Actually I was writing on another topic; suddenly fear word entered my thoughts. As you all know our thoughts wander, now it’s about fear, are we really living with fear. My mind answered yes, possibly we live with fear. At first instinct I thought “I am fearless”. Then I have to be daring enough to face my fear. I asked myself what makes me fear. Deep in my heart exist many of the fears.
FEAR is an abbreviation for False Evidence Appearing Real. It’s one of the emotions like sadness, anger, anxiety, happiness; it’s an unavoidable emotion. And like all these we have to accept and act accordingly. The response of fear starts from a section of brain called amygdale. The most common fears I think are nightmares, lizards, wild animals, some humans too.
Fear of falling, fear of loudness is the innate fears, which are born along with us. From toddler state we react to fear when we sense threat or sense dangerous. Slowly other fears start in our life. Some of the common fears I made a list are: fear of rejection (love, interview), losing a person or job, life, harassment, death, responsibility (job, family), nightmares, darkness, God, disease, ghost, disease, failure, financial crisis, superiors (like parents, teachers, boss, wife/husband) and so on.
In my school days I was afraid of our school principle, he used to hit us considering our results. I studied fine for him not for me. I think most of us have experienced this. I remembered a sentence from a book read recently, forgot the name of writer, he wrote “I don’t believe ghosts, but I am feared of them” same thing with most of us. We causally say no ghosts but are afraid of going to abandoned areas, especially in dark.
If I talk about ghosts, the topic will be diverted and I am afraid to verbalize about ghosts. We will focus that on any other day. Once I get those thoughts I cannot sleep peacefully.
We tend to learn fear quickly, but overcoming this is difficult, but possible. We can unlearn the learned fear.
Fear increases our heart rate, we sweat and breath rate quickens, and this response of our body is called as fight response. At times we can overcome the fears. Some of us change over time.
