Fear

Isn't fear the weirdest thing ever? I came up with the idea of writing about this when I had the misfortune of stumbling upon a most undesirable picture from "The Exorcist" on the Internet and spent the whole night paranoid. It only hit me then how irrational fear is. I mean, where does fear even come from?

Coming from a-totally-non-qualified-definitely-not-an-expert-just-a-human-being-who-has-experienced-it-way-too-often's perspective I feel like fear is such a complex matter and the fear of seeing a scary film is very different to being afraid of saying what you believe. The reason I say that is because when I see a scary image I sort of go numb and freeze, then I have the natural instinct to try and get away from it. With fear of dealing with people, thinking about the future, you're not panicking, you're more kind of exaggerating everything in your head and thinking about what could happen. And I suppose that is what fear does. It blows everything up way out of proportion and it plays tricks with your mind. Your imagination is much more frightening than reality when fear has taken control of the reigns.

So I guess what we should address is the question of "What is fear?" Why do so many of us have the same reaction to scary pictures and why are so many people are afraid of spiders? I think it could be a reflection of what we see around us. Everyone's afraid of these things so the actions and feelings get instilled in us also. But that doesn't really sit with me. How can it feel so natural? Maybe its the fear we saw in their eyes that frightened us and whenever we see that thing by which they were frightened of again, we associate it with that time of fear. Also, touching on my belief in reincarnation I'm not going to dismiss that our fears don't come from past lives. It kind of makes sense doesn't it? We can't explain why we're afraid of something in this life because our memories from lives gone by have faded so much. All that remains are the feelings because feelings are infinite. 

Other than that I find it ridiculously difficult  to figure out why we have fears for no apparent reason.

If I were to speak about the other type of fear I mentioned, the fear of the future, the fear of failing. That to me is definitely due to external sources and once again society. Society has told us how to behave, what future is the best and we fear we can't live up to that. I don't know why we do, but we do. We're often afraid to give our opinions because we think people will reject them, stare at us or that it'll just go really badly. We don't rationalise it or more importantly forget about it, because even if they do all those terrifying things in your head, it doesn't even matter. And about the fear of failing in our future lives. I know I'm convinced I'm going to end up homeless because everything I'm interested in is so easy to fail in or just simply doesn't produce jobs.  In general though, people are afraid to chase their dreams for fear of failing and ending up as something you hate for the rest of your lives. All of these common fears are derived from Mothers, Fathers, Teachers, Aunts, Uncles, The Media and others telling us that your life is a success if  you become a doctor or a lawyer and make X amount of money each year. You have a nice house, attractive spouse of the opposite sex with whom you make 2 kids, a boy and a girl (at an appropriate age, mind you.) This is what's deemed stereo typically perfect in society and many of us have a fear of not achieving that.

Now I want to discuss the power  of fear. The utter grip it has over our thoughts, our actions, our feelings and our lives. After I saw that petrifying photo I was talking about, why couldn't I just forget about it? I lay in bed and I kept checking every inch of my room to make sure she hadn't just popped in to say hello. I deemed every unexpected object to be her and my heart would stop for a split second until I realised it was just a blouse. I don't even know why I wanted to keep looking, surely I'd want to delay seeing her for as long as possible??? I guess I wanted to try and regain some of the power that fear had taken from me.

You become so engrossed in fear. The people around you kind of dwindle away and you act towards them in a manner that's not like you. You might turn to anger or tears but in whatever way you do its negative so as we all can testify, fear affects our relationships with others.

Its so important to try and eliminate our fears, to add a dollop of logic to our lives, because only then can we live all our dreams to their fullest. Who doesn't want that? 

They say the best way to eliminate fear is to just face it. Then you'll be free from its clutch. I totally believe in this. I make sure I don't shelter my eyes when a ghost pops up in scary films because my imagination will be worse than whats in front of me and the motions of fear that I go through(squealing, clutching the blanket, tensing up and shaking) all lead to the initial fear building up and building up.

Making fun of scary things also helps enormously. Laughter is a curing and preventative medicine so if you laugh, you're not only tricking your body into thinking you're happy and releasing endorphins and all that jazz but you're simply seeing the bright side of life as well.

Also, I love the quote "Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood"  and that's something I wholeheartedly believe in. Its my opinion that that is the reason for prejudice. Homophobia is the correct term because its not people being ass holes its people being afraid of the unknown among other things like insecurity etc. But if you sat down and truly investigated a spider you wouldn't be as afraid. You'd understand that they're generally harmless and just look creepy.

And my last piece of advice is that we must realise that our fear of people is ridiculous, When we look at people doing something really out there we think about it or a split second and then we move on to the next candidate in our queue of thoughts. We've all been awkward at some point in our lives and from this we possess a basic human compassion. We need to demolish the fear of displeasing society as well and determine our own definition of success. I know mine is very internal and emotionally based. What's yours?

They're the best things  I can come up with to eliminate our fears and I'm ashamed to report that I had intended to leave ye with some scary pictures to work on curing ye're selves with. The bad news? I saw 20 spiders in Google images and had a seizure......

I'll leave ye with one question, and one question only,

What would you do if you weren't afraid?

Love,

             Rachel=)