How real are our fears?

How real are our fears? 

Have you ever thought of how many of our actions and our choices in life are powered by fear? Fear of failure, fear of conflict, fear of being judged and so on. But how real are our fears? When I ask this question I am not referring to the experience of fear as a feeling – this is, of course, very real and can be very intense. What I mean is how much of an actual danger is contained in a thing that we are afraid of? 

As it happens, we cannot always easily assess the level of threat before our fear response kicks in and this is due to our neurophysiology. Curiously enough, our amazingly sophisticated brains cannot distinguish between the real and the imaginary threat. How come then that we are afraid of some things and not afraid of others? Pondering these questions can help us gain a deeper insight about ourselves, how we function and what we can do to feel happier and freer in our life. 

 

Map is not the territory

As neuroscientists have established, we have, in fact, very few innate fears, which are essentially the fear of loud noises, the fear of falling, the fear of rapidly approaching objects, and the fear of pain. The rest of our many and diverse fears derive from learned experience. 

For example, a toddler reaches out and touches a candle flame that looks so lovely and attractive, but… it burns their hand. The brain locks this painful experience in its memory and learns to associate fire with the danger of being burnt. And it deals similarly with all other painful experiences, whether physical or emotional. If your father shouted at you and called you stupid when you tried to express your opinion, this experience may have instilled in you a fear of speaking your mind, to avoid encountering a similar pain. 

Our brain does not generate fear in response to a particular thing itself, unless it is one of the innate instinctual fears. What it responds to is our representation or interpretation of the thing. These representations and interpretations are accumulated gradually over our lifetime and stored in our brain and our nervous system, creating a kind of internal map designed to help us navigate safely through life. When a new situation arises, our brain, like a super powerful computer, analyses these stored meanings within a fraction of a second and comes up with a response that is supposed to keep us safe. Any new experience is automatically interpreted based on the previously created categories, and a warning is issued in accordance with the perceived seriousness of the threat. 

What is important to remember, though, is that “the map is not the territory”, and whatever meanings and interpretations may have been valid, and have kept us safe in the past, may no longer be valid or appropriate in the present. The territory has changed, it changes all the time, and if we continue following the outdated landmarks we are more likely to find ourselves in a place of distress rather than in a place of safety. Yes, it may have been necessary to keep your thoughts to yourself in order not to trigger your father’s angry outburst – when you were little. It was an effective coping strategy. However, in your life as an adult, the fear of expressing yourself may prevent you from advancing your career, having your needs met and enjoying a satisfying relationship. It is important therefore to survey and update our internal maps regularly. 

 

Pain and safety 

Our brain is wired to keep us safe. There is a catch though. Very often our brain confuses being safe with being free from pain, which is not always the same thing. Sometimes it is necessary to undergo pain precisely in order to be safe and well. We understand this better when it concerns physical pain. We go to a dentist, get a jab, or put disinfectant on a scratched knee, which stings. It makes sense to us, and we are able to reason with and override our fear of pain for the sake of our health. 

Unfortunately, we are not as reasonable and efficient when it comes to emotional pain. Partly,  because this type of pain is less visible and it is easier to hide it from our conscious awareness, and partly, because we begin to apply moral values to our emotional experiences, categorising them into positive and negative, acceptable and objectionable. This moral valuation becomes enmeshed into our self-identity, it becomes fixed, and thus we tend to push away from our awareness the aspects of ourselves or our experiences that appear unacceptable to us. 

The fear of allowing ourselves to feel fully what we actually do feel may be very great. Yet, if we avoid addressing our emotional wounds for the fear of looking at them, they begin to fester, just as the physical wounds do. They may even convert into a physical illness. However, when we muster up enough courage to switch on the light of our consciousness, we find that what appeared to be a scary ghost in a dark room collapses into a harmless heap of clothes over a chair… 

It only takes a couple of steps and flick of a light switch to dispel our ghost, but it may be too scary to do it on our own. In this case, we may engage a trusted friend or a therapist to support us. I have accompanied many people on a rendezvous with their deepest fears, and so far no one has been destroyed by them. On the contrary, what I witness is the process of transformation into a more empowered, joyful and inspired being – when the demons that had threatened to devour us metamorphose into our allies.