Fear is a learned response to a perceived danger from a physical or psychological stimulus, real or not. The origin of all fear is one’s death and therefore any stimuli that is perceived as a threat, fear is generated as an unpleasant sensation, with a range of physical symptoms, such as faster heart-rate, greater sense of awareness, dry mouth and even paralysis.
Healthy fear is a natural response to danger, and is part of our normal evolutionary and biological makeup. Unhealthy fear is the fear of something that cannot harm us, such as spiders or something that cannot be avoided like old age.
Unhealthy fear causes suffering and unhappiness, incapacitating us by paralysing our will. Many individuals suffering from phobias will know the experience of being “frozen on the spot”.
Additionally, fear is always future oriented and ultimately is a fantasy that we replay in our minds and critically we believe our thoughts to be true, giving rise to intense emotional experiences that take away the present moment of life.
Generated fear is again future oriented’ for example, what is going to happen to me in the financial crisis sweeping the world?
Fear can become irrational and take over our lives, in the current economic crisis sweeping the globe, the renewal of nationalism, insecurity about employment and increase in violence on our streets and our selves, it should not surprise anyone that within this culture of fear many people have developed a mindset that has been conditioned to expect the worst, especially when politicians use psychological scare tactics, as we have seen before invading Iraq, changing individual freedoms due to “terrorist” threats and now what will soon become known as the infamous “ripoff” also known as the bailout of $800Billion from the poor tax payers.
Politicians and religions use fear to control people, its time to wake up to how we are being managed through our fears or wait for the inevitable loss of freedoms, life style and your own life.
EXECISE
This exercise demonstrates how thoughts can generate emotions.
From victim to creator (by Dav Panesar)
