FEAR
&
FEARLESSNESS-I
THE BASICS:
Fear is the most basic emotion, common to all living beings, from a single cell amoeba to the man.
You and I were afraid for the first time in life - when we were pushed out from the secure and tranquil environment of our mother’s womb.
We cried straining all of our frail vocal cords – a most natural way of ventilating our fear, and, we were also struggling to fulfill our first need on the earth - to breath, to inhale. It was the first emotion we experienced on our birth. It is for this reason that most people have so much fear of death too. Fear of Birth and death are both primal fears.
We didn’t come to life with any baggage – other than life itself. Life is considered the greatest gift to us. For us, the visible, physical body and the invisible intellect and emotional quotient represent life. Anything adverse happening or likely to happen to them evokes fear in us.
We do acquire other things subsequently – wealth, property, relationships, friendships, career, honour, position, security and so on – during our sojourn in life. When the loss or damage of any of these things is likely to happen, we feel fear.
COMMON FEARS
We can see two types of fears in the world : (i) collective fears and (ii) Individual fears
COLLECTIVE FEARS : Many groups of people are afraid of other groups of people, for various reasons – based on differences in caste, creed, race, religion, sex, nation, culture, habits, ideologies and so on. These are collective fears. Globalization has not fully removed these fears, but has, in some cases, aggravated them. All wars, all tensions, all mutual suspicions are based on one or the other of the above. Don’t we see this all the time in all parts of the world? We are divided so badly and still dividing so badly on all these parameters – all of which look attractive to us – when we are in the company of “our people” – which connotes, our language, our caste, our religion, our state, our nation, and so on. The concept of a Global citizen has not really taken off – to unite people of all hues and colours.
INDIVIDUAL FEARS : There are many types of individual fears - like (i) Fear of silence (ii) fear of noise (iii) Fear of darkness (iv) Fear of light (v) Fear of open spaces (vi)Fear of closed spaces (vii) Fear of losing their safety (of home, country, family etc) (viii) fear of adventure ( ix) Fear of being mediocre (x) Fear of excellence! (xi) Fear of living (xii) Fear of dying (xiii)Fear of living in shame (xiv) Fear of living in Debt (xv) Fear of losing love / a loved one (xvi) fear of disease (fear of different diseases evoke different levels of fear in us) / fear of ageing (xvii) Fear of public speaking / singing / dancing / any public performance (xviii) fear of leading / following (xxi) Fear of heights / fear of falling (xxii) fear of depths (xxiii) Fear of flying (xxvi) fear of insects / cockroaches / wild animals /dogs /snakes (xxvii) Fear of injury / of pain / of blood / of injections / of surgery (xxviii) fear of God / of demons / of hell / of priests / of mythical rites / of unknown places/ of buildings / of structures / of haunted places / of cremation grounds (xxxi) fear of water / fear of swimming (xxx) Fear of rejection – by the society, by spouse, by children, by parents, by employer, by neighbours, by religion, by friends and so on (xxxi) fear of losing employment / promotion / pension / business /income / property (xxxii) fear of marital partner or marital relations (xxxiii) Fear of war and similar occurrences (xxxiv) fear of natural disasters like tsunami and so on.
I have listed some of the common fears across the world. You can add to the list your own fears. You will be afraid – not merely when a threat arises to you – but also when it arises to some one /thing you love or identify with mentally.
Individual fears can also spread from one person to another – and affect whole communities in due course – in the absence of strong, enlightened leadership.
Fears can also be classified as (i) Rational fears (ii) Irrational Fears.
RATIONAL FEARS : are based on real threat and urge us to take immediate action to remove the cause of fear. Like a cobra crossing our path and standing before us suddenly. We must protect ourselves. Rational fear makes us do all those possible actions to protect our self from real dangers. After the cause is removed from us, we quickly return no normalcy and get over our Fear.
IRRATIONAL FEARS : These are not based on reality but on morbid imagination. There is no cobra – but all through the Road, you are looking for one. You are lying in the cosy comfort of your own bed but you are feeling like falling off from a steep cliff and screaming and sweating. Many such irrational fears can take you over – if you do not cultivate FEARLESSNESS and COURAGE. All through our life, we suffer more from irrational fears than from rational fears.
CAUSES OF FEAR
EXTERNAL CAUSES : For rational fears, the external causes are – some power or some propensity that the fear evoking person, animal or thing has – for effecting some harm to us and their known tendency to cause such harm.
A violent, mad person evokes fear in us. You never know what he will do next.
Some people have the habit of harming others – physically, verbally, emotionally or otherwise for almost no reason. They do evoke fear in people around them. An armed thief or dacoit is a cause of rational fear.
A lion evokes a rational fear in us – because of its wild, carnivorous nature. A cobra evokes a similar rational fear – because of its venomous nature. Fear of fire is a rational fear. But, in all these cases, when we understand how to handle the fear-evoking object, animal or person, our fear comes down drastically. You are not afraid of a cobra or Lion so long as it is in captivity inside a ZOO.
