Fear is a funny thing – especially in today’s popular culture. Think about it: most of us take extreme care to avoid exposing ourselves to events, objects, and beings that we fear. And yet, at the same time, there are entire industries devoted to providing us with opportunities to not only voluntarily expose ourselves to events, objects, and beings that cause us great fear – but to pay dearly for the experience .
The entertainment industry. While many of the most recent “blockbuster” movies utilize cutting edge “special effect” technology – much, if not most, of this technology is used to enhance and make more real the audience’s experience of being frightened – even terrified. There are insane amounts of money made providing people with the opportunity to be “entertained” via being frightened.
Amusement Parks. Perhaps a misnomer, unless we can agree that millions of Americans consider engaging in activities that frightened them to be an amusing activity – which they apparently do. The most popular theme parks are those with the scariest rides. Throughout the country amusement parks compete to create rides that are more frightening than those of their competitors in order to attract more people.
Thirteen of the 25 highest grossing films released in 2011 were of the thriller, action, or horror genre – all of which are specifically designed to incite fear and anxiety. All of the top grossing theme parks not only in the United States, but world-wide, offer thrill rides. As a matter-of-fact there are ratings systems where those parks with rides that instill the greatest fear are ranked highest.
The role of fear in our lives
Considering that we are willing to pay good money in exchange for the opportunity to experience fear, which means we value fear, it is logical fear has a special role and purpose in our lives.
We are willing to pay for fear, on the other side of the coin, we are also more than willing to pay out vast sums in order to ensure our safety.
A good example is the amount governments around the world appropriate to maintain military forces. Our personal, everyday lives also demonstrate our willingness to lay out cash in exchange for feeling safe. For example, within the automobile industry effective safety features are a very important factor when we purchase a vehicle. We wear helmets when riding our bikes. Install alarm systems in our homes.
We may love the thrill, the fear we experience when riding a roller coaster or watching a scary or thrilling movie, but we also have a full expectation that we will be safe. We find ourselves in a paradox – we are willing to put ourselves into situations where we want to experience fear but, at the same time, we have a need to feel safe.
There is a very sane reason we do this and it has to do with the role fear plays in our lives. When we feel fear we prepare to take action to protect ourselves from the source of our fear. In other words, when we watch that scary movie or ride that insane roller coaster we are practicing. And what we are practicing is survival.
The primary role of fear is to increase our chances of surviving a threat.
Fear and stress
Not only do our cars have safety features, our bodies (including our brain) have safety features as well. One of these is our ability to feel stress. When we are stressed, our bodies react in ways that enhance our ability to protect ourselves. For instance, when we’re afraid, some interesting things can happen:
- Our hearing becomes keener
- Our vision is enhanced
- Our physical strength and endurance are optimized
The stress that fear induces also forces us to make a decision: Do we stand and fight the source of the fear – or do we retreat from it? This is what is most commonly referred to as the “fight or flight” response.
This response is very handy when it comes to survival – and we all know we improve our skills (responses) to situations with consistent practice. However, while our ancient ancestors living in the wild were forced to practice this skill everyday in order to survive – in our modern world most of us aren’t too concerned about being attacked by wolves when we’re out hunting for dinner or when looking around the forest for something to throw into the pot for supper.
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Irrational versus rational fear
So far, we’ve been talking about the primary role of fear. What fear can do for us. However, the fears we experience can be either rational (real) or irrational (not real). Remember, the primary role of fear is to help us to survive a threat. We run into a problem when we react to our fear, or fears, by consistently fleeing from them whether or not they pose a real threat.
Of course, we should flee from rational fears. For instance, if driving down a two lane highway you note that some idiot has made an unsafe pass and there is a definite threat of a head on collision – you certainly want to escape from this threat (flee) by veering onto the shoulder of the road or taking some other evasive action.
On the other hand, if the idea that this could happen and therefore you are so fearful that you never learn to drive, or avoid driving whenever possible, your fear ceases to be a safety asset and becomes a liability.
We cannot deny that there are definite risks to driving. So, while fear of driving or traveling by motor vehicle is somewhat irrational – it is not totally irrational in that the possibility of not surviving the ride does exist.
