Full text and summary of author Trillion Small’s talk titled “Overcoming the Fear of Love” at TEDxSMUWomen conference. In this TEDx talk, Trillion Small discusses the fear of love and shares personal stories to illustrate the impact of past experiences on our reactions to love. She explains how our brains are wired to protect us, leading to a fear response when love has caused pain in the past.
Listen to the audio version here:
TRANSCRIPT:
I love movies, and recently I was watching a movie by Tyler Perry, and one of the main characters was a single mother of three children, and her love life was absolutely nothing to brag about, nothing to talk about. But in this movie, she meets this drop-dead gorgeous man. I mean, he is gorgeous. And he treats her amazing, and her three children. He loves them unconditionally.
But throughout the movie, she begins to push this amazing man away. And he was baffled by it. He said, like, what’s going on? Why are you pushing me away? And in one scene, she said, I just got so scared because I’m so used to being taken advantage of. And him confused, says, but why would I scare you? And she said, because you are everything I’ve ever wanted in a man.
Now, this is a movie, but I promise you, I can totally relate to this woman’s fear. A few years ago, I went to counseling, and I am a counselor, but I did want to go at first because I was like, there’s nothing wrong with me. I’m good. But I’m telling my clients, yes, come to counseling. But I didn’t want to go.
But I ended up going because I kept having failed relationships. And I realized, maybe it’s not the guys. Maybe it’s something within me that I need to really work through. So I was willing to say, hey, put the mirror in front of my face. Let’s deal with this.
So after listening to all of my sob stories about all these bad guys and how horrible they are, my counselor, who’s a male, he crossed his legs and said, Trillian, it kind of sounds like you’re interested in dismissive men. Now, me being very intelligent, I thought, that’s the stupidest thing. Why am I paying you? Like, how dare you insult me? Like, why would I be interested in a man that is not even paying attention to me?
But I left that session. I paid him. I left that session. And I thought about the different guys that I had been dating. And I realized, huh, he was right. He was right. I was attracted to and I attracted dismissive men. So I then began to say, Trillian, what in the world would call somebody to push away what is not good for them or push away what is good for them and accept what is not good for them?
So if I was presented with two different guys, it’s almost as if I was to say, oh, my God, what’s wrong with you? Why are you asking me all these questions? Why do you want to take me out? Like, what are you, the FBI? Right? That’s the good guy.
While this guy over here, it’s, well, he’s not even texting me back. He didn’t even call me. But three weeks later, he texted me and he just said, I’m good, you, with the letter U and didn’t even spell out the whole U. But I’m like, oh, my God, he’s so awesome. Right?
And I’m thinking, Trillian, what’s your problem? So I’m thinking, really, what would provoke a person to push away that love and that support and that nurturing? And I realized we are simply hardwired to protect ourselves for survival. And I realized what would cause a person to push away those things that we deem good are two things, experience and association.
So whenever we have an experience, we then associate a feeling to that experience. So for example, if a young lady was proposed to in Paris, she would associate Paris with love. But if a family member lost one of their loved ones to a bombing in Paris, they would associate Paris with grief.
Then if a mother lost her son in the hands of a police officer, she would associate a cop with hatred. Then on the other hand, if that mother lost her child and the police officer found her child, she would probably associate a police officer with gratitude. And I personally associate canoeing with fear.
How do you associate something so fun with fear? A few years ago, my brother and I went canoeing. I was in the front. He was in the back. And one mile in, it’s a four-mile trip, one mile in, we are having a good old time. And I look over to the right and I see a stick. It was a red and a yellow and a black stick, right? Yeah, you see where this is going.
And so I’m like, oh, great stick. And then the stick raises its head. And I realized that’s not a stick. That’s a snake. And he is looking at me. And he’s swimming towards me. And in that moment, I drop my paddle and I turn my back and I start screaming for dear life. I wish there was a camera to record this.