For irrational fears, the external causes are - our parents, teachers, preachers, relatives, friends, the books and periodicals we read, the audio-visual media we use and so on. They are all catalysts and instigators of various irrational fears in us – by what they told us or will be telling us and by many of their actions.
They can of course, create both rational and irrational fears in us. Fear of ghosts, daemons, cockroaches, darkness, open spaces, closed spaces etc are all irrational fears which children inculcate from these (unfortunately) trusted sources. Irrational Fear has been most contagious and spreads through all these media. You tend to believe what they tell – especially of what frightens them and what frightens you, because you believe them or love them. To a certain extent, many people do have a morbid interest in what frightens them irrationally.
INTERNAL CAUSES :
For Rational Fears : While knowledge is the internal cause of rational fear, Ignorance is the internal cause of irrational fear. You, can input a certain amount of rational fear into yourself – when you perceive adverse, harmful sensory stimuli, through the eyes, ears, tongue, nose, skin and the mind itself – by proximity with a person, animal or object. You do sense a real danger or harm to you from some sources. Then, you do become ready for guarding yourself from the sources of danger or harm.
For instance, when there is a foul smell, which your nose perceives, you move away. Your nose is made for perceiving an approaching danger and guide you to avoid it. Your tongue warns you not to swallow a thing which it cannot handle. Your eyes, your skin, your ears are all made to guide you to avoid harmful persons, animals or objects. But sensory stimuli only carry impressions into and out of you. If you look at the process carefully – a lion may be standing close to you. It evokes fear in you as an external cause – only if your eyes and mind are functioning at the moment well. So, within us – fear is always aroused by our own sensory stimuli – based on past experience or knowledge.
For Irrational Fears : In the jargon of psycho analysis, if you feel, I AM NOT OK, I am inadequate, I must be afraid – if this is the script (internal program) running in your mind and in your veins – You will be afraid of some thing or other all through your life. As we have seen earlier – our very own trusted sources like parents, teachers and preachers, the books we read and the audio-visual media we use are the creators and perpetrators of irrational fears in us. What is implanted in childhood into our sub-conscious does not leave us so easily – even if later knowledge tells us that there is no need for fear. This needs more intensive training.
LOVE & HATE - Swami Sivananda and many other saints say that Attachment to any thing (called RAAGA in Sanskrit) is a primary cause of fear.
Love based on attraction and Hate based on aversion can lead to irrational fears - of losing the person or thing we are attached to or coming in proximity of the person or thing we are averse to.
A single minute of delay in the child’s or spouse’s coming home can evoke irrational fears about their safety, in many of us. If it does not – you may even be called insensitive by some people. Suppose the delay is an hour – can we treat it as irrational fear? As you can see – the border line is thin in some cases.
Suppose you love your spouse – your own apprehensions of his/her likely absence, divorce or death can evoke great fear in you.
Suppose you don’t have any such attachment or love towards your spouse – then? No fear at all. You may feel relieved. Same is the case with any other thing. I am not advocating that you must not love your spouse or Children etc. You will, any way. And, you will be afraid of any adverse event likely to happen to them. That’s different subject we will deal with in another post.
EFFECTS OF FEAR
There are many physiological, psychological and social effects of fear.The effects differ based on the severity of the fear.
Biologically some part of the brain like the amygdala and the hypothalamus are immediately activated and control the first physical response to fear. Chemicals like adrenaline and hormone cortisol are released into the blood stream causing certain physical reactions such as:
- Rapid heart rate
- Increased blood pressure
- Tightening of muscles
- Sharpened or redirected senses
- Dilation of the pupils (to let in more light)
- Increased sweating
- Heavy Breathing
- Shivering
- Urination
- Jumbling of thoughts.
- Inability to sleep
- Some acutely fearful thoughts can make the person sick instantly.
- Socially –we become incapable of normal interaction with other people
- We become incapable of concentrating on any important work – and this may affect our social standing adversely.
- Fear can immobilize our movements.
There are so many such aftereffects of fear. These are all automatic reactions of the body-mind complex – if unchecked. But, what can be our standardized responses – to fear.
STANDARD RESPONSES TO FEAR
Our standard responses to a fear stimulus include the following :
(i) fight ( fight the object evoking fear in us)
(ii) flight (running away from the scene of fear)
(iii) Freeze ( becoming totally immobile in fear, un able to decide on what to do, which itself is a response)
(iv) Flock – (coming together of similarly threatened people and then deciding on the above three responses)– or
(v) Resorting to extreme steps such as ending one’s life – in extreme cases of hopelessness.
But great saints like Buddha, Christ, Socrates, Ramana Marshi, Mahathma Gandhi etc have shown how one can remain calm, unruffled, loving and smiling – in the face of any threat. This is another way.
We arouse the fear, raise its levels, reduce it and can remove it altogether. It is within our capability. Amygdala centre of Brain may give out alarm signals, which then are picked up by the various hormonal glands, which send out these alarm signals to various parts of the nervous system and body organs for appropriate reaction. But your conditioned response need not be FEAR but can be courage – which can be cultivated at any period of life.
We will now see how we can handle our rational fears more effectively and usefully – and remove our irrational fears, permanently - in the NEXT POST.
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