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Fear is the reaction of the human body to an external threat. Find out where biological, social, moral, and disintegrative fear come from. How to deal with them and how is fear different from phobias?

What makes us afraid?

Fearis a trait necessary for human survival and it is from the survival instinct that it originates. When we are in an emergency, our body and emotions react. Fear is born in the brain - in the amygdala, which in turn transmits impulses to the hypothalamus, causing the body to produce adrenaline.

So we make more of the "fear hormone", our muscles tighten and our heart starts to beat faster. This natural preparation of the organism to fight or flee from a threat was developed in humans (and some animals) through evolution.

We react emotionally to fear, but the degree of this reaction depends on the specific person. Those who avoid a threatening situation, when it occurs, will react to it more strongly than those who perform daily jobs with many dangers or love extreme sports.

Fear also comes from people's ability to connect facts. We are aware that a given situation may pose a threat, because we have experienced it ourselves before, or the ability to think abstractly tells us that a given situation or behavior may cause a threat.

Kinds of fear

Psychologists and psychiatrists have made many divisions of fear, there is no single obligatory typology. Most often, however, there are four types of it:

  • Biological fear- arises when a person is in a situation of threat to his he alth and life. Biological anxiety includes the fear of death when we suffer from a serious illness or the anxiety we feel while walking alone through a dark street at night.
  • Social fear- occurs when a person is afraid to enter into relationships with other people. It is not a social phobia, resulting in fear of leaving home not to meet someone else, but fear that arises, for example, during important speeches, when meeting new people, at times when a given person is assessed by other people.
  • Fearmoral- causes lowered self-confidence, remorse and the feeling of being insufficiently good - in accordance with the very high moral requirements adopted by him.
  • Disintegrative fear- arises when the balance between a person and the environment in which he lives is disturbed. For example, a situation where a person cannot cope with an accident that has left him or her psychological balance unbalanced.

Methods of coping with fear

Although fear is one of the primary human qualities, you can try to deal with it. They can help:

  • Taming fear- talking about what causes fear in us and confronting the situations that cause it helps tame it and thus make it cease to be a source of fear.
  • Physical activity- another important weapon in the fight against fear. Physical effort and subsequent fatigue make us stop focusing on what we fear, and we also increase the level of serotonin, i.e. the happiness hormone, in the brain.
  • Rest- finding at least half an hour a day for yourself in a busy schedule, devoting yourself to whatever brings relief: bathing, reading, hobbies improve the quality of life, change the way thinking in a more positive way, motivates to work.
  • Fear rationalization- the ability to control your moods, work on concentration and creativity make it easier to deal with the biological source of anxiety.
  • Specialist help- when we feel that we cannot cope with fear or it takes the form of a phobia, it is worth consulting a psychologist or psychiatrist who will advise you on the right course of action.

Fear and phobia - what's the difference?

Fear and phobia are two different concepts. We feel fear towards a specific threat: a person, situation or event. What we fear is within the limits of probability - it is possible that what we fear will happen. It is also worth adding that fear motivates us to act: although we are afraid, we try to prevent the threat, avoid negative situations, the source of our anxiety. It's different with a phobia. This is an irrational fear, and the person feeling it realizes that their gut feelings are not relevant to reality.

While fear is most often caused by external circumstances, phobia is more related to internal reactions. It is difficult to define it and indicate its source. The difference between fear and phobia can be explained by the situation with the spider

i. The fear of this creature is that, while we are afraid of it, we caneven shout at the sight of him, but we are able to stay with him in one room, we can apply measures that will allow, for example, to move the spider outside the room in which we are.

On the other hand, anxiety (arachnophobia) makes it impossible to get close to the spider, causes chills, vomiting, panic attacks. There are also delusions with spiders in the lead role: a person imagines that invertebrates are walking on him, lurking behind the bed, nightmares also appear.

When to see a psychologist?

See the gallery of 10 photosAbout the authorAnna SierantEditor in charge of the Psychology and Beauty sections, as well as the main page of Poradnikzdrowie.pl. As a journalist, she cooperated, among others. with "Wysokie Obcasy", the websites: dwutygodnik.com and entertheroom.com, the quarterly "G'RLS Room". She also co-founded the online magazine "PudOWY Róż". He runs a blog jakdzżyna.wordpress.com.

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Category:

Psychology