Substance: Useful information, anecdotal and from studies, on how and why fear is generated in the human brain, what purposes it serves and how it can be counter-productive, and how it can be surmounted or diminished.
Style: Straighforward and entertaining.
NOTES:
p. 67 ff: The instinctive reactions to danger are four, not two: freeze, flight, fright, and fight.
p. 152: training reduces fear; skills should be mastered without stress, but practiced under stress; stress shuts down corticol processing, but does not affect automatic (learned) responses. (good quotes on this page)
p. 156: prepare for danger by reducing normal daily stressors; courage needs a margin in which to operate.
p. 162: simulated danger is just as effective in training as real danger; the Navy has a ship devoted to the project, and the results generate superior performance in genuine disaster situations.
p. 170: "the first step in dealing with a crisis is acceptance. ...studies of disaster have found that many people remain in denial in the face of evident danger." "psychologists say that people who have never experiences a fatal catastrophe have difficulty recognizing that one could be unfolding." "..the most terrifying part of a crisis is likely to occur at the very eginning, while the full scope of the danger remains unclear...anticipatory fear is often worse than the experience itself."
p. 171: "For humans, uncertainty in the face of danger magnifies stress by forcing a person to think about a wide range of possible outcomes and weigh the possible strategies for ddealing with those outcomes. It also allows worst-case scenario thinking that can detract from useful problem-solbing. A key early step to combating feat is to find out as much information as possible about the threat at hand."
(see the Grimms' tale about Elsa and the beer; other studies have shown that cancer patients become calmer once they know their diagnosis, and can concentrate on a single course of action.)
p. 172: Inaction is inherently stressful. "the more control a person has over a threatening situation, the less anxiety it provokes." Optimists and extroverts are consistently more proactive; instead of lamenting a half-full glass, they look for a faucet. Taking action of any kind reduces stress.
p. 176: "When faced with fear, be careful whom you mill with. Panic and courage are both contagious." Empathy is useful when animals must react quickly to cues from others in the herd. Anger can displace fear, which is why warriors shout in battle.
p. 180: Positive reframing reduces stressl negative reappraisal increases it. Sharing feelings, positive self-talk, airing negative emotions are useful; mulling over your condition in an aimless way or suppression of emotion is not.
p.188: The story of the exhibition pilot Neil Williams who made a nearly spit-second decision to fly upside down until the last minute before landing, because of a broken wing, shows he had these advantages: extraordinary preparation through thorough habituation to unusual orientations of acrobatic flight, previous in-flight emergencies, fanatical about honing his skills, completely familiar with the structure of the particular plane and its limitations, had a store of knowledge about other people's experiences, fundamentally optimistic and proactive.
p. 190-192: The fact that he could come up with an extremely creative solution under intense pressure is due to "overlearning" maneuvers, as soldiers do, and the integration of experience that constitutes responsive expertise or "mastery".
p. 195: Mastery requires "ten thousand hours or so" of both procedural memory or "routine expertise" and problem-solving ind discussion or "adaptive expertise" and there is "no quick or easy way to accumulate the vast quantities of information that need to be integrated into an expert's store of knowledge." (see also the Parable of the Ten Virgins on accumulating righteoushess). An up-front investement is necessary for a lightening-fast performance (see the book "A Prayer for Owen Meany").
p. 198: Willimams's feat is similar to Sullenberger's landing of a US Airways plane on the Hudson river in January 2009 - each explained what he did and why afterwards in a logical fashion, but the action was reflexive at the time, not reflective, which is not fast enough. "...for the exceptionally well-prepared, reflex can have a kind of genius to it" (see the book "Blink").
p. 204: The prefontal cortex struggles to control our emotions; success can be laudatory tales of courage or disastrous incidents of brainwashed suicide. (the Japanese on Saipan are his example; others include the Jews at Masada, the Jonestown suicides, and others). Refusing to engage with fear by minimizing risk in our modern culture is going too far the other way, generating "a lack of emotional authenticity and connectedness."
p. 207: "Catastrophe victims frequently report that they lead richer lives in the aftermath." They become closer to family and friends; remingind people of their mortality made them vlaue their relationships more while the maintenance of these relationships provided a buffer against the terror of death (reciprocity - hence the value of mourning, public funerals, etc.) "The important lesson is not to be afraid of fear, but to work with it. Accept it as part of your life. We should not try to conquer fear, and we should not try to avoid it." ( )