And my first thought was, don’t look at it because it won’t see you. So that’s why I turn my back. I don’t look at it. And then my second thought was, jump in the water. Get away from the snake, right? Because that’s the smartest thing to do, Trillion. You just jump right on in there with the snake. Great.
Thank goodness my brother thought a little bit quicker and a little bit more rational. And he took his paddle and he whacked the snake to its death. Now, the snake was gone, but that fear, oh, that fear was still in there because the moment we stepped foot on ground, I said, I will never do that again.
I will never go canoeing again. Why? Because it was associated with fear.
So in this movie, what we can realize or what we can take away from that threat system is that our limbic system, when we are engaging in fear, what we can take from those different scenarios is that our limbic system and our threat system is being engaged. And so our limbic system is responsible for your rewards, your emotions, your memory, right? Your learning.
So I’m not going to talk about all the different parts that are involved in the limbic system, but I want you to remember the thalamus. I want you to remember the amygdala. I want you to remember the hippocampus and the hypothalamus. So I’ll explain.
Your thalamus is responsible for taking in all of your senses, all five senses, the things that you’re experiencing in the world. Your thalamus takes in that information. It then sends it down to your amygdala. I call her Amy for short. Amy gets that information. She looks at it and she is responsible for your emotional reactivity. So she looks at it and says, either she’ll say, yes, this is a threat, or no, this is not a threat. But she doesn’t want to misread, so she sends the information to her assistant. I call her Miss Hippo. She’s your hippocampus.
I have an appellee name because she has a large filing cabinet of all of your memories. So hippocampus, Miss Hippo looks through the files and she’s trying to determine, have we experienced this before? And if she says, yes, but no danger, cool, like keep going with your life. But if she even remotely recognizes a sense of threat, whether it was real or perceived, a real or a perceived threat, she says, oh my gosh, Amy, we are in danger. So she sends the file back to Amy.
Amy sounds the alarm. We’re in danger. Real or perceived. Amy then sends the signal down to your hype man. He’s hype-othalamus, right? I call him hype. So your hypothalamus hypes you up. He pumps you with adrenaline and that stress cortisol, getting you ready to either do Creed II, like Michael B. Jordan, you’re either going to fight that thing out, or you are going to run.
Now, all while that is happening, the information is also sent to your prefrontal cortex, which is closely connected. Now, your prefrontal cortex is your executive functioning, part of your brain. It thinks more rational. What it does is it looks at that information, and it either confirms, yes, this is a threat, keep the process going, or your prefrontal cortex says, guys, chill out. No big deal. Chill out. And then it’ll cease. The process will cease if you have a properly functioning limbic system.
So to make this more clear, if a bear was to walk into this room, your thalamus will see the bear and say, that looks like a threat. And it’ll send the information down to your amygdala and your hippocampus. They’ll confirm. Hype man hypes you up and gets you ready to either fight the bear or run from it. And then you are ready to take action.
But then your prefrontal cortex gets the information and says, oh, it’s a mascot. So then that whole system, everything that was just getting started to get you ready to fight or run, it says, oh, we’re good. Just go take a selfie with it. We’re okay.
One of the things that I wanted to express to you all is that you can truly be fearful of love. Every experience that we have is filed away and it’s pulled for future references.
But what happens if you file a memory incorrectly, especially as it relates to a threat? In the movie that I started with, the lady who was fearful of love, somewhere in her memory bank, there was a storage of information that said, connectivity is connected and associated with fear and maltreatment. And the only way that her brain could have gathered that information and stored it in such a way was to have, in the past, reached out and tried to connect with other people and that reach was met with hurt.
So remember, our brains are wired to protect us and for survival. So what do we do if we think something is even tampering with our survival? We fight it or we run from it. Yes, it’s possible to be fearful of love, especially if you have never experienced true authentic love.
