Source: www.zeitnews.org
Whenever you face something you’re afraid of, your brain starts a chain reaction that is triggered by a stressful stimulus and ends with the release of chemical substances. Your breathing speeds up. Your heart races. Your muscles tighten. Beads of sweat start forming across your forehead. This condition is called the fight-or-flight response; which is critical to any animal’s survival. It is actually your body reacting as if your life were in dangerand that is the exact reaction of all of us to something we fear.
By definition, fear is an emotion induced by a perceived threat which causes entities to quickly pull far away from it and usually hide. The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear. It is a part of what makes us human. Fear can either be real or imaginary and is frequently related to the specific behaviors of escape and avoidance; which could ascend to anxiety, where it is the result of threats that are perceived to be uncontrollable or unavoidable.
Every one of us has faced this kind of situation. “Paralyzed with fear”, is the correct notion. Some of us are able to stand up and fight it but extreme cases cause us to a freeze or also known as paralysis response. When we try to consult experts or confide in people about what we are afraid of, the most common response would be “Try and face the fear, and get over it”. Well, this is easier said than done.
During the 19-th century, debate surrounding the evolution, the “face of fear” – that wide-eyed, gaping grimace that often accompanies sheer terror – became widely discussed. Why do people make that face when they are terrified? Some said that God had given people a way to let others know they were afraid even if they did not speak the same language. Charles Darwin said it was a result of the instinctive tightening of muscles triggered by an evolved response to fear. To prove his point, he went to the reptile house in the London Zoological Gardens. Trying to remain perfectly calm, he stood as close to the glass as possible while a puff adder lunged toward him on the other side. Every time it happened, he grimaced and jumped back. In his diary, he wrote, “My will and reason were powerless against the imagination of a danger which had never been experienced.” He concluded that the entire fear response is an ancient instinct that has been untouched by the nuances of modern civilization.
Darwin had never experienced the bite of a poisonous snake, and yet he reacted to it as if his life were in danger. Most of us have never been anywhere near The Plague, but our heart will skip a beat at the sight of a rat. For humans, there are other factors involved in fear beyond their instinct. Human beings have the sometimes unfortunate gift of anticipation, and we anticipate terrible things that might happen – things we have heard and read about or seen on TV. Most of us have never experienced a plane crash, but that does not stop us from sitting on a plane with white-knuckle grips on the armrests. Anticipating a fearful stimulus can provoke the same response as actually experiencing it.
As I have stated earlier, fear is the basic human instinct embedded in the human conscience. I, myself have acrophobia, which is the medical definition for the fear of heights. Many psychologists think that the fear of heights enters your life at some point in your past. There was probably an event that happened to you that linked heights with some type of emotional trauma. Acrophobia sufferers can experience a panic attack in an elevated place and become too agitated to get themselves down safely. When I come to think of it, this was true. There was this one time when I was playing in the park with my cousins, then all of us decided to climb the ‘big ball of rope’, which was really tall for a 6 year old. We were all racing to the top when I suddenly felt terrified and I could not move a single muscle on my body. I was breathing fast and I started cryingI was stuck with paralyzing fear for almost 20 minutes until my cousins decided to come and help me get down. They moved my hand and feet for me until I felt it was safe enough to start moving on my own.
One of the ways to ‘treat’ this condition is by exposure therapy. For instance, therapy for a person with a fear of snakes might involve visiting a snake farm repeatedly and taking small steps toward touching one. First, the person might get within 10 feet of the snake and see that nothing terrible happens. Then he might get within 5 feet of the snake and when nothing terrible happens within 5 feet of the snake, he might get close enough to touch it. This process should be continued until new, fear-extinction memories are formed – memories that say “snakes are not going to harm you”; and serve to contradict the fear of snakes that lives in the amygdala. The fear still exists, but the idea is to override it with the new memory.
The Prevention magazine article “What are you afraid of? : 8 secrets that make fear disappear” offers these tips for dealing with everyday fears:
- It does not matter why you are scared. Knowing why you have developed a particular fear does not do much to help you overcome it, and it delays your progress in areas that will actually help you become less afraid. Stop trying to figure it out.
- Learn about the thing you fear. Uncertainty is a huge component of fear: Developing an understanding of what you are afraid goes a long way toward erasing that fear.
- Train. If there is something you are afraid to try because it seems scary or difficult, start small and work in steps. Slowly building familiarity with a scary subject makes it more manageable.
- Find someone who is not afraid. If there is something you are afraid of, find someone who is not afraid of that thing and spend time with that person. Take her along when you try to conquer your fear – it will be much easier.
- Talk about it. Sharing your fear out loud can make it seem much less daunting.
- Play mind games with yourself. If you are afraid of speaking in front of a group of audience, it is probably because you think that they are going to judge you. Try imagining the audience members naked – being the only clothed person in the room puts you in the position of judgment.
- Stop looking at the grand scheme. Think only about each successive step. If you are afraid of heights, do not think about being on the fortieth floor of a building. Just think about getting your foot in the lobby.
- Seek help. Fear is not a simple emotion. If you are having trouble overcoming your fear on your own, find a professional to help you. There are lots of treatments for fear out there, and no good reason not to try them under the guidance of someone with training and experience.
“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself” – Franklin D. Roosevelt. So, putting that in mind, let us all walk towards a new and improved version of ourselves, by taking that first step in eliminating the thing that scares us the most.
This article is written by Maizatul Azamiah, a 4th year student studying in Mansoura University, Egypt. Learn more about her in the Young Columnists tab.