The Fear Thing

Fear. What a juicy word! There are few people on the planet who do not identify with this word; if you just use the word “fear” a bit loudly in a crowded room, you will feel the room quieten somewhat, eyes glance in your direction as it calls most people to attention, creating a shift in consciousness. Fear has a lot of power.

Indeed our news and the media are all about revealing first hand actual accounts of peoples greatest fear being played out in a drowning, an accident or threat to human life that ends either victoriously or tragically. Everyone identifies with it, and most people, but not all, would choose a way out or through their fear. I believe that coming face to face with your personal dragons is not only courageous and freeing, but a necessary step to becoming a whole and functional person. Indeed it makes sense to uncover and work to correct that unconscious response that pushes you to resist some aspect of your life by sticking your head in the sand.

So where does fear begin? Fear is there to protect us from harm. Our biology triggers the flight or fight response to get us to come to immediate attention or risk losing our lives. "Fear releases an incredible amount of adrenaline, getting our heart pumping to our brain and body for fast thinking and movement" (Jaymie).
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But on a daily basis in our contemporary, modern world, we do not have many predators lurking in our suburban bushes to worry about, or be ready to battle to save our children or mate. Given that our biology is heavily programmed with this flight or fight response to protect us and ensure the longevity of the species, it finds interesting ways to play itself out in today's world. At least in the western world, without a real "life" threat to act on, this response instead plays itself out on superficial levels such as embarrassment, rejection, abandonment and/or betrayal. As intense or agonizing as these emotions may be, they are far from life-threatening. Our socialization tells us to hide these emotions and bury them; this in turn creates anxiety. Anxiety is your body's way of warning you there is something to fear (Myhre).

"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light not our darkness that frightens us. We ask ourselves 'who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous?' Actually, who are you not to be? Your playing small doesn't serve the world. There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. It's not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.
As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically
liberates others. "
~ Marianne Williamson

Most westerners have a love/hate relationship with their fears. They don't like being afraid of things and yet, they rarely do anything about their fears.

For those who cannot acknowledge their social fears very directly, there are movies or novels where the characters presented subtly reveal their fear of something; we identify with it and are pulled into the story or into the character. Essentially, we live vicariously through this experience of watching someone else do what we feel we cannot and thus lead the life of a member of the audience. This just doesn't sound very liberating to me.

I chose to do this essay on fear so I would be forced to read and research about what fears are, how they may have come to us, what they can teach us about ourselves and to learn techniques to move through them so I could apply them to my own resistances. Writing about fear doesn't have the power to magically dissolve my fears, but it certainly is conscious raising to realize the impact of not addressing the fears within. We all tend to fear things we don't understand and this keeps us from opening and becoming involved in something that could benefit us or others in the big picture.


"You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, 'I have lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.'
You must do the thing you think you cannot do. "
~ Eleanor Roosevelt


Yes, there are risks involved in taking a look and moving through what scares us. But if we thought about the potential risk inherent in most acts, we can quickly move into paralysis. Anything from walking across a busy road, slipping in the shower, to choking on our dinner could grow it's own mild resistance behaviors.


Advice about how to move through and overcome fear has been coming at us for a very long time. The self-help area of libraries and bookstores are filled with antidotes for growth through and out of the fear element of our human lives.

Currently, medications that block the physiological effects of adrenaline are some of the methods used to treat people for anxiety and fear.

In Science Daily, an article was written about how the potential of a substance found in the Yohimbe Tree bark accelerates recovery from anxiety disorders. In the latest series of studies of how mice acquire, express and extinguish conditioned fear, a UCLA team finds that Yohimbine helps mice learn to overcome fear faster by enhancing the effects of the natural release of adrenaline. Adrenaline prompts physiological changes such as increased heart and metabolism rates in response to physical and mental stress.

The book, Feel The Fear and Do It Anyway, published in 1987, became a world-wide bestseller. The author, Susan Jeffers, observed that fear can be broken down into three levels: the surface level, the ego level and the level where you don't trust yourself (Jeffers).

On the first level, fears operate on the surface where people usually can identify and sometimes speak about them. These fears are more conscious; we tend to make decisions and choices to move our lives toward or away from fears on this level. These more readily identifiable fears can be broken down into two types: those that happen from aging, loneliness, illness or change, and those that require action such as making decisions, using the telephone, going back to school, ending or beginning a relationship.

On the second level, fears are not so much situation-oriented, and reflect a sense of self and ability to handle your world (Jeffers). If afraid of rejection, this fear will affect almost every area of a person’s life, through friends, intimate relationships, job interviews, etc. Rejection is rejection no matter where it is found, so to protect yourself, you limit yourself.

On the third level, everything in levels one or two can be summed up to one thing - you feel "I can't handle it." This can be prefaced before every fear - from helplessness to making a mistake. It concludes in a basic sense of fear created in trusting yourself to handle any situation.