Therefore, we might call some of our fears “semi-rational”. This type of fear can include things such fear of flying, fear of water, fear of fire, fear of snakes, and fear of dogs. There are methods to overcome these rational and semi-rational fears. The most common methods include:
- Visualization – seeing yourself successfully facing the fear
- Meditation – reducing the stress caused by the fear
- Desensitization – incremental and systematic exposure to the source of the fear
Sometimes our semi-rational and/or irrational fears can require professional counseling – for example we can identify them, yet cannot effectively institute methods and techniques to ease and/or overcome these fears on our own.
There are also fears that do appear to be completely irrational when our criterion is that a fear is rational (or semi-rational) only when it is a direct threat, or there is a real possibility of a direct threat, to our survival.
Let’s take as our example what is reported to be the most common fear in our modern world:
Public speaking
Now, most of us know that getting up in front of a group of people and speaking to them poses no real threat to our survival – it’s not going to kill us. For most of us, it just feels like we’re going to die:
- Our stomach lurches and we feel nauseated
- Our heart beats too quick for comfort
- Our breathing becomes shallow and/or rapid
- Our muscles tense up and/or we start to shake
- We start to sweat and/or our mouth gets dry as a bone
The simplest solution to overcoming this fear of public speaking is also the most obvious – “Just don’t do it.” The problem is there is a possibility that this fear of public speaking becomes so intense, so irrational, that it keeps one from living a full, meaningful, and purposeful life.
Fear has many degrees. A fear of speaking to large groups may not have as negative of an impact as a fear of speaking to small groups – especially when that small group might be just a couple people, or even just another person. Now, this irrational fear of public speaking is so powerful that it keeps an individual from developing social, as well as intimate, relationships. Now this fear becomes a severely negative impact on quality of life.
Fear versus going outside your comfort zone
There are times that what seems to be an irrational fear can indeed be a real threat to our survival. For instance, if a woman is walking to her car in a mall parking lot and feels uncomfortable, perhaps experiences some of the body’s responses to the stress of a threat – yet she does not observe any direct threat to her survival.
However irrational it may seem to her – she should respond as if this is a direct and serious threat and take action to avoid it. For example, walk up to another group of women, quickly turn around and go back towards the mall scanning the parking lot as she returns, even scream “Fire” at the top of her lungs to get the attention of others.
Remember, the body’s response to fear includes heightened senses – that woman in the parking lot may have heard something that did not register consciously, but IS a threat. Not to mention that scientific experiments have indicated “intuition” is sometimes actual observation/sensation of real circumstances.
Of course, there are fears which we can identify as indeed “irrational”, meaning that there is no possible direct threat to our survival. In this case, what we’re really afraid of, our true fear when we will not risk getting out of our comfort zone is most usually a fear of failure.
Many “irrational” fears can be distilled down to the fact that we are asking ourselves to do something that is outside our comfort zone. The reason most of us are not willing to perform an activity or be open to a new experience is that we don’t want to place ourselves at risk. We could make a mistake, we could bring ridicule to ourselves – we could fail.
We can apply the same techniques to overcome irrational fears as we do “semi-rational” fears: visualization, meditation, desensitization. However, we are in no way limiting ourselves if we decide not to pursue an activity we fear when that fear poses no direct threat to our survival (or severe negative impact to the quality of our lives.)
If something is outside our comfort zone, but does not threaten our survival nor ability to manifest our potential – for instance, if you are deathly afraid to go rock climbing, “Just don’t do it.” Feel free to take a hike instead.
Many of us have benefited from, or could benefit from, seeking professional counsel when it comes to facing and overcoming our fears. The degree that our fear poses a direct threat to the quality of our lives may require a mental health counselor. Fears that don’t pose such a threat can often be overcome when we take the counsel of friends and family.
One person that can be overlooked when it comes to the benefits of counseling to overcome our fears is ourselves – taking our own counsel. The methods and techniques of quantum jumping provide an “additional self” to take counsel and learn from. A doppelganger self who has already faced and/or overcome irrational fears that are keeping you from achieving your desires and dreams in the here and now.
