FEAR AS A WISE PRESENT

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

There are feelings that are familiar to absolutely all people. Fear is one of those feelings. He goes hand in hand with us all his life.

Fear begins with the fear of an evil monster from a children's fairy tale, lurks in the dark with its unpredictability, overtakes with bitter crying in fear of being left alone, without a mother.

We grow, change, and fear also changes, turning into fear of failing in an exam, not being accepted by peers, rejected, ridiculed, unloved, abandoned, betrayed, abandoned.

The more we want in life, and the more valuable we have, the more fears it can grow - this is how the fear of being unsuccessful, the fear of poverty, loneliness, the fear of not being accepted in our society, the fear of devaluation, of not meeting the expectations of loved ones or a boss appears.

CAUSES OF FEA

Why does it arise? Probably because life does not give us one hundred percent guarantees, and at any moment something unpleasant or threatening may happen. Because we are mortal at every moment, and not starting from 80 years old, because we do not know how much is given to us, what awaits us tomorrow.

We walk through this fragile world, and fear accompanies us, serves as a warning signal for us. He tries to pick us up where we can fail, but he can also become an obstacle on the way, stop and prevent us from being free, living something important, mastering something new. New things often cause tension, uncertainty and even fear, because we do not know what awaits us and how we will cope with it, whether we have enough strength, abilities, courage, whether we can.

Martin Heidegger, a 20th century German philosopher, said that fear is the basic condition of being. Fear makes obvious such qualities of the world as fragility, lack of constancy and conditioning.

HEALTHY AND EXCESSIBLE FEA

Depending on what fear does to us, it can be divided into healthy and painful fear. What is the difference?

Healthy, that is, realistic fear is directly related to the threatening situation and corresponds to it in its type and size. When driving a car at high speed, it is quite natural to be afraid of an accident, collision, fear of losing control. If you walk down a deserted street in the middle of the night, the fear of robbers will be healthy. Or if you did not prepare for the exam, then the fear of not passing it will be perfectly appropriate for the situation.

Healthy fear warns of danger, helps to better perceive some things that are important to our life. For example, knowledge about the dangers of smoking is not very effective for smokers, but if a person is told that they are at risk of lung cancer or heart attack, and the person feels fear, then they are more likely to quit smoking.

Painful fear is fear that prevents a person from doing what, in general, he can handle. Painful fear restricts, makes a person passive, paralyzes, distorts the perception of reality.

If, for example, a person is afraid of an exam, although he has prepared and knows enough, but fear paralyzes him to such an extent that it can prevent him from going to the exam, this is already pathological, that is, painful fear. The pathological fear is the fear of losing consciousness, taking the subway, flying airplanes, and so on. All these fears do not allow a person to live, "force" him to avoid certain situations, to perform protective rituals. Life becomes loaded, some plans are not realized due to fears, to the extent that a person may stop leaving the house altogether.

When fear is fixed, it arises again and again in other situations, leads to fixed defensive reactions, it is spoken of as a disease. In this case, fear is often irrational, a person is immune to arguments (for example, airplanes are the safest form of transport), explanations help little,why did the fear arise (once the stuffy atmosphere in the subway caused a fainting state, after which there was a fear of fainting in the subway).

Thus, we can say that healthy fear protects us, and painful fear limits, blocks, may prevent us from realizing ourselves, to realize something important and valuable in life.

WHAT ARE FEAR

What can fear arise about? Each of us has our own vulnerabilities, which are actualized with fear.

The famous Austrian psychotherapist Alfried Langle grouped fears into 4 groups, according to his concept of four fundamental motivations that drive a person:

1. Fear of losing your "can", leading to a feeling of powerlessness. Powerlessness contradicts the essence of a person, which is why it is so difficult to experience it.

This also includes the feeling of loss of control, behind which is the same “not be able to”. Fear of inner fragility that you will not be able to endure this difficult life. Another fear is about the fragility of this world, which I trust, but at any moment something bad can happen. And when this happens, the fear arises that the situation will repeat itself.

In its very depths there is a feeling of loss of support, of the ground that holds, a feeling that I am falling into Nothing.

2. Another category of fears - these are fears associated with the threat of loss of value: health, relationships, hobbies, fear of being isolated and alone.

3. There are fears of oneself: fear of loneliness, fear of being oneself, fear of losing respect, of discovering something unsightly in oneself, fear of not living one's own life, not realizing oneself, not being able to rely on oneself, not protecting oneself, not living up to the expectations of others.

4. Fourth category fears is associated with meaning, future, context: fear of the new and the unfamiliar, of the uncertainty, the doubt whether this new future has a future, whether it makes sense. The fear that you will not have time to live something important, experience, realize that valuable that you consider the meaning of life.

