Fear in Woods

Fear

Falling in dark Woods

“He thought with a kind of astonishment of the biological uselessness of pain and fear, the treachery of the human body which always freezes into inertia at exactly the moment when a special effort is needed.”

George Orwell, 1984

Fear is the emotion which is experienced by almost everyone. There is fear of height, fear of closed space, fear of dark, fear of water, fear of crowd, fear of boss, fear of enemy, fear of getting obese, fear of disease, fear of getting injured, fear of work, fear of death, fear of the unknown, and what not. Almost everything in this entire world can be connected with fear. So, there can be various kinds of fear, from trivial to serious which we experience in our day-to-day life.

As per Wikipedia, “Fear is an intensely unpleasant primal emotion in response to perceiving or recognizing a danger or threat.”

We know what causes fear, but we don’t know how or why does it happen? Well, on surface level fear may be considered to be some temporary physiological changes in the body like increase in adrenalin and blood glucose levels, accelerated breathing and heartrate, sweating, goosebumps, dyspepsia (butterflies in the stomach), inability to think properly, etc. These conditions may be summarized as ‘fight or flight response’.

For the question, “why do we experience fear?”, we need to go back to millions of years ago when life first originated on Earth. During the primitive stage of life fear was essential for survival. Due to this instinctive fear, the primitive forms of life avoided harmful or dangerous situations. So, we may say that fear is one of the results of evolution of life. Those organisms which experienced fear survived while others got extinct (survival of the fittest). With the evolution of life into complex forms, the idea of fear became more and more complex. For most animals fear is an important condition to protect themselves from other predators. The human mind being complex, the concept of fear, for us, is not just limited to threat of a predator. It’s as diverse as our thoughts and life experiences are. Today almost every human being experiences fear, some get frightened by cockroaches, some by other humans.

Is there any person in the world who doesn’t experience fear?
What if I say, “Yes, there are.” You might think I must be lying.

Well, there is a disease called Urbach-Wiethe Disease which completely removes fear from a person. Urbach-Wiethe Disease is a rare recessive genetic disorder that can affect the brain and skin. However, the symptoms and effects of this disease may vary from person to person. For example, in an American woman, given the initials SM for anonymity (also popularly known as the woman who knows no fear), this disease affected the brain and led to the complete absence of fear. In her late childhood, this disease destroyed both of the amygdalae of her brain. Because of this brain damage, the woman completely lost the sense of fear. A knife attack in the park at night and a case of domestic violence which she barely survived were not able to scare her a bit.

This disease was first officially reported in 1929 by Eric Urbach and Camillo Wiethe. Since its Discovery approximately 400 cases have been known and a quarter of them have been registered in South Africa.

There is yet another way to completely disable the sense of fear. Removal of adrenal glands may also make a person impervious to feeling scared. This is because, adrenal glands are responsible for the release of adrenaline hormone, which governs fear, stress and anxiety in our body. Jordiy Cernik, famous for his daredevil activities like sky diving, was a victim of Cushing’s syndrome, which resulted in the removal of his adrenaline gland in a surgery. He no longer feels the sensation of fear along with stress, anxiety etc. He can do incredibly risky stunts without a slight increase in the rate of his heartbeat.

Daredevil Stunt

But, the absence of fear is a pretty dangerous condition and may lead a person to really dangerous situations that can do him serious harm.

But what is the ultimate fear that even the people impervious to fear cannot escape? Suffocation in the absence of oxygen is the fear that nobody can escape. It’s the ultimate fear, you become helpless and you die slowly suffering through this terrorizing fear.

Most people consider fear as an undesirable emotion. They feel it weakens them. That is just a narrow outlook on this important emotion. If we look at fear through a broader perspective, we’ll find that fear is one of the essential emotions essential for survival.

Fear protects us from dangerous situations. Sometimes it gives us instant energy boost by increasing adrenaline and blood glucose level particularly in fight or flight situation. Even in our day-to-day life we experience fear for different reasons but in most cases it’s for valid reasons. The only issue is that most people are unable to maintain their calmness during the surge of fear overwhelming their entire thinking ability. If one learns only this one thing, one will utilise the feeling of fear for their own benefit.

So, how can we get hold of our fear? Well, it comes through practice. But the essential thing to achieve it is mental strength. So, we first have to strengthen our mind which can be achieved through practicing daily exercise, yoga, meditation, martial arts, etc. However, regularly practicing easier meditation techniques like ‘Annapana’ or ‘Vipasana’ will also help strengthen the mind along with enhancing it to a different level.

Meditation

So, fear is not something we need to worry about. We just need to take every step to mitigate it and empower ourselves to keep calm and make the right decision at moments of fear.

“He who fears he shall suffer, already suffers what he fears.”

Michel Eyquem de Montaigne

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