Photo by Favor of God - Getty Images
Woman in shadows
Fear constitutes a potent force driving human behavior, sometimes eclipsing all other factors shaping a person’s mood and behavior. Diagnostically, the most ubiquitous mental maladies are anxiety disorders, a term that is a clinical euphemism for fear. Entire lives are under the sway or outright control of this unnerving emotion.
What's more, when people fail to recognize fear as a driving factor in their lives, it can emerge in disguise, often manifesting as anger (the fight portion of the fight-or-flight stress response) and false bravado. Too often, it becomes the engine driving conspiracy theories, hate, incivility, the culture wars and violence, giving rise to all manner of plagues on oneself, each other and sometimes humanity. Hitler was an extreme example of unconscious fear run amuck, and we all know where that took us.
When unchecked, this most primitive of emotions, while vital to the survival of our species, wreaks havoc on well-being. It reduces some individuals to passive recluses who cower from life and shapes others into mindless goons who stave off their unrecognized dread with belligerence.
The convict named Red in the movie The Shawshank Redemption, portrayed by Morgan Freeman, said it best in stating, “It's an awful thing to live in fear.” Indeed. Unaddressed, this emotion can separate us from all that is good and hopeful in our lives. In its most severe forms, it crushes a person's will to live, sometimes resulting in suicide.
Overestimating the Danger
Fear assumes a variety of permutations, including phobias, existential dread, paranoia, social anxiety, post-traumatic stress, and even obsessive-compulsive disorder, among others. Most all-encompassing of these is dread, in which one becomes highly sensitized to and wary of perceived risks, routinely overestimating them. Dread is a chronic condition of mind, keeping the psyche trapped in a state of hypervigilance. Sort of like how one feels walking alone at night in an unsafe neighborhood, except it's there all the time, regardless of one's environment.
Stay on top of the news of the day
Subscribe to our free, daily e-newsletter to get Milwaukee's latest local news, restaurants, music, arts and entertainment and events delivered right to your inbox every weekday, plus a bonus Week in Review email on Saturdays.
However, for most, persistent fear disrupts the quality of their lives in less dramatic but still very painful ways. Someone with social anxiety may become isolated. A person suffering from PTSD can endure paralyzing flashbacks. Worriers walk around in a mental fog of angst and rumination. Other fearful folks cower from making decisions or taking reasonable risks. Some obsess over germs and harmless physical symptoms. The impacts are many and pervasive.
To escape these mental torture chambers, some turn to prescribed drugs or self-medicating, often with booze. Others strive to distract themselves from their distress with compulsive behaviors like gambling, relentless media surfing, ritualized behaviors, mindless video games and the like. Unfortunately, when facing our fears, avoidance and distraction not only fail but usually backfire.
When a client asks me, as many do, how to overcome a debilitating fear, I deliver the unwelcome but largely irrefutable truth: “You must face it.” Running from fear gives it more power. Confronting it returns that power to oneself. Hard to do? You bet. Some of us can meet this challenge on our own. For example, my son, who had a fear of heights, decided to meet it head-on with bungy jumping. But with more complex or debilitating fears, professional help may be needed. What’s more, there are some types of fear, often found in those with PTSD, which prove too intense for this kind of exposure therapy, requiring specialized forms of intervention.
Regardless, the way out of fear is through, not around. Running this psychological gauntlet is no picnic, but the fulfillment one gains from vanquishing a fear more than compensates for the discomfort. When a person’s life is no longer under the thumb of this emotional adversary, they rise up and reclaim it. They evolve from servitude to freedom.
As for summoning the courage to take on one’s fears, this quote from Eleanor Roosevelt sums it up: “You must do the thing you think you cannot do.”
Philip Chard is a psychotherapist and author with a focus on lasting behavior change, emotional healing and adaptation to health challenges. For more, visit philipchard.com.
