Fear. When you think of it, you might think of the fear you feel in dangerous situations such as walking along a cliff or when someone startles you. But fear can also occur at times when you are not in mortal danger at all. It can limit you in your daily life, make you feel sad or avoid you from going out. To better understand fear, it is important to understand what happens when you are feeling scared. I’d like to explain a bit more about that.
Thinking patterns as a tool
Fear makes you alert in situations you perceive as dangerous and helps you prepare to react. Fear is accompanied by various physical reactions such as nausea, sweating, increased heart rate and muscle tension. But besides physical reactions, something also happens in your mind, automatic thinking patterns often emerge. These patterns are there to help you. For example, to flee faster or to avoid a problem, but also to be more focused or to pay attention.
The other side
However, when you go along with automatic patterns too often, your judgment can become clouded. Consider, for example, that you can never find out whether a dog is dangerous if you automatically run away. Or that you won’t learn your boss’s boundaries if you always say ‘yes’. In that case, thinking patterns can backfire:
- Worst case scenario. When you feel scared, you assume the worst. This makes you cautious and so the outcome can only be better than expected. However, the probability of this disaster happening is not as high as it feels. Remember that there are other possibilities.
- Solvability. Fear can literally stiffen you and make you feel like something bad is happening to you. As a result, you forget or underestimate your ability to solve a problem. It is rare that there is nothing left to do when disaster actually happens. There is always something to fix or resolve!
- Forbearance. Because you probably prefer to avoid unpleasant situations, you become used to ‘safety’ or comfort. As a result, you underestimate your ability to tolerate or endure disasters. It often feels very bad, but it is quite endurable when it comes down to it. Think back, for example, to the unpleasant things you have already been through in your life. You are still standing strong!
- Responsibility. Stress activates our problem-solving ability to think about whether and how this could have been prevented. This also makes you reflect on your role in the situation and you may overestimate your responsibility. However, the fact that you could have done something differently does not mean that you should have done things differently.
Do you recognise these thinking patterns when you feel scared? Or are you not yet aware of them? You might be able to pay attention to this the next time you feel scared and find out what thinking patterns are at play with you.