Why? Because things that are unfamiliar can be very frightening. Now there’s different types of love, right? You have the relationship love, the romantic love, you have the friendship love. But I just want to talk today about that agape love. I mean that unconditional love that when you connect with it, it gives you a sense of protection and security. I mean that type of love that truly sets you free when you connect with it.
So if our responses are based on the memories filed, that means the fear of love is a memory recall issue and it is a lack of knowledge. So here’s an example. Guy: Baby, I love you. Girl: How do you know? How do you know? Right? We think that emotions are feelings. Sometimes they give us a little buttery feeling.
But love truly is knowledge and intelligence. Another scenario. Friend one: Girl, I really think you should get back into the world and start dating again. It’s been like five years. Friend two: Girl, no. The last time I tried that, I got hurt. Memory recall issue. So what she was doing in that scenario was recalling the last time she did it and it created a fear in the present for a future event that hasn’t even happened yet.
So no, I am not proposing that we create a memory eraser. Sometimes I would like to. I’m like, if I can just erase that part right there. From that moment to that moment. What I’m instead proposing is that we create new counteracting memories that override the lies and the stories we have been telling ourselves. So you see, I believe that our greatest sufferings sometimes is not even from what actually happened to us. It’s from the lies and the stories we told ourselves after the event. They left me. They hurt me.
So now the lie that we tell ourselves and the story that we tell ourselves is, well, I must not be good enough. Maybe I’m not wanted. Maybe I wasn’t the awesome woman that I thought I was. Those are the lies and the stories we begin to tell ourselves.
So how in the world do we decrease the strength of these unhelpful lies? And how do we forge brand new helpful memories? And there’s one way, I believe, that I’d like to share. And that’s through a form of operant conditioning called extinction. So what extinction is, is it’s basically when you extinguish or you stop the behavior that’s connected to a memory by ceasing to reinforce what used to trigger you.
So I’ll explain. What researchers did with rats was they would train the rat to become fearful of a sound. And they would do this by sounding the alarm and administering a shock. They would sound the alarm and administer a shock, so much so to where they could simply sound the alarm and the rat would be fearful of the sound, not even the shock, because they stopped the shock.
And then they wanted to make that learned behavior, they wanted to extinguish that fear so they kept on sounding the alarm but not administering the shock until the rat learned to no longer fear that sound. That’s extinction. So it’s almost as if the rat’s brain said, okay, guys, Amy and hippocampus, Miss Hippo over here, that sound used to trigger a response in us. And it used to be a threat, but it’s no longer a response. So you don’t have to be fearful anymore.
It’s almost as if the brain was to say the coast is now clear. You are free to no longer fear that experience. And back in March 21, 2016, I had my very first extinction experience. It was the first day in 26 years that I heard my father’s voice for the very first time. We had no connection for 26 years.
And one of the very first things that my father said was, I have been looking for you. And he said, I never stopped loving you. And in that moment, I’m breaking down crying on the phone. The reason why that statement meant so much to me was because for 26 years, I had been telling myself that I’m not wanted, that I’m not good enough, and that no man would truly love me. So when he said those words, it was as if those lies were completely eradicated, because they were met with new knowledge, supported and espoused by an experience.
And so what I want to tell you all is that love didn’t hurt. Love didn’t abuse you. It didn’t leave you. It was the person that you loved that did those things to you. And what happens, though, is we end up generalizing that experience and saying, that person hurt me, so I’m never doing this again.
And what happens is we forsake the ability to be who we truly are, which is loving beings. And we forsake the opportunity to receive what we truly need and love and desire, which is love and belonging. Psychologist Maslow says that we will never be able to reach our fullest potential if we do not obtain a sense of love and belonging.
So I wonder, what would life be like if we fully surrendered to love, if we fully let go and said, I’m willing to receive this thing. Maybe even if it’s unfamiliar, I’m willing to receive this thing that you are telling me has the opportunity and the ability to give me a sense of freedom. What would life be like if we surrendered this grandiose illusion that we can control outcomes?
