference is what is also happening at the same time. With fear, we’ve moved out of the “green” state of safety and into the yellow on its own. With excitement, we’re in the green and the yellow at the same time. The yellow gives us the energy and readiness, while the green gives us a sense of safety. Polyvagal Theory even has a name for that particular combination. It calls it play.
A key point here is that we’re talking about the feeling of safety, not actual physical safety. If we feel safe, our body reacts in specific ways, regardless of whether we actually are safe.
In this case, I’m feeling safe because I’ve done basic risk mitigation. I’ll be hiking with an expert who is familiar with both the area and the bears. I’m carrying bear-spray, and I’m in a group. While there will still be real danger here, I’m feeling safe because of the precautions I’ve taken. That’s what my nervous system cares about. How safe do I feel?
Our nervous system works the same way in the office as it does in the mountains. Think about the last time your heart was pounding before something at work, maybe a big presentation, or a difficult conversation with someone on your team. That pounding heart is the same yellow arousal. Whether it turns into fear or into excitement depends on whether there is any green running with it.
What helps is that we have some influence over which one we get. We can add a sense of safety to the situation. Some of that is real preparation, the kind you can genuinely trust, so that you know you have done the work. Some of it is how we frame the moment to ourselves1. Neither one removes the stakes, and that is fine, because we don’t need the stakes gone. We need enough safety beside the arousal to tip it from fear towards excitement.
So the next time your heart is racing before something that matters, notice that the feeling itself isn’t necessarily telling you to stop. It is the same arousal either way. The question worth asking is what would add a little green, whether that’s more preparation or simply reminding yourself that you are not, in fact, in real danger.
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Alison Wood Brooks (2014) found that people who relabelled their anxiety as excitement, simply by saying “I am excited,” performed better at high-pressure tasks such as public speaking, singing, and maths than those who tried to calm down. Reappraising the arousal, rather than fighting it, proved the more effective move. ↩