Fear and Its Many Faces

What IS Fear?

We all know that fear is an emotion - one of the most basic and primal of emotions. And we know that this emotion comes as a response to a stimulus of some kind and creates a group of physiological responses in our body that stimulates a series of physical responses to occur. Now, let us take a deeper look.

Here is how Wikipedia defines/describes fear:

"Fear is an emotional response to threats and danger. It is a basic survival mechanism occurring in response to a specific stimulus, such as pain or the threat of pain.... Fear should be distinguished from the related emotional state of anxiety, which typically occurs without any external threat.... People develop specific fears as a result of learning.... Although fear is learned, the capacity to fear is part of human nature."

And from How Stuff Works:

"Fear is a chain reaction in the brain that starts with a stressful stimulus and ends with the release of chemicals that cause a racing heart, fast breathing and energized muscles, among other things, also known as the fight-or-flight response. The stimulus could be a spider, a knife at your throat, an auditorium full of people waiting for you to speak, or the sudden thud of your front door against the door frame."

Fear Specialist, Motivational Speaker, and Trainer Brian Germain refines this further:

"In its most fundamental essence, fear is a defense mechanism. It is a set of preconditioned psychological and physiological responses, intended to help us survive dangerous circumstances. From increased heart rate to an empowering of muscle responses, we are transformed into a turbo-charged version of ourselves that is desperately trying to stay alive….When the big alarm goes off in our heads, we are left with three general categories of response: Fight, Flight, or Freeze."

Fear comes in many forms from mild discomfort to the most severe of phobias. And fear has many faces and many names: alarm, apprehension, agitation, anxiety, aversion, cold feet, discomfort, disquietude, dread, foreboding, fright, horror, misgiving, nightmare, panic, phobia, presentiment, qualm, scare, suspicion, timidity, terror, trepidation, uneasiness, worry - to name only a few.

Nature gave humans this emotion of fear, and the physiological responses we have to it, to help alert us to, and successfully handle, life-threatening situations. Fear is intended to protect us from extreme pain, severe injury, and death. And in this, fear is a gift. It helps us to detect and deal with physically painful or life-threatening events. It helps us to survive as individuals and as a species.

Nature also gave humans something that other animals do not have - the ability to remember past events, and to imagine and anticipate future events. This gift has proved to be a mixed blessing. It has enabled us not only to detect real threats to our safety, but also to create false threats.

The acronym FEAR has been known to stand for...

F - False
E - Experiences (or Expectations)
A - Appearing
R - Real

But what is False and what is Real? Let's take the example of the fear of snakes. People have learned over centuries of conditioning that some species of snakes (but not most) have a venomous bite that can result in pain, paralysis, or even death. So, when is a fear of snakes healthy and useful and when is it not?

Let's say that you are walking down a trail and you suddenly come face to face with a rattlesnake coiled, ready to strike, and within striking distance. Is your fear response rational and real? You bet! But let's say that you encounter this same coiled rattlesnake ready to strike, but it is on the other side of a glass partition in a zoo. Is a fear response in this situation rational and real or irrational and false? Well, clearly, the snake in this situation cannot harm you. So, the fear is irrational. It is our mind that has created this false fear because it has juxtaposed an imagined outcome over the real one. It has, in fact, created a False Expectation Appearing Real.

So, we know that Fear is a defense mechanism that protects us from imminent danger. The question is, how do we distinguish real danger from false danger?

The term "clear and present danger" tells us a lot. Danger is something we encounter in the moment it occurs. It lives in the present, not in the past or the future. If we are mugged in an alley and someone holds a gun to our head while stealing our wallet, that is a clear and present danger, in the Now. That is real. If we walk down that same alley a few months later, shaking with fear though no mugger appears, that is a false danger, because nothing dangerous is occurring in the Now. That fear is generated by our minds imposing an image or experience from the past over a present experience and creating an imaginary future. It is not real.

The problem with responding to false dangers as if they are real is this: the physiological responses generated by fear, in all its many forms, can create real wear and tear on our bodies. It creates stress, which in turn affects the health of our various organs and of our immune system. Not every unknown or undesirable situation we face warrants this physiological fear response.

Another problem with triggering a fear response to false dangers is more emotional and psychological. Fear boxes us in. It traps us in an over-protected life where safety becomes more important than joy or love or living a life that maximizes our full potential.

Let's extrapolate this information into our current situation. Take the economy, for example. Clearly, things are not going as well as they could. Some people are losing jobs, or houses, or cars, or other material things. But is everyone? No. Is this the same thing as losing one's life or a limb? No. It's a temporary downturn that will require many of us to downsize, make do with less, make compromises, and, on the upside, become more adaptable, creative, and flexible. Much of the current recession has actually been caused by the media, generating in most people a false fear based on layering the past (the depression of the 1930's) over the current situation and generating an imaginary future that is not real, though the panic caused by that imaginary future has made the situation much worse than it otherwise might be.

How about the swine flu? As of today, the state of Massachusetts has identified two confirmed cases. And both of these young boys are recovering just fine. Does this warrant the closing of schools, public transportation, and public gatherings of all sorts? Does it warrant admonitions to people to refrain from touching each other? As of this writing, there have been 176 deaths from swine flu in Mexico and one in the United States (a 22-month-old Mexican infant in Texas who was in poor health to begin with). Did you know that in the USA in 2008, 36,000 people died from the regular flu (according to the Los Angeles Times). There was no "state of fear" engendered by this regular seasonal flu. Up against this statistic, is the spreading fear and panic generated by the swine flu outbreak really justified, or is it yet another example of False Expectations Appearing Real?

And how about all the lesser fears that stunt our growth and opportunities. What about people who never have fulfilling relationships because of "false fears" such as the fear of commitment, rejection or intimacy? What about people who never go for the job or business they want because of fear of inadequacy or failure? What about all the artists, writers, and other creative types who never allow their work to be seen by others because of the fear of criticism or rejection? Are any of these fears "clear and present dangers" to life or limb? No. Yet, look at how they rule our lives.

It is time to make fear our friend - to distinguish between genuine danger and imagined danger, to value and respect the rational fear that protects life and limb and let go of the irrational fears that hold us back and unnecessarily limit us from being the joyful, loving, successful, fully expressed people we were meant to be.

As Don Miguel Ruiz has noted: "Death is not the biggest fear we have; our biggest fear is taking the risk to be alive -- the risk to be alive and express who we really are."