Everyone is afraid of something sometimes. In the dark, for heights, for insects, or the dentist perhaps. There is a fear of everything. That fear can be quite annoying. For example, we start to sweat and feel uncomfortable. Yet it is not always wrong to be afraid. What exactly does that mean, fear?
Useful
Although we might not immediately expect it, fear is very useful. Imagine a young woman walking down a dark alley. A little further away she sees a shadow and it scares her. She thinks: Maybe I shouldn’t have walked here alone, let me turn around and choose a safer path. A good decision, because perhaps a robber was waiting for her. The young woman got herself to safety. Just imagine if she hadn’t had this fear. There was nothing in her body that indicated anything was wrong. If that shadow had really been a mugger (or maybe even something worse!), she would have been in big trouble.
Fear is also useful because you can react more quickly to certain situations. Suppose the young woman had continued walking despite feeling fear. She doesn’t know how else to walk, or her bike is on the other side of the alley. She walks through the alley, but keeps a close eye on the spot where she saw the shadow. The moment the robber jumps out, the woman takes off running and manages to get rid of him.
Your body
Your body reacts in a certain way when you are afraid of something. The things that happen within your body all have to do with fear. Everything that happens in your body allows you to act faster and be more alert in certain situations. For example, it is important that your body delivers sufficient oxygen to the muscles. With more oxygen in your muscles, you can respond faster. The oxygen is pumped through your body by your breathing, so it is not surprising that you breathe faster when you are afraid.
To pump oxygen through your body faster, it will be sent via the blood. That is why your heart rate also increases when you are anxious. Usually more oxygen is pumped to the larger body parts, such as the arms and legs. This creates a dizzy feeling, because less blood goes to the brain. Do you suffer from stomach ache when you are afraid? This can also be explained logically: less blood goes to your stomach, because your limbs are more important at this time. Your body prepares to suddenly take action. If you suddenly have to run fast, your muscles will become warmer. This heat is normally cooled with sweating and that is why you start to sweat. The shivering that some people do when they are afraid also has to do with preparing for action. Your muscles are often tense because they expect something to happen. This causes shivering.
Finally, you also need a good dose of adrenaline. With adrenaline in your body, you can suddenly do much more than you initially expected and you react to situations differently than normal. Adrenaline takes a while to leave your body. That’s why we often still feel bad for a long time after an anxiety-provoking event.
Dodge
Because fear is an unpleasant experience, we prefer to avoid it. Consider the example of the young woman mentioned earlier. She left because she didn’t feel comfortable in the dark alley. There’s nothing wrong with this. It’s a completely natural reaction. It is programmed into us and it prevents problems that we would otherwise not have seen coming. Animals also have fear. You see a zebra fleeing from a lion on TV. Or how about that fly in your house? He always flies away when you walk up with your fly swatter. The fly leaves out of fear.
Unnatural fear
Unfortunately, it can also happen that a fear someone has is not good for that person. The fear hinders life and causes a person to no longer function normally. For example, you may be afraid of spiders. Many people suffer from this, but it is a small group that is so afraid of spiders that everything revolves around the spider. The house is thoroughly cleaned every day and the person with a fear of spiders will avoid any situation involving a spider. He or she thinks about spiders all day long and everything revolves around fear. You can understand that this fear is not natural, and even annoying. Someone who is so afraid of spiders may not go outside anymore. Because imagine there is a spider in the garden, or in front of the front door. We call such an extreme fear a phobia. You have phobias in all shapes and sizes. Unfortunately, you can’t just get rid of a phobia. It can take a lot of time and people with a phobia are sometimes afraid to admit that they have a problem. You can overcome a phobia by going to therapy. There are many different types of therapies for these fears.