Understanding the fearful mindset

In life in the West, we are taught fear from a very young age.

Fear is engrained in our young brains by a constant bombardment of information, which is emotionally loaded.

Our growing brains are very sensitive to emotional stimuli from the environment and hence quickly learn to discern fear from other feelings.

What happens over time?

The child learns to fear and avoid certain life situations/people and to prefer others.

This is protective in many ways, as it keeps the child out of harm's way while it does not have the life experience to make informed decisions.

In adult life however, fear tends to mostly be a hindrance.

It limits our confidence, curtails our capabilities and lowers our happiness levels.

Fear is, essentially, destructive.

It increases heart rate, raises blood cholesterol and introduces stress hormones in our blood.

In other words, fear is destructive to our bodies and is an incredibly unpleasant sensation.

The first step to reducing our perceived levels of fear is to notice when it arises.

Think about the trigger situations which leave you feeling fearful. What are they? What are you fearing will happen in that situation? How often do you encounter these situations in life?

Can you associate a number, on a 1-10 scale, describing the intensity of the emotional response for each situation which leaves you fearful?

Learning to recognize fear is the first step to distancing yourselves from it.

The next step is to learn to reframe fear and transform it into more helpful emotional states.

I will describe this process in a following post.

Thank you as always,

Peter