And I get it. It can be difficult because sometimes our greatest desire and our greatest fear simultaneously can be to know and be known by others. Why? Because in order for me to let you know me, I have to stand here and be vulnerable. I have to stand here metaphorically naked and unashamed. But that’s uncomfortable, so I’d rather hide because I don’t want you to see the true me because what if you reject me?
And again, that reminds me of the last time. So I’d rather just not. I’d rather just not do that. But the only way that we can get to that solid place that we actually truly desire is to allow ourselves to let love in and to love others, so much so that we can obtain that freedom that we ultimately desire.
The fear of love is an issue of knowledge, and the antidote is knowledge rooted in truth. And I thought you guys might want to know that I did go canoeing again, and I loved it. The reason why I went canoeing again is because I refused to let fear tell me what I can and cannot do. And so I said, I’m going to do this again until I overcome this fear. And that’s my hope and desire for you all to do it again. Try again. Try love again. Just one more time.
Thank you.
SUMMARY OF THIS TALK:
Trillion Small’s talk, titled “Overcoming the Fear of Love,” explores the deep-seated fear that some individuals have when it comes to accepting and embracing love in their lives. Through personal anecdotes and insights, she highlights several key takeaways:
1. Recognition of Fearful Behavior: Trillion begins her talk by recounting a movie scene where the protagonist, despite meeting a wonderful partner, pushes love away due to her fear of being hurt. This behavior is a central theme of her talk, emphasizing that fear can lead people to reject what is good for them.
2. Self-Reflection and Counseling: Trillion shares her own experience of seeking counseling to address her repeated failed relationships. This reflects the importance of self-reflection and seeking professional help when struggling with matters of the heart.
3. Understanding Attraction Patterns: Trillion’s counselor pointed out that she was attracted to dismissive men. This realization highlights the importance of understanding our attraction patterns and why we may gravitate toward certain types of people.
4. Experience and Association: Trillion discusses how our past experiences shape our associations and perceptions. Positive experiences lead to positive associations, while negative ones can lead to fear and avoidance.
5. Limbic System’s Role: Trillion delves into the role of the limbic system in processing emotions and memories. The thalamus, amygdala, hippocampus, and hypothalamus all play crucial roles in determining our responses to perceived threats.
6. Fear of Love and Unfamiliarity: Trillion emphasizes that fear of love often arises from unfamiliarity, especially if one has never experienced authentic, unconditional love. She distinguishes different types of love, focusing on agape love, which brings a sense of protection and security.
7. Emotions vs. Knowledge: Trillion challenges the notion that love is primarily an emotional feeling. Instead, she presents love as knowledge and intelligence, emphasizing that it’s essential to understand what love truly is.
8. Memory Recall Issues: Fear of love can be linked to incorrectly filed memories, where past experiences cause individuals to associate love with hurt or rejection. Trillion encourages the creation of new, positive memories to override these negative associations.
9. Extinction and Operant Conditioning: Trillion discusses the concept of extinction, where behaviors associated with negative memories can be overcome by ceasing to reinforce those behaviors. This can help individuals extinguish their fear of love.
10. Surrendering to Love: Trillion encourages her audience to surrender to love and let go of the illusion of controlling outcomes. She acknowledges that vulnerability is uncomfortable but necessary for authentic connections.
11. The Desire for Love and Belonging: Referencing Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, Trillion highlights the importance of love and belonging in human fulfillment and personal growth.
12. Overcoming Fear: Trillion shares her personal triumph of overcoming her fear of canoeing by refusing to let fear dictate her actions. She encourages her audience to do the same with love, to try again, and not let fear hold them back.
In her talk, Trillion Small emphasizes that the fear of love is rooted in past experiences and associations, and overcoming it requires a shift in mindset, the creation of new positive memories, and the willingness to embrace vulnerability. Ultimately, she encourages her audience to take the brave step of trying love again, as it is essential for personal growth and fulfillment.
