The inhuman nature of fear: why are we afraid?

They say that if you sit down in the dusk, left completely alone, sit with your back to the open door, sooner or later your "covetous fear" will come out. But whoever says there, I personally never managed to combine all three conditions: loneliness, twilight and a thirst for self-knowledge - therefore I can not know what is behind the "creature" behind my door.

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Although of course, I would like to see something unusual, but very little hope, because, like any person, I am exposing my fears in all possible forms. And whatever there is not behind my door, I will always share it with something else. Perhaps that's why, fear is considered one of the least desirable emotions.

And honestly, this is very unfair, because fear is one of those important emotions that not only protect our genes in every possible way for transmission to the next generations, but also protect us from "stupidities". Under stupidity, I mean those cases when fear does not allow us: to stand under the arrow, walk on dark alleys deep in the night, swim for buoys at sea, well, or take a mortgage ....

What is fear?

From the point of view of psychology, fear - is an internal state caused by a threatening real or perceived disaster. And this state arises in us, in those cases when something threatens our life or property. But here, in which direction our fear is bent depends only on the personal predispositions of the person:

• Real - arises as a rule in the case when we realize that someone deliberately can cause us harm right here and now. I do not need special explanations here, because each of us, for example, may be afraid of street gangs or a bailiff.

In this case, there are three main reactions to fear: struggle, flight, stupor - and all of them are conditioned by innate qualities. At the same time, the sympathetic department of the nervous system is responsible for active behavior (struggle or flight). Vessels widen (red face), hormones are injected into the blood, the heart starts to knock more often, muscles get more oxygen - all these changes begin to prepare our body for immediate activity.

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• Neurotic - as such, does not have a target, because it is aimed at an unconcrete but unpleasant event in the future. A person lives in a state of intense expectation of the same death that in his opinion lurks behind every corner and takes the most incredible forms, turning his life into an unending horror.

In this case, the parasympathetic department of the nervous system predominates, so for fear, a person reacts in a completely different way. Vessels narrow, breathing becomes superficial, body temperature decreases and the person stiff in horror remains to hope that everything will go away.

Strangely enough, but fear works always and its action covers all areas of our life. And sometimes in life it happens that we can not admit our fear, and then the most terrible things can be a variety of objects and phenomena: darkness, loneliness, rapid approach of the object, height, sudden change of stimulation or something completely unfamiliar. And then in order to justify your fear of the object is inherently innocuous, we endow this object with features that are not characteristic of it.

Why are we afraid?

The fate of each of us can be compared to a book. We are its authors, only we do not always realize this. It's much easier to consider yourself a simple character, because then fear can be perceived as a phenomenon that acts independently of our will. At that time, as the author himself can come up with the development of events, the character only obeys the written plot.

Deciding that we are heroes of the book, we live in accordance with the script. In which the rules are clearly spelled out: "if you do not go to college you'll go to the janitors". And then the character as a person involved in the process is forced to fear. They are afraid of committing what is considered bad according to the rules of the script: to be deceived, childless, lonely, etc. And we draw pictures in our imagination. A lot of things our imagination can do! If only it belongs to the author himself!

But if we remember about this, the pictures would become different, and the plot of the novel would turn completely in the opposite direction. After all, the author, which we do not realize in ourselves, has one habit: he always seeks to complete the plot begun. So having received a picture created by the imagination, he considers it his duty to write for her continuation. And if it depicts what we are afraid of, then sooner or later it will take place in our life.

In the world there are many laws. Do you know what the most important of them sounds like? A person can do anything! And to make it work, you just need to ... believe in yourself