Thomas Hobbes said that on the day of his birth, his mother had given birth to twins: himself and his fear, few emotions define us as much as this stubborn and recurrent subject who not only guarantees our survival, but also acts as a true limiter. opportunity, the voracious enemy of our freedoms and our personal growth, so it is so interesting to know the anatomy of fear.
Fear can be shameful and overwhelming, we know, however, eliminating it altogether would be like leaving the doors and windows of our house open, like walking barefoot on a sharp, rugged floor, that is, an insignificant risk that would directly affect our balance and survival.
- Moreover.
- Contrary to what one might imagine.
- Brave and daring people also do not erase that feeling from their minds.
- Fear is still there.
- You just need to know how to handle it and deal with it.
“I think it’s braver to overcome your fears than to defeat your enemies, because the hardest victory is over yourself. Aristotle?
Something interesting than Alfred Hitchcock himself? Do you know these psychological problems?It is always said that nothing can be more pleasurable than “controlled fear. “In fact, a good part of the world’s population goes to film for the sole purpose of feeling fear, anguish, terror. However, just knowing that they are in a safe environment and will then leave the room “unhinged”, relaxed and accompanied by their friends provides an exciting sense of well-being.
To say that fear is necessary and healthy is not absurd, this primary emotion is very beneficial to the human being whenever we control it, however, by the time this adaptive response takes over and triggers a succession of chemical storms and physiological changes in our bodies, the story changes completely.
It is at this point that we give way to the most paralyzing stress, panic attacks and a “kidnapping. ” In which we are subordinated to a series of complex and interesting processes?
Helena had a traffic accident six months ago while taking her daughter to school, both came out unscathed, but the memory of the accident and its psychological impact remain in your mind like an open wound that severely affects your quality of life.
Sometimes even the sound of the water bottle on his bedside table at night causes him to wake up startled and panicking, reminding him that the other car crashed into his vehicle. These days, Helena still can’t drive her car. Hands on the steering wheel already speed up your heart, make you sick and the world begins to spin around you as if it were inside a roof.
Reading this fictional but recurring story of people who have been e wrapped up in traffic accidents, we know that our protagonist will have to ask for help sooner or later, however, to understand the origin of the most common panics, phobias and fears, it is not enough to understand their origin. We have to go a little further, we have to delve into the anatomy of fear in our brains.
All the information that enters the senses passes through the amygdala, a very small structure of our limbic system that constitutes the oldest area of the brain, regulated exclusively by our emotions. Is it interesting to know that the amygdala? It monitors everything that happens inside and out that, when it detects a potential threat, it activates a series of connections to generate an entire kaleidoscope of complex reactions.
The amygdala, in turn, has a bad habit of not paying attention to detail. There is no time to waste to ensure our survival and that is why it often makes us react to irrational or unrrasonable stimuli.
Your “alert” system immediately activates the nervous system to practice a very specific response: escape, and for this it will prepare our body.
As we see, all this succession of physiological and chemical changes can be of great help to escape an objective danger, a real threat, but when fear is psychological and inaccessible, when you have the case of someone like Helena, who associates all Her abruptness with the memory of her accident triggering a panic reaction, we can understand the wear and tear that can mean living like this for months or years.
If there is a really exhausting dimension for the human being, it is psychological fear. What constitutes the complex anatomy of generalized anxiety disorder, negligible anxiety, phobias, hypochondria or obsessive-compulsive disorder?Fear appears, as we see, in many dark shades of gray and black, moments when the person completely loses his control capacity, his quality of life, his dignity?
It can be said, in fact, that today the fears most present in our society are undoubtedly those that are in our minds, those that do not correspond to external predators, but to those inner shadows of which it is so difficult. . escape, deter, disinfect. However, achieving this is a vital obligation.
Here are some simple strategies you can use to test
Now that we understand the anatomy of fear, let’s look at some secrets that can help us allow this emotion to condition our behavior just for our own good:
To conclude, as we can see, the subject of the anatomy of fear and how to deal with this feeling is a complex and very broad field, an area that probably needs to be understood in order to take better care of yourself. As they say, to aspire to true happiness, we must first tear down the walls of fear.
André, Cristoph (2010), Psycholog of Fear: Fears, Anxiety and Phobias.
H-tler, Gerald (2001)? Fear biology: stress and feelings ?, current platform
Gower, L. Paul (2005)? Psychology of Fear ?: Nova Biomedical Books