The Causes Of Fear, The Types of Fear and Coping With Fears

by Jayaram V

Fear is an adaptive and conditioned response to some perceived threat. The threat may be real or imaginary. Fears caused by real threats are normal, but those caused by imaginary threats are abnormal. The latter kind are known as phobias or irrational fears, which exercise crippling and disabling effect upon the people who experience them. To overcome them, professional help is required. This article is about ordinary fears which we experience under normal circumstances in our daily lives and which may interfere with our decisions and actions and prevent us from  being who we are and what we can actually accomplish in our lives.

Our standard and normal response to fear falls usually between the two extremities of avoidance and escape or confrontation and rational or irrational resolution. In simple terms, they are the instinctive flight or the fight responses, which are employed in nature by all the living creatures having some intelligence, as a part of their survival strategy. In normal conditions, when a threat is perceived, our responses to it may fall into one or more of the following actions: instinctive, emotional, rational, irrational and a combination of all the above.

How fear manifests in our lives

Our fears manifest themselves in various ways such as  anxiety, worry, insecurity, lack of confidence, shyness, nervousness, nervous breakdown, pure fear, panic and terror. Some fears are specific while some are generalized and vague fears which are difficult to analyze and understand since a multiple causes and emotions are mixed up with them. There is no exaggeration in saying that fear rules our lives and lies at the base of our thinking and actions most of the time because of the very nature of our existence, where change is the norm, nothing can be really taken for granted and where we are subject to the limitations of time, space, energy and knowledge. Depending upon how our fears arise, our fears are either external and situational or internal and subconscious. Some of the commonly experienced fears and their variations are listed below.

1. Fear of death, pain, suffering, violence, conflict, injury and hurt
2. Fear of failure in life, profession, reaching goals, acceptance,  relationships, actions and performance.
3. Fear of losing control, of things getting out of control, of not being able to manage things and resources.
4. Fear of the unknown and the unfamiliar, darkness, desolate places, new people, new places, new situations, new gadgets and new processes.
5. Fear of authority, your boss, government, police, highly placed people, the organization you work for and religious institutions.
6. Fear of loss of life, relationships, wealth, prestige, name, position, place, dignity, self-esteem, self-worth, respect, status, recognition, power and other things we love dearly.
7. Sub conscious fears that remain suppressed in our consciousness, unknown to us, but keep surfacing from time to act in self-sabotaging ways to limit our chances of success and happiness.
8. Fear of being controlled, manipulated, harassed, exploited or cheated.

The symptoms of fear

Like other emotions and feelings, fear is normal and natural as long as it remains within the bounds. Primarily fears cause emotional, biological, psychological and physiological reactions in us and prepare us for the perceived threat. Sickness, obsessive and compulsive behavior, blaming others, hiding one's true thoughts and feelings, chronic fatigue and tension are some of the results of pe4sistent fears. Our fears turn into a problem if we experience them more frequently and persistently or when they produce acute and crippling responses in us to the extent they begin to interfere with our thinking, behavior and life styles. Some of the physical symptoms produced by our fears are listed below.

• Sweating,
• Physical and mental tension
• Palpitation of the heart,
• Shaking of the body and the limbs,
• Increased blood flow
• Dilation of the pupils
• Knot in the stomach,
• Dryness in the mouth and throat
• Heaviness in the head
• Lack of hunger,
• Indigestion,
• increased blood pressure
• Sleeplessness
• Muscular and bodily tension
• Restlessness.

How fear influences our thinking and actions

Our fears impact us both physically and mentally. They enhance our negative thinking and impair our normal perception, rationality and comprehension. They motivate us to limit our expectations and do things safely and securely so that we can avoid taking undue risks or face complications. Although our fears are intended to be part of our survival instinct, they  become a problem when they begin to interfere with our normal functioning, limiting our abilities and opportunities. We can see their stamp our actions, thoughts and relationships. Over the course of our lives we become so habitually accustomed to our fears that we may not even notice their presence in our consciousness. As we learn to ignore our fears by pushing them down deep into our subconscious, we develop strange habits and self-limiting behavior under the illusion of leading normal lives, without feeling impaired or uncomfortable.  In general people deal with their fears in some of the following ways.

They:

• Stay with in their comfort zones, unwilling to venture out and experience new things or meet new people.
• Hide their feelings and thoughts in front of others. This would create problems for them in establishing intimate relationships.
• Prefer to stay in the same job or in the same unhappy relationship even if they are draining them out emotionally.
• Do not communicate  freely with others for fear of exposing themselves or their weaknesses.
• Avoid socializing or building friendships to minimize the chances of getting hurt or being exploited.
• Let things happen to them rather than taking control of them for fear of ridicule or criticism.
• Lack of initiative.
• Show deep reluctance to take decisions and calculated risks.
• Suffer from low self-esteem and underestimate themselves and their abilities.
• Undersell themselves due to their poor opinions and low expectations of themselves.

