Nocebo......The Power of Fear

We're all familiar with the placebo effect.

Likely some of us are familiar with the progress in the field, with scientific research indicating that it is not as much  'just placebo', as it was thought to be earlier.....lightly and dismissively treated by many, especially in the field of medicine. 

Placebo is now known as that element which triggers the brains own pharmacy and has the most wonderous and efficacious of treatments. The trigger can come from anywhere.....the medication, the doctor, the alternative treatment, faith, hypnosis, anywhere. It's yet nascent, but appears to have immense possibilities.

Similar is nocebo. The darkside of placebo. 

Placebo and Nocebo are in essence the expectation set by the mind. If it's ruled by the power of fear, it could have aligned outcomes. It is said that nocebos are probably more powerful than placebos...and all evidence shows that the human mind finds them easier to create and they last longer.

This is because survival is the deepest instinct and there is nothing more powerful that happens in our brains and bodies than fear.

And if you think about it, from an evolutionary perspective, it makes sense. Which is a more important feeling to have, as we’re surviving in the forest, fear, or hope and optimism? Probably the fear, because it’ll keep you from getting eaten by the lion. So it makes sense why it’s more powerful.

It's a legacy we carry. It's now about being aware. 

While fear is needed as a protector, what happens when we are overtaken by irrational fears.

In fact this is what caught my attention in what I was reading; the author giving an example of when he found himself irrationally fearful when his child was to be vaccinated. He spoke of how there was this one part of him that was overtaken by fear, and the other, more rational part of him that was embarrassed by the other part and he's like "i don't know this guy, I'm not here, I don't know where he came from".....and how the little boy said "does daddy need a lollipop?". And he says he did.

He talks of how even as a science writer, he decided to write about it. 

"I understand fully why anything with your kids is that much more powerful— why there’s so much fear around not just vaccinations, but a lot of things with your kids, because it’s our most vulnerable space. 

And at this stage what we need is empathy, someone who understands, who is willing to look at the fear and not the irrationality of it"

This awareness ties in beautifully to 'the most awkward thoughts are the ones that need airing'.

To acknowledge our fears,  know when they're irrational....and find the way to deal with them. Else they'll become your nocebos.