Jeffers goes on to give you five truths regarding fear: The first is that fear will never go away as long as you continue to grow. The second is that the only way to get rid of the fear of doing something is to go out and do it. The third truth about fear is that the only way to feel better about yourself is to go out and do it (doing it comes before feeling better about yourself)
Truth number four is that not only are you going to experience fear whenever on unfamiliar territory, but so is everyone else.
Finally, number five sums up fear with the reality that pushing through fear is less frightening than living with the
underlying fear that comes from a feeling of helplessness. The more helpless we feel, the more dread of loss of control.

Most of the victim role deals with feeling out of control. Whether a complaint is about your spouse, boss, loneliness or lack of money, the basic underlying issue is one of feeling lack of control. There is a feeling of helplessness. The only way to correct this state of mind is to identify where it is happening in your life, and begin to take
responsibility for your experiences.

Jeffers has outlined seven definitions of what it means to take responsibility to increase your ability to handle the fears that come up in your life:
1) Taking responsibility for yourself. You cannot blame anyone for anything you do or feel. This means that all that talk of what happened in your childhood causing you to act like the victim has to go. "When you blame any outside force for any of your life experiences, you are literally giving away all your power and thus creating pain, paralysis and depression" (Jeffers).

2) Taking responsibility means not blaming yourself. We are always doing the best we can in any moment in time. If you are only just now recognizing that you have repeated a self-defeating behaviour, e.g., blaming yourself or feeling guilty, it means that you are now in a place to recognize this and can possibly change your actions. Anything that takes away your power or pleasure makes you a victim. We are always in the midst/process of learning about ourselves.

3) Taking responsibility is being aware of where and when you are not taking responsibility so that you can eventually change. Look for a question. If there is anger, if pain is experienced, self-pity or joylessness, is there something going on in your life where you are not standing up to the plate and taking responsibility for your experience.

4) Handling the Chatterbox. This is the internal dialog that constantly runs inside our heads. We are often so used to its presence that we do not notice it but it is very real and with us all the time. The chatterbox can sometimes deliver streams of dialog alerting you to what or where you might be going wrong in any moment, or where there is lack in yourself to handle a situation well.

Miguel Ruis delivers an outlook on the "voice" in his book the Voice of Knowledge. His message states that everything we are taught from knowledge to manners to cultural identity, actually moves us away from our human integrity. He compares the voice to a "wild horse that is taking you wherever it wants you to go. You have no control over that horse, but if you cannot stop it, at least you can try and tame that horse" (Ruiz).

5. Taking responsibility means being aware of payoffs that keep you stuck. Discover what motives you have for a self-defeating behavior keeping you from growing or changing and improving your life. What served to protect you at one time in your life may be exactly what is holding you back now. Choose differently.

6. Taking responsibility means figuring out what you want in life and acting on it. Set your goals and then go out and work on them.

7. Taking responsibility means being aware of the multitude of choices you have in any given situation. Every moment of the day you choose the way you feel and respond - from hitting the snooze button one more time causing you to be late, to responding positively to a request for more of your time at work. Pick the one that contributes most to your aliveness and growth.

There is no denying these principles are a path to greater happiness and well being. There is no better way to empowering yourself then by taking these on at even the most rudimentary level. Even if you arise every day and give yourself five minutes to say a prayer or read a personal affirmation, to recognize yourself and where you are right now in this moment, is a productive start to release from fear.

Whether one does this search a little or a lot, there is much freedom and understanding to be gained. When you tap into what you personally are afraid of, it gives you immediate insight and empathy into the lives and responses of those around you. Wouldn't the world be a better place if society developed their own natural empathy by finding compassion first and foremost for themselves. I believe if people could recognize the fears that were chosen at some point in their life to protect them from a perceived harm are now not constructive or relative to their life today, they would work to change this and thereby live more wholly and productive lives.
I believe this would produce more harmony in the world today and random acts of kindness would abound.


“Fears are educated into us, and can, if we wish, be educated out.”
Karl Augustus Menninger

"Let me not pray to be sheltered from dangers, but to be fearless in facing them. Let me not beg for the stilling of my pain, but for the heart to conquer it. "
~ Rabindranath Tagore




Works Cited:

Jeffers, Susan. "Feel the Fear And Do It Anyway"

Myhre, Mark Ivar."What is Anxiety" Emotional Healing. (http://www.join-the-fun.com/anxiety.html)

Germain, Brian. "What is Fear" Transcending Fear Magazine. http://www.transcendingfear.com/articles.html

University Of California - Los Angeles. "Biology Of Fear: UCLA Study Finds Properties Of Yohimbe Tree Bark Hold Promise For Revolutionizing Treatment Of Anxiety Disorders." ScienceDaily 5 April 2004