Fear

Article by Minahil Mehr

Fear. Fear is an emotion common to all, it is a feeling we all know. A lot of people claim to be fearless in the face of anything, but that within itself is conspicuously demonstrative of the cloak of delusion that fear shelters us with, causing us to view our lives through what is nothing more than a thick lens of personal invulnerability.

We often mistake fear to only come in tangible forms; spiders, clowns, heights, and such. Fear can also be manifested simply through the events which occur around us, such as failure, loss, or regret. It is not things or stimuli which we fear, but rather the sensation and expressing of fear itself because of the way it makes us feel, and the responses which it initiates of us, and we commonly misjudge the experience and label fear to all sorts of stimuli, and that is what keeps us from living our lives to the best.

Fears are created through the psychological processes of conditioning. What this means is that the particular stimuli which invoke our fearful responses are understood by our nervous systems as a threat, and so we initiate the same response each time we are exposed to the particular stimulus. This is known as classical conditioning. Then comes the reinforcement of the fears. Our brains recognize the fearful responses we have to particular stimuli, and so, to protect us from the supposed ‘threat’, we avoid the stimulus. Whilst this is great for not screaming hysterically or jumping on tables each time we see a spider, this makes fear stronger, because we are not allowing ourselves to be accustomed to the exposure of our fears, and so each time, the fear response is more and more extreme, and finally, those fears become phobias and puppeteer how we live our lives. This is known as operant conditioning.

So then how are other people brave? What does that mean?

Bravery is not sheltering one’s fears from others, or from the self-denial that we do not truly fear. Bravery is the ability to face and conquer our fears, and to understand that the stimuli around us are all the same, not that which we truly fear.

So how do we achieve this? Do we fight fire with fire, and use psychological conditioning, which is the way that all fears are constructed? Do we desensitize ourselves to it, or flood ourselves with stimuli that invoke our fears?

The answer is not a simple one, and that is because human beings are not simple creatures. The beautifully constructed biology of chemical reactions is a psychological control system, and this control system is different for everyone, therefore, what works for you may not work for your family, friends, teachers, or your next-door neighbours. What does however work for everyone is to face your fears. Do not let yourself yield to the temporarily safe cloak of delusion which supposedly shelters you. Let’s break through the self-deception chains and be one in control of our lives instead of our lives controlling us simply because there are spiders and snakes and clowns and other things outside which are just part of life, nothing to be feared. Remember, the ships will never conquer the seven seas if the anchor never leaves the dock.