Fear - Driver or Inhibitor, is fear the most exploited emotion by Humans (8 mins read)

A little bit background, about a week ago I posted a request on LinkedIn for my network to vote on which topic should I write my next article on. There was an overwhelming response making this one of my most viewed posts. Majority of the people voted for “FEAR” as the topic and Fear….had once again won the race (albeit this time of votes). In this opinion piece, I have tried to gather and pen down my thoughts on this topic which impacts our lives at every step of the way.

Some text book stuff first…

The most commonly used definition of fear is “An unpleasant emotion caused by the threat of danger, pain or harm”.

There are close to 100 documented (and researched) forms of fears/phobias ranging from the common ones like Acrophobia – Fear of heights to some very obscure ones like Chronomentrophobia- Fear of clocks/time (yes it’s a thing!)

Let’s dig deeper…

Fear can be seen not only in humans but also in animals. In fact, fear is essential to survival; as without fear no animal will be able to protect itself from dangers like predators. The fundamental difference in how fear manifests in humans and animals relates to the key evolutionary deviation between humans and all other animals – the human brain. As far as current research shows, only the human brain has the unique ability of imagination. That means, the human brain can imagine things that do not exist! this is a huge evolutionary gift as without imagination humans could have never reached where we are today. In case of fear though, this is also a curse as when we combine imagination with fear, we get imaginary fears – A response to a threat which only exists in our imagination. Don’t get me wrong if done well, this can be extremely helpful (at times) as it could mean anticipating a threat before it manifests thus preparing for it. However more often then not, it means imagining a threat that does not and will not exists. Lets do a small exercise, imagine your worst fear (you know what it is!). Now close your eyes and imagine your self in a situation facing that fear. So if your fear is of heights, imagine your self on the ledge of a high rise building without anything to hold on to. If your fear is of spiders, imagine yourself in a basement with a spider crawling on your feet. Go on, I will give you a minute…

I can bet that if you truthfully do this exercise, you could feel your heartbeat rising, your pulse racing and you thinking of ways to get out of this situation. This is the beauty of our brain, it can imagine a situation and prepare the body for a very real physical response.

Fight or Flight..

Fight or Flight are the two broad ways that animals (including humans) deal with a threat or fear resulting from this threat. This means we can either fight the threat or flee (flight) to get away from the threat and optimise our chances of survival. The response though becomes complex when the threat that we are perceiving is imaginary. What do you fight when there is nothing physically present to fight from. If you are fleeing what do you flee from, when the threat will follow your brain’s imagination. While this response is great in a real world situation, the same response in an imaginary situation is what leads to stress which is a well known factor of many chronic diseases. Hence the first item on everyone’s list to manage stress should be to deal with this imaginary threat.

Fear in professional life..

Lets explore the concept of fear in professional world. Think of every major decision you had to take in your professional career. The so called butterflies that you felt in your stomach when you were taking that decision was your brain’s response to an imaginary fear, more often than not – A fear of unknown.

In professional life, we try our best to base our decisions or actions on data and facts. However, we are humans and whether we accept it or not, emotions and intuition plays an important part in everything we do. The key here is to manage our emotion to ensure an optimum outcome. The corporate world has in fact found a way to translate this very concept of emotional decision making to a science and that’s where Risk assessment comes to play. Now since Risk in itself is a topic worthy of its own, I will not get into detailing it here (more on it in my next article ??).

At this time, all I would say is work out if the fear that you are feeling is real or imaginary. If the fear is indeed real, find data and facts to put relevant mitigation in place. If the fear is imaginary, find a way to truly convince yourself of this fear’s virtual nature so that you can free your mind to take an effective decision.

My 5 steps to dealing with fear..

Now that we have established that fear is a critical emotion and plays a role in every aspect of our life, its clear that we need to learn to deal with it. Here is a technique that I use and hopefully you can benefit from. The technique has 5 steps – Identify, Analyse, Confront, Manage and Repeat. Lets look at each of this step in a little more detail,

• Step 1: Identify – Identify the one fear that you feel impacts your life the most. Be honest and truthful to yourself. If possible write this down on a piece of paper so that you have put it out for yourself to see. I have found that often writing something down gives you more power over your emotions.
• Step 2: Analyse – Analyse this fear, asses everything around it. Think of why you might have this fear, remember there are no wrong answers they are just your answers. If you think it originated from an event in your life, write it down. If you think the fear is due to an evolutionary aspect of life, that’s fine, write that down too.
• Step 3: Confront – This is the most important step in the process. Now that you sort of understand your fear and its potential origins, it’s time to confront it. Start small, initially just use your imagination to put yourself in a situation which triggers your fear response. Gradually take it to the next level of small exposure. Take your time it can take a few days to a few weeks. The idea is to confront your fear in small doses till you feel comfortable dealing with it. Seek a trusted friend to be with you on the journey and If you think you need professional help, do not hesitate to get it. Eventually, when you feel relatively comfortable doing this, find a physically safe way to fully confront your fear. If you have a fear of heights try sky diving. If you have a fear of spiders, go to a specialised pet shop and ask the helpful sales agent to put a spider on your hands. You get the drift..
• Step 4: Manage – A very critical step, once you have started to get confident with the way you are confronting with your fear, manage it. From time to time, sit back and introspect on how you feel about the fear. Remember there is no one size fits all and everyone has their own process. Fine-tune your ways till you feel confident
• Step 5: Complete and Repeat – Congratulations you got there, I know this is not easy so pat yourself on the back. Now repeat the same process for your next fear (or from time to time for the same fear to ensure its held in check)

There is nothing more debilitating and crippling than fear. It holds you back from living your life fully and more often than not, even expressing yourself freely. The feeling though of getting over that fear is so liberating and rewarding that in retrospect, you will certainly think why did you not act on it sooner.

I Hope this article helps you in some way. Please let me know which part you liked or where your views differ. I would love to hear your views on this topic and especially how you deal with your fears!