Fear is an emotion that we frequently encounter when faced with different types of situations. How to manage anxieties? Fear: definition and manifestations.
There are millions of fears, and they can be explained or seem to come from nowhere. The fear of death or disease seems reasonable from a psychological point of view.
There are also phobias that, conversely, seem much more irrational and excessive, such as agoraphobia (fear of bald people), acrophobia (fear of fruit), or even phobophobia (fear of being afraid and of being surprised).
How to Manage Anxieties and Fears?
Whatever the cause, the feeling of fear is very real and can be felt daily. So what is fear? How to manage anxieties and fears?
How does our brain react when it feels it? Is fear just a figment of our imagination? And how do we manage not to let fear dominate us?
Fear and Imagination: The Power of the Brain
The positive thinking movement, which advocates for anything that can be imagined to come true and, of course, carried out within reasonable limitations, emphasizes how limitless our imagination is.
Despite all possible efforts of will, the fall is almost inevitable. In the first case, the image tells us that the crossing will be easy; in the second, we imagine the fall.
Both the carpenter and the roofer imagine that they can do it. How to manage anxieties and fears.
Emile Coue
Emile Coue, a French psychologist and pharmacist renowned for the method that bears his name, used a very interesting example to show all the power of the imagination:
“Each of us can walk on a board 10 meters long and 25 centimeters wide if it is placed on the ground. Suppose this plank is placed between the two towers of a cathedral; few people will be ready to jump!
By tinkering, for example, with a stepladder, you can suddenly feel unbalanced and lose confidence in yourself and your ability to see fear arise.
This, (how to manage anxieties and fears), means that fear and imagination can be intrinsically linked.
Some people who do not usually suffer from vertigo can experience the link between fear and imagination when they practice activity at height.
In Such a Situation
It is the fact of imagining what could happen, namely a loss of balance, a too-sudden movement, or the fact that our ladder moves, that makes us fear the worst and therefore arouses fear.
On the other hand, oddly, if you are tree climbing or throwing a via Ferrata, even if you are much higher than the top of your stepladder,
The fact of being attached by a harness, carabiners, and ropes and equipped with a helmet allows you to feel safe and dare much more about how to manage anxieties.
The Security
These accessories allow our brains to focus on the action to be carried out: crossing, continuing the route, having fun, and enjoying this moment in the trees or on the cliff.
Few people make mistakes or fall. However, without a harness, fear invades the majority of us and makes it difficult or even impossible to carry out this activity.
Fear, caused by our imagination unfolding all possible and imaginable disaster scenarios, therefore prevents us not only from carrying out activities but also, in some cases, from realizing ourselves as human beings.
Survival: The Fundamental Role of Fear
Fear is one of the most basic human emotions. Often decried, it nevertheless has a fundamental role in helping us to survive. Because fear is a physiological reaction of our body to danger,.
By living without any fear (how to manage anxieties and fears), we would often act recklessly, putting ourselves in danger and therefore having a much shorter life expectancy.
What Physical Manifestations of this Feeling?
In the realm of experimental psychology, numerous primary emotions, such as fear, joy, surprise, anger, sadness, and disgust, are recognized.
Facial expressions serve as a visible manifestation of these emotions, offering insights into the physiological reactions associated with each.
Fear, for instance, initiates a cascade of changes beginning in the brain, influencing our responses based on cognitive evaluations encompassing individual elements like interests, desires, expectations, and beliefs.
The impact of fear extends to our physiological state, accelerating metabolism, elevating blood pressure, and increasing adrenaline and blood glucose levels.
Concurrently, muscles tense, pupils dilate, and non-essential bodily functions momentarily pause.
Sweating and nausea may accompany this heightened emotional state, rendering us momentarily defenseless due to altered perceptions and magnified representations of the feared object.
Fear, as a complex emotional response, intricately weaves together psychological and physiological facets, orchestrating a profound impact on our overall well-being.
Visible Symptoms, But with a Specific Objective
But this emotion is nevertheless a mechanism adapted to our environment that, from time to time, gives us reason to have rational fears.
Fear allows us to become aware of the danger and threat so that, in theory, we can react quickly. What we feel like an attack or a danger can be a direct or indirect threat to our bodily integrity or even an attack on our self-esteem.
Fear, therefore, has a precise objective, which is our survival, and we must prepare to overcome it in the future.
Fear
While fear is therefore a normal emotion, it can also become dysfunctional. When our fears do not have a definite physical nature, they can be the fruit of irrational ideas based on often improbable threats.
There are no good or bad emotions because feeling things is always positive when it is useful and allows us to evolve in life healthily.
Repressing your feelings or trying to control them at all costs is therefore often not beneficial in the long term.
What should be done instead is to identify the primitive fears and those dysfunctional ones generated by our beliefs, interpretations, or even society.
Being too carried away by this type of fear can slow us down, prevent us from having new experiences, and even paralyze us.
How to Manage Anxieties and Phobias
Living in a permanent state of alert and converting our thoughts into fears and pseudo-realities is particularly disabling.
These consist of, among other things, having anxiety when traveling, entering into relationships, removing oneself from the source of inspiration and creativity, dancing, and public speaking.
Or asserting oneself at the professional level. In this case, the problem comes from how we face these fears and what we do with them.
Dysfunctional fears should not be managed in a dysfunctional way because, on the contrary, it is a question of trying to overcome them.
Examples of Phobias
Some people suffer, for example, from phobias such as:
- Aichmophobia: fear of needles and sharp objects
- Aerophobia: fear of air and wind
- Emetophobia: fear of dust
- Anuptaphobia: fear of celibacy
- Astraphobia: fear of thunder
- Blemmophobia: fear of the gaze of others
- Claustrophobia: fear of confined spaces
- Coulrophobia: fear of clowns
- Emetophobia: fear of vomiting
- Lilapsophobia: fear of tornadoes
- Nomophobia: Fear of being separated from your cell phone
- Ochlophobia: fear of crowds Pyrophobia: fear of fire
- Tokophobia: fear of giving birth
- Xenoglossophobia: fear of foreign languages
If we cannot live without fear, we must find ways to overcome these types of dysfunctional fears to be able to aspire to joy and well-being. This often requires patience and finding a balance in our progress.
To Deal with Fear?
Our levels of fear depend a lot on our experience of control. We are often more afraid in situations where we feel that we have no control.
For example, road accidents are more important than plane accidents, but more people fear flying because they have no direct control in this specific case.
There is, therefore, work to be done to have the feeling of controlling the situation, at least psychologically. Fear is necessary for our survival.
If you sense that your anxieties are taking control of you, it's time to engage in some introspection, either on your own or with a professional's assistance.
Take a notebook and write down how you would like to live and how you would like your life to be. Also, add what prevents you from accomplishing your plans and make it no longer affect you.
What are you Afraid Of?
Get to know yourself emotionally to better manage your fears in a functional way and those of those around you. Not accepting one's fears, nor making them our own, prevents them from governing us.
Increasing your level of emotional intelligence and overcoming your fears is very good for your well-being. This allows us to gradually develop our full potential.
And you? Have you managed to overcome your most unmentionable fears? Do not hesitate to share your experiences in the comments; they could help other readers who do not pass there!
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