Coping With Fears

By Jayaram V

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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 not. The latter 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 and which may interfere with our decisions and actions, preventing us from being who we are and what we can actually accomplish in our lives.

Our standard and normal response to fear usually falls between the two extremities of avoidance and escape or confrontation. We may also deal with them either rationally or irrationally. 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.

Such responses are part of our survival strategy. When a threat is perceived, we may act instinctively, emotionally, impulsively, rationally or irrationally. It is not necessary that we respond to fear in the same manner all the time. We may also act part rationally and part emotionally. A lot depend upon how we perceive the threat and how we think about ourselves.

HOW FEAR MANIFESTS IN OUR LIVES

Fear is the most dominant and persistent emotion we ever experience. It rules our minds and hearts and determines the quality of our lives, our success, the nature of our thinking and how we deal with the various problems in our lives. There is no exaggeration in saying that most of the emotions we experience are but different versions of the same fear.

We experience fear in different ways as anxiety, worry, tension, insecurity, timidity, nervousness, nervous breakdown, apprehension, pure fear, panic and terror. It is also experienced as lack of self-confidence, courage and conviction. Some of the well known fears, which we experience commonly, are listed below.