No born hero.
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Editor’s note: There are no natural heroes, and all the qualities beyond ordinary people must have undergone long-term training. Felix, who has set a number of world-first records in his more than ten years of parachuting adventure, is not inherently fearless. He is also afraid of unknown things, but after training, the public is presented with a A fearless hero who can fly at supersonic speeds. This article is translated from Medium, author John Tierney and Roy F. Baumeister, the original title is “How to Train the Fearless Mind”, I hope to inspire you.
Before Felix Baumgartner decided to jump off a hot air balloon 24 miles from Earth, his fans knew he was the fearless Felix. He once jumped from the two tallest buildings in the world, and jumped across the English Channel with carbon fiber wings. He once stood on the edge of a 600-foot-deep cave in Croatia, plunging his head into the black void, and winning fearlessly as always.
The plan to make the first supersonic leap from the stratosphere did not disturb him either. He rushed to the Mojave Desert in California to train under the guidance of aerospace experts. The Mojave Desert is located near the air base for the first supersonic flight. When asked what the risks were, he calmly pointed out the way he might die while performing his mission: this giant tulle balloon (about 40 acres) is thinner than a dry-cleaning bag, a few thousand before the ascent process Within feet (about 3,000 meters), it could be destroyed by the wind on the ground and fall to the ground without the opportunity to open a parachute. And if his space suit loses pressure in the thin air at 120,000 feet, his blood will boil.
There is one thing that is even more worrying. He may lose control of his body during the descent. When he accelerates to more than 700 miles per hour, one part of his body will exceed the speed of sound, while the other part is still subsonic, which may cause the body to rotate extremely fast and blood to the eyes.
Felix said one afternoon during training: “We just do n’t know when to be physicallyWhat happens at supersonic speeds. I was really scared, but I learned to control my fears and not let them hinder me. “Anyway, he thinks so.
At the age of 41, he performed more than 2500 skydivings as an Austrian paratrooper and professional adventurer, but this time he had to tackle a new challenge: putting on a custom spacesuit and wearing a helmet. When he was training heavily on the ground, he could not feel the outside air, and he could hear nothing but his own breathing. Sometimes he felt like he was trapped and desperately wanted to escape. But he remained confident.
He said:” This is a psychological problem, I do n’t worry because I am very good at doing my own psychology in advance Build, put yourself through the test, and redouble your efforts. “
Later that day, when he entered the wind tunnel for his first flight test, his confidence seemed to make sense. The bulky compression suit and helmet made any exercise awkward, and he walked like a Hulk with arthritis. By adjusting his arms and legs, he can rise or fall in the tunnel and keep his body at an angle of 45 degrees to the ground. He and the engineering team are very happy, because everyone seems to know that he has the classic qualities of an astronaut. They were ready to move to the next step, simulating a five-hour ascent in the thin, cold air of the stratosphere by placing Felix and his pressurized tank in a high-altitude cabin at an air force base in Texas.
On the eve of going to Texas, Felix packed a suitcase in his apartment in Los Angeles, but he couldn’t sleep that night. He kept thinking: five hours. Can he lock himself in the space suit and helmet for so long? At dawn, he got the answer: impossible. At 6 am he booked a ticket back to Austria.
Fearless Felix finally succumbed. He wasn’t afraid to go into space one day and leap from a distance of 24 miles from the ground, but today he was too scared to be able to sit safely on the ground in a space suit for 5 hours.
In the beginning, he felt a little uncomfortable after wearing the suit and the helmet for a few minutes. Then he started to be afraid before putting on his helmet. When he left the apartment by car, he was nervous as soon as he saw the Getty Museum because he knew that he was only an hour away from the training site in the desertCheng. When he reached the outskirts of Lancaster and saw Palmdale, he felt anxiety again, which meant that he was only 15 minutes away from the training site.
When he entered the building and put on that suit, he started to notice some of the most subtle things : The neon lights in the locker room are too bright, and he can’t stand the smell of the helmet seal rubber.
In the early training, he showed great self-confidence, but what has changed now? Felix was also unclear, but he was right in one of his previous conversations: it was a spiritual thing.
The brain has evolved to protect the body. The brain has evolved rather slowly, and the main evolutionary way is to add new structures instead of replacing old ones. The brain responds to new dangers by creating new systems.
Neuroscientists have identified three major threat warning systems. The simplest, and from the evolutionary point of view, the oldest, is the basal ganglia system. These neuron populations exist and function in simple reptiles, and they may operate in a rather automatic, fixed manner. They can only detect standard types of threats and send out alerts, which is enough for the animals to fight or turn and run away.
Later, another threat-alarm system emerged during evolution, often referred to as the edge system. It includes the amygdala, a small but important structure in the middle of the brain that triggers emotional changes in the face of threats, dangers, and problems. The limbic system does not replace the basal ganglia system. It works with the basal ganglia system to better understand the threats and respond flexibly.
Even before the advent of language, these systems have evolved, and they respond even if we don’t realize the threat ourselves. Neuroscientists have discovered that when they see a hostile face, they can trigger a response to the amygdala before other parts of the brain can react. The basal ganglia may function in a proactive manner and gradually evolve into overreaction. The basal ganglia system often causes animals to escape, and these animals could have remained safely in place, but the cost of this error is far less than the risk of arrest. Today, people don’t feel that many deadly threats in their suburban homes, but the long-evolving part of the brain still reacts in the same way: safety is better than regret.
With the long-term evolution, the third alert system appeared: the prefrontal cortex. “Anterior” means that its position in the brain is in front, so it may be something completely new in evolution. It is more developed in humans than in other species. The prefrontal cortex is involved in many very human activities, such as logical reasoning, conscious thinking and executive control. It understands the symbolic meaning of an event, including thinking in words. Therefore, it is more flexible and specialized than the basal ganglia or limbic system, but it can also activate those older systems. If an idea, such as Felix’s “I’m passing that lake, so I have to wear a spacesuit in 15 minutes” triggers a basic sense of fear or danger, he may make emotional and irrational Reaction.