FEAR OF DEAT

One of the strongest fears inherent only in man is the fear of death, the fear of the Nothing that comes with death. I. I. Mechnikov in his work "Biology and Medicine" noted that fear of death is one of the main features that distinguish humans from animals.

Behind many other fears is the same fear of death. Often people cannot even talk about their death, this topic is forbidden, terrible, impossible for them. But since death is also a part of life, part of that order, a structure inherent in the world, which is a support for a person (we all know that in life there is birth, growth, maturation and death), this topic should be devoid of fear, you need to talk about it and have an idea of death.

Existential philosophy sees the meaning of fear in the fact that it leads a person to the question: how can I live with the fact that one day I will die, and that this can happen even today?

If I had to die today, what would it be to me? What is dying for me? What is death to me? These are questions that allow you to touch the topic of death, look at it, hear yourself, what is inside responding to these questions, what feelings arise, what am I most afraid of in this?

As a rule, regret arises that death will destroy what we have created, that it will not allow the continuation of what has been started, what has not yet been done, what else are you going to do. The question of death turns us face to face: am I living fully, am I realizing what I consider important? An unlived, empty life intensifies the fear of death. If life is filled with valuable, important, meaningful, then death is not so terrible, it is part of the life order, which also gives support.

THE VALUE OF FEA

Drawing a conclusion, we can say that fear has meaning, it points us to important areas of life, does not allow us to miss something important for us, it seems to tell us: “Look at your life, where are you missing something? Where is the point of your development? What should you strengthen in yourself? What views and attitudes to revise?"

Where there is fear, there is growth and development. Fear is present in our lives, so that we become older, stronger, calmer. As a matter of fact, there is always a valuable feeling behind fear: "I want to live!"

Since the feeling of fear is always experienced as some kind of weakness, the loss of the ground under our feet, the destruction of the structure that supports us, then the work with fears is based on the search for support, stability. What do we lack in our life, in ourselves, in order to feel ourselves more firmly? What conditions must be met so that we can be more stable in the existing reality?

The less a person can, the more fears he has, the more insecure he feels in the world. Children usually have a lot of fears, because they still have very little ability, do not know enough about the world, its structure, laws. An adult is able to find things that make him stronger, help fill the existing lack of support.

What can be done for this?

1. Find the maximum number of supports in the world and in yourself. What keeps me outside, what do I rely on in myself?

2. Find spaces where I feel safe. Where do I feel like a world understood, protected?

This makes it possible to more often emotionally feel the supports that carry my being, the spaces in which I can be, and feel a sense of security. The more of these feelings a person carries, the more confidently he goes through life and the more difficult it is for fears to grab him.

An essential element of dealing with fears is working with tension. Fear is always associated with tension, the alternative to which is a state of calmness and relaxation. It is necessary to try to come to relaxation of muscle tone and a sense of inner peace by various methods (massage, baths, exercise, calm activity).

Working with the breath is of great importance. When fear arises, it is inevitably accompanied by a failure in breathing: we freeze and stop breathing, or breathing becomes very shallow. Accordingly, in the process of working with fears, you need to pay attention to the fact that breathing is uniform, abdominal, and not chest.

SEE FEAR IN THE FAC

There are specific methods for dealing with fears. One of them is based on paradoxically wanting what causes fear. This method was developed by Viktor Frankl, who applied it to work with fears of expectation.

With a significant amount of humor, a person desires for himself what he fears. According to the principle “a horrible end is better than an endless horror”, a person with fear to blush in public wishes to himself: "Well, if I have to blush, then I will do it to the maximum. I will blush so that I will glow like a red lantern, my cheeks will glow with a blush, I will blush every 10 minutes, I will show everyone how to blush! I wish myself this, henceforth I will blush regularly in public!"

Other methods of working with fears, known to psychologists and psychotherapists, lead a person to take a position in relation to his fear, to the decision to be able to withstand what the situation threatens at least once. That is, it is about looking into the face of your fear, allowing it to enter into yourself, withstanding it:

Step 1: What would happen if what I fear happens? What would really happen?

Step 2: How would it be for me? Why would that be bad?

Step 3: What would I do?

Such confrontation with fear allows to some extent to experience possible reality, which is perceived as terrible, and this contains the seed of healing from fear. Relief comes in an amazing way, because at the same time, something keeps the world, some kind of life continues, even very sad and difficult, when there is nothing you can do, but you just stay with it, let it be. Such a plunge into the very depths of fear is like plunging to the bottom of an abyss, where the ground reappears underfoot.

And if the question arises: if I cannot bear it and die? So this was my life

The integration of death into life frees us from fear and makes us free, life becomes fuller and feels good to a greater extent. As a result, inner peace sets in: I admit that life can be as it is, and not as I want to see it. This is the main lesson we learn: life has the right to be what it is. My task is to meet it in its real manifestation and try to live it as well as possible from myself, from my essence, remaining myself in any of its manifestations.