Scared Of Something?

Confront it - safely - and you can conquer it

Fear is “an unpleasant and often strong emotion caused by anticipation or awareness of danger.” It is one of the basic human emotions, helping us to recognize and respond to dangerous situations and threats. It is a survival mechanism programmed into our nervous system from birth. 

The process of creating fear takes place in the brain and is entirely unconscious. When you experience fear, your breathing speeds up, your eyes widen, your heart races, your muscles tighten and your skin sweats.
All these physical responses are intended to help you survive a dangerous situation by preparing you to either run for your life or fight for your life (thus the term “fight or flight”). 

Sometimes fear is triggered by something that is startling or unexpected (like a loud noise), even if it’s not actually dangerous. That’s because the fear reaction is activated instantly — a few seconds faster than the thinking part of the brain can process or evaluate what’s happening. As soon as the brain gets enough information to realize there’s no danger (“Oh, it’s just a balloon bursting — whew!”), it turns off the fear reaction. All this can happen in seconds.

In humans, as in all animals, the purpose of fear is to promote survival. If we couldn’t be afraid, we wouldn’t survive for long. We’d be walking into oncoming traffic, stepping off rooftops and carelessly handling poisonous snakes. Experiencing fear every now and then is a normal part of life. 

Public speaking (speaking in front of others is one of the most common fears people have), going to the dentist, pain, cancer and snakes are some of the common triggers for fear. A small amount of fear before an important speech serves a purpose – it encourages you to focus on your topic and avoid making a fool of yourself. This is one of the types of fear that can be useful to sharpen our minds. 

Future-oriented fear is known as anxiety with no easily identifiable stimulus. While fear happens at the moment danger arises, anxiety is characterized by apprehension because we don’t know what’s going to happen next, and we cannot control upcoming events.

A phobia is an intense fear reaction to a particular thing or a situation. With a phobia, the fear is out of proportion to the potential danger. But to the person with the phobia, the danger feels real because the fear is so very strong.

Phobias cause people to worry about, dread, feel upset by, and avoid the things or situations they fear because the physical sensations of fear can be so intense. So having a phobia can interfere with someone’s normal activities. A person with a phobia of dogs might feel afraid to walk to school in case he or she sees a dog on the way. 

Many of us fear the same things - so do we have universal fears? This makes sense if you think about fear as an evolutionary instinct embedded in the human consciousness. 

This idea of the universal fear is supported by Fear Factor’s recent desi version “Khatron Ke Khiladi” where 13 celebrity women break away from their make-up rooms  and do some daring stunts! The emotional experiences varied between fear, disgust and horror. Consider riding a bicycle across a thin ledge across the roof tops of a 17th floor building or eating strawberries amongst a live swarm of flies, or live iguanas  licking off fruit bits from the girl’s faces.

Charles Darwin said it was a result of the instinctive tightening of muscles triggered by an evolved response to fear. To prove his point, he went to the reptile house at the London Zoological Gardens. Trying to remain perfectly calm, he stood as close to the glass as possible while a puff adder lunged toward him on the other side. Every time it happened, he grimaced and jumped back. In his diary, he writes, “My will and reason were powerless against the imagination of a danger which had never been experienced.” Darwin had never experienced the bite of a poisonous snake, and yet he reacted to it as if his life were in danger. 

We tend to avoid the situations or things we fear. But this doesn’t help us overcome fear — in fact, it can be the reverse. Avoiding something scary reinforces a fear and keeps it strong.

Fears and phobias limit our ability to get the most from life. In some cases they can prevent us living even a relatively normal life.

It is possible to overcome most kinds of fears, and not necessarily with ‘treatment’ but through learning how to manage our own thoughts and feelings. For example, people who fly despite a fear of flying can become used to unfamiliar sensations like takeoff or turbulence. They learn what to expect and have a chance to watch what others do to relax and enjoy the flight. Gradually (and safely) facing fear helps a person to overcome it.

Next week, we would continue exploring fears and how to surmount them.

What are some of your biggest fears? Fear of failure? Heights? Being alone?  losing someone close to you? Or simply sharks?

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Thought for the Week

“Nothing in life is to be feared.
It is only to be understood.”
Marie Curie (1867-1934)
Two-time Nobel Laureate in Physics & Chemistry
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First published in Gray Matter - The Hindustan Times