ALL ABOUT FEAR

WHAT IS FEAR?

Fear is what we feel when we are unable to predict what is going to

happen, and we think that what is going to happen is likely to be bad

for us. Fear is a very useful emotion, because it helps keep us alive. If

we never felt fear, we wouldn’t be aware of danger, and so we wouldn’t

do what’s necessary to protect ourselves.

However, many of our fears are misplaced, or out of proportion to the

danger we are in.

WHAT ARE WE AFRAID OF?

We fear anything that threatens our survival. We need to survive in two

ways: as a body, that is physically, and as a person, that is psychologically.

Death threatens us in both ways. We try to survive as a body by staying

healthy, avoiding illness and physical danger that could damage or kill

us. We try to survive as a person, and overcome our fear of death, by

believing that when we die some important part of us will continue

on. This could mean our soul or spirit, our children, our work, or the

memory people have of us.

Surviving as a person means being the person that you know yourself

to be, not giving yourself up to be what someone else wants you to be.

It’s about not shrinking under the weight of humiliation or cruelty to

become an object, a nothing. It means not falling apart, or disappearing,

when overwhelmed by unexpected events.

We try to survive as a person by maintaining our sense of self-worth,

personal pride, dignity and respect. All of these are threatened when

other people don’t respect us, when they ignore or humiliate us, or

treat us like an object to be used and abused.

When we are faced with a crisis that reveals a serious difference between what we thought our life was and what it actually is, we try to survive as a person by interpreting what has happened. We can choose to do so in one of two ways. We may tell ourselves that the crisis is a challenge, which we will master, and thus we become courageous. Or we may tell ourselves that the crisis is our punishment for our wickedness, or that we are weak and helpless and there’s nothing we can do to protect ourselves. In this case, we increase our fear.

SO HOW DO WE CONQUER FEAR?

• Know yourself. Know what your priorities are and what these

priorities lead you to fear.

• Value and accept yourself. Don’t set yourself impossible standards

and judge yourself harshly. Don’t believe that you have to deserve

all the good things that happen to you. Don’t believe that you

deserve the bad things that happen to you.

• Look after yourself. Eat food that’s good for you, exercise regularly,

get plenty of sleep and relaxation, and be moderate in your vices.

Don’t carry any health measure to extremes. If you do, it’s because

you haven’t recognized the presence of your greatest fear.

• Assess dangers realistically. Understand probabilities, for example

that you are more likely to be killed by smoking than by being

struck by a meteorite. Understand and accept that we live in a

world where things happen by chance.

• Remember that things are resolved, one way or another, and that

everything passes. Don’t try to control everything or to force people and

things to be what they can’t be. Let people and things be themselves.

• Know that our greatest fear is fear of something that can’t happen.

No matter what happens to us, we can’t be annihilated as a person.

When people treat us badly, when they humiliate, betray or ignore

us, and when we discover that the world and life is not what we

thought, we can feel that we are fragmenting and diminishing to

the point of disappearing. But this will not and can’t happen. You’re

still there, observing this process. It's not you who are fragmenting

and disappearing, but some of your ideas. These are the ideas that

no longer give an accurate picture of what is happening. You go on

existing, but you have to change some of your ideas. This can be

painful and confusing, but time will pass and you’ll survive.

If you do all these things, then fear will present you, not with a

disaster, but with a challenge that you can master.