Coping with fear

The coping mechanism to deal with fear vary from person to person. Some people  are prone to react more fearfully to real threats than others because of their personal beliefs, social conditioning and early childhood experiences. Traumatic events such as personal abuse, natural calamities, accidents, unexpected physical or personal loss and the death of the near and dear invoke deep rooted fears in most people. The loss of things that are considered indispensible to the peace and happiness of people leave lasting influence upon the behavior and thinking of almost everyone.

Since our responses to fearful situations are mostly acquired through conditioning, we can change our conditioned behavior consciously and deliberately to cope with our fears intelligently, realistically and effectively. This simple concept however requires a great deal of effort before it becomes an effective practice. The following suggestions are useful in this regard.

1. Change your responses to the situations that produce anxiety. To do that you have to pay attention to how your fears arise and impact you physically and mentally. When you know the mechanism behind your fears and how you react to them, you can use that information to deal with your fears by changing your thinking and responses step by step. Most importantly you have to focus on yourself rather than on the event that is triggering the fear in you because you may not be able to change the world outside or the events that cause fear in you, but with effort you can change yourself. You can start with mild fears such as using that complicated fax machine with myriad other functions lying in your office or the automatic checkout in the grocery store which you are hesitant to use because you feel clumsy doing it all by yourself. Start with something and then build upon it.

2. Practice visualization. Think of the situations that produce fear. Visualize yourself taking control of them by thinking and feeling differently. In visualization you have the luxury of the thinking of your worst fears and the freedom to experiment with your responses in whatever way you may deem fit. Make your visualizations as realistic as possible, using all the sensations you can think of, to make them look real and effective and face them in the comfort of your own mental space without the possibility of really getting hurt. Make sure that your visualizations always end up with a positive and successful result for you.

3. Use affirmations. Negative self talk enhances our feelings of anxiety, insecurity, helplessness and hopelessness in fearful situations. We can neutralize these responses using positive self affirmations and learn to think differently so that we can stay calm and focused and intelligently in situations that enhance our feelings of insecurity.

4. Stay in the present. When we stay in the present we get an opportunity to become acutely aware of the mechanism, the emotions, feelings and sensations associated our fears, how they interfere with our lives and thinking and how we can deal with them realistically and rationally. When we become aware of them, we can stop responding to our fears in the old and ineffective ways which we might have acquired in our childhood from our peers and role models.

5. Practice detachment. Our attachment with things and people produces in us anxiety and fear of loss. Change is the order of life. We keep losing things as we grow in age. Renewal and destruction go hand in hand. There is nothing here that we can keep permanently. There is nothing here that we can take from here. Ultimately death has to descend upon us and do its work. Everything has to wither and go away, our beliefs, our thoughts, our things and even the self-sense and the identity that we build and so ferociously defend all the time. So at some stage in our lives, we have to become acutely aware of the importance of detachment and learn to live like the lotus plant in the muddy waters of a pond. Detachment gives us the ability to control ourselves and our emotions and remain undisturbed by external events.

6. Practice yoga. The purpose of yoga is not just to exercise your mind and body for looking good and feeling young. There are better methods than yoga for that. The main purpose of yoga is to suppress the modifications of the dynamic consciousness that is present in each of us, which the modern science calls the mind, and gain control over the way we react to things. The Ashtanga Yoga of Patanjali aims to free us from the impact of all kinds of thoughts and emotions, not just fear, and help us experience the truth of our being. You can learn it from an experienced teacher, who knows not only the asanas or the postures but other aspects of yoga such as pranayama (breath control), pratyahara (withdrawal of the senses), dharana (concentration) and dhyana (meditation).

7. Practice positive thinking. As we have discussed already, negative thinking aggravates our fears and makes us feel more insecure and anxious about the outcome of the fearful situations we face. If we learn to think positively about ourselves and our abilities we can be more effective in controlling our fears.

8. Learn to let go of things. We have already discussed the advantages of detachment. From detachment comes the ability to let go of things. We can overcome certain fears like the fear of failure and the fear of rejection by not taking things too seriously and by learning to let go of things. With the same attitude we can also stop beating ourselves for the actions that we think we could have and should have done differently.

9. Keep yourself health and happy. Good health enhances our vitality, our self-esteem and our positive emotions. What we eat influences our emotions and mental condition. Choose a diet that is just right for your mind and body by consulting your personal physician. Also make sure that you sleep well. Good sleep has a healing effect on your mind and body and keeps your nerves calm.

10. Love yourself unconditionally. You are the most important person in your life. Accept yourself for what you are but also acknowledge that you deserve all the good things in your life and entitled to the same privileges and opportunities like others. It is possible you might have had some bad experiences in the past and at times you might have felt negatively about yourself and your accomplishments. These experiences might have created in you feelings and subconscious beliefs that may be limiting success and happiness. You can neutralize them successfully when you accept yourself wholly and unconditionally and give yourself a chance to examine your untested beliefs and thoughts.

It is important to remember that we can neither suppress nor ignore our fears. But we can learn to cope with them in intelligent and effective ways and minimize their impact upon our lives. We can do that by understanding our fears, experiencing them consciously, becoming aware of how they arise, what they do and how they effect our minds and bodies. When we know our fears closely and clearly, we can proactively manage them and remain in control of our lives and goals.

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