Fear review. When may the fear be useful?

Posted by admin on Jan 28, 2010 in General information | 1 comment

For some people fear has become an inseparable attribute of their life. This is the reason why we decided to make a short fear review and clarify the situations when the fear may be useful. This fear review does not certainly cover all possible occurrences and makes only a kind of general survey of the present state of affairs.

Phobia is an excessive, irrational fear of an object or situation. Scientists think that fear is a kind of anxiety disorder. The case is that anxiety represents the main symptom found by the doctors in patients experiencing extreme fear. Phobias are considered to be emotional reactions of the learned type. Psychologists think that phobia is a result of fear provoked by a frightening experience projected to other situations with subsequent repression or forgetting the initial fear. The sufferer attempts to keep away from the similar situation afterwards and such a reaction diminishes the anxiety for a short period. However, subsequent existence strengthens the individual’s connection to the traumatic situation and supports the anxiety.

Behaviorism and behavioristic approach are sometimes successful in defeating phobia. This therapy presupposes increasing exposition to the object or situation that provoked anxiety until the person finally gets rid of it. The idea is that the individual realizes that his fears of the provoking situation do not come true. Scientists explain that the strong associations between the fear-provoking situation and the feeling of anxiety with consequent escaping of unpleasant situation are interrupted due to behavior phobia therapy. There are different other ways of struggle against irrational fears. One of the most effective methods is the relaxation.

Existentialists describing fears use such terms as dread, angst or anxiety. As a matter of fact anxiety is an essential category of existentialism. Søren Kierkegaard considered that anxiety is a desire for what the individual fears. Martin Heidegger thought that dread and anxiety are the distinguishing ways through which human existence is revealed as a dependent being, and thus the initial fear becomes possible through anxiety.

One and the same emotion such as fear can be either useful or harmful. In the first case the question is about normal, one could even say healthy, objective, rational fear. In the second case we can speak about pathological, irrational feeling of fear. How to distinguish them from each other?
The fear is rational if:

1. There is a real danger, which can cause certain damage to the person. It is senselessly to be afraid of monsters under a bed. In fact they do not exist in a reality, and inexistent things are unable to cause harm.

2. The source of danger can be controlled. It is useless to be afraid that the Moon will fall on the Earth. Even if such threat would be real, all of us equally could not control it.

3. The level of fear corresponds to a level of probable damage. The fear to catch AIDS as a result of a mosquito sting is irrational, as AIDS is not transmitted by such way.

4. The power of fear corresponds to the probability that trouble will take place. Many people have unreasonable fear of air travel, but are not at all afraid of automobiles though it is statistically proved, that the probability of automobile accident is much higher.

5. The fear helps to avoid danger. From this point of view too strong fear is irrational as it deprives the person of an opportunity to think soberly and to react adequately to a dangerous situation.

Many useful words have been invented to identify the nature of the fear by means of adding describing prefixes to “phobia”, which in the Greek language signifies the “feared thing”. For example, acrophobia means fear of high places; claustrophobia is the fear of closed places; when the person is afraid of the night and experiences fear of the dark spaces, doctors name it nyctophobia; xenophobia is fear of strangers; and zoophobia is fear of animals. Agoraphobia is the fear of open places and is considered to be a particularly disabling suffering because it may prevent patients from even leaving home. Schoolchildren may suffer from school phobia and experience test anxiety, especially if they are too much emotionally attached to their parents.