The prefrontal cortex can also handle the idea of happiness, such as completing this activity, Felix can set a world record, but the feeling of happiness will not be so strong or rapid. In the brain and nervous system, negative reactions dominate.
The negative prejudice of the brain affected Felix Baumgartner, but his heart rate increased when he saw the lake or smelled the rubber seal on the helmet, which did nothing to him benefit. To jump out of the stratosphere, Felix must control his inner fears, control his amygdala, and suppress the “fight or flight” response of the autonomic nervous system. He had thought he could do it, but it turned out that he needed the help of someone who knew the psychology.
Fei Licks is awkward. In 25 years of skydiving and fixed-point skydiving, he has been the one who can complete the task.
On his first meeting with Michael Jevis(Michael Gervais) When I sat down and talked, I didn’t feel much better. Jervis is a clinical psychologist. His specialty is dealing with “high-risk environments.” He needs to use a strategy called “minimization.” This is UCLA psychology. A term introduced by Shelley Taylor in the 1990s. Taylor’s theory argues that, unlike good things, bad things cause two very different reactions: mobilization and minimization.
Mobilization (mobilization) puts you into a high-speed operation, allowing you to quickly deal with the current threat. This process can be caused by unconscious physiological reactions, or it can be the result of deeper thinking and more careful analysis. May be useful in the short term. But it doesn’t make sense to increase adrenaline, cortisol, and other stress hormones indefinitely. Once the threat disappears, the minimization response is the release of endorphins, serotonin, and oxytocin to produce a good feeling. Beginners of skydiving experience a moment of fear when they jump off the plane, but they usually feel very happy when they land. The scarier a horror movie is, the more viewers like it, because they will feel happy and relaxed after watching it.
To help Felix reduce his negative emotions, Reeves made him imagine that he was tied to his clothes and couldn’t escape. What will happen? Felix estimated that the panic would cause him a heart attack.
Revis said: “You will not panic to death.” That suit is not so powerful. The threat is mental, not physical. The way to overcome it is to find all Incentives to document how anxiety accumulates as you move from an apartment in Los Angeles to a locker room in Lancaster.
Revis in Felix’s mind reproduces the journey to the training site: a fast-moving train. When Felix began to worry about wearing the space suit in Los Angeles, a series of negative thoughts immediately appeared in his mind. His train passed the Getty Museum and the lake. He saw the neon lights in the locker room, smelled the rubber seal of the helmet, heard the visor click and shut, and the train was accelerating in the direction of disaster. Jervis had Felix draw a sketch of the route and a train, monitoring his heart rate as he imagined himself passing every point along the way.
If Felix’s heart rate and breathing accelerate at some point, he must stop to calm himself before moving on. Jervis asked him to rate his anxiety, from 1 to 10. When he passed the lake, if the level of anxiety rose to 3 degrees, he would have to reduce the level of anxiety to 1 degree to move on. If the level of anxiety rises again when he arrives in the locker room, he will have to wait for himself to calm down before putting onThat suit.
Reeves’ goal is not only to reduce Felix’s fear, but also to eliminate his fear. In the process, he uses two skills taught by Reeves to Felix: good thinking and good breathing. Jervis told him that instead of treating the suit as a prison, think about how special it was. It will provide you with pure oxygen to breathe and keep your blood from boiling. The smell of the rubber seal is the smell of success. This suit will make you a superhero.
Felix is skeptical of this inspiring statement, understandably, but it is a mature technology of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). CBT is essentially a set of strategies to overcome negative biases. To date, no other treatment has been studied so thoroughly, and no other treatment has been found to be so safe and effective for such a wide range of problems, including depression, anxiety, and other diseases.
A CBT technology used by Felix is called a “coping statement,” and it has been shown to help people overcome their fears. In laboratory experiments, this method has even been shown to improve people’s ability to endure physical pain. Jervis repeatedly repeats these positive words, which help Felix relieve his anxiety whenever Felix’s anxiety begins to build up. The more these words are repeated, the more believable they become. Hearing more, when Felix was wearing the suit and looking in the mirror, he started thinking: This is so cool.
In order to enhance Felix’s patience, they initially only wore helmets instead of full suits, so he The arm can also feel the air, thus avoiding the sense of panic that is isolated from the world. At the first treatment, Felix’s anxiety reached 8 degrees at the end of the hour, and they stopped the treatment. But in the second treatment, Felix learned a new way of breathing, and he could last longer with the whole suit. When there is not enough positive utterance, when the rationality from the prefrontal cortex does not match the original response of the amygdala, Felix concentrates on deep breathing. This triggers the parasympathetic nervous system, which is a response to a fight or flight.
Felix will press his hands and feet tightly together, hold his breath for 30 seconds, and then slowly take a deep breath until anxiety passes and he is ready to enterStep up. When wearing a helmet, he did not feel as anxious as before, but was very calm. If his anxiety level rose from 1 to 3 when the mask was closed, it would still be controllable at this level. He just kept repeating the phrase “This will make me a superhero” and then kept breathing deeply until his mood returned to normal.
He said, “Breathing is really helpful, although it sounds simple. Just let fresh air into the lungs and everything changes. Within a few weeks, he spent a lot of time adapting to clothing. By the time of the large-scale test of the simulation task, he had not slept through the night for this. In his opinion, the five hours in that suit seemed to pass quickly. When he came out, the team members were all for him Applause. Fearless Felix seems to be back in the building.
Translator: Jane
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