Don’t be afraid, there’s nothing to fear, stop trembling and pull yourself together; don’t be a coward, stop giving in to these fears… We know how to add and subtract, speak multiple languages, send people into space, and perform successful open-heart surgeries. Yet a matter as fundamental to our existence as emotions remains a challenge for many of us. Today, we focus on fear.

Fear is evolutionarily conditioned, and its entanglement with our life experiences turns it into anxiety. But before we get to the core, let’s first examine how fear itself works and what information it carries. Fear is an emotion that mobilizes our energy, similar to anger. The difference lies in the direction in which this energy is used: anger encourages confrontation, while fear compels us to avoid it. Fear is meant to steer us away from what we recognize as harmful, unpleasant, or painful.

The Evolutionary Function of Fear

You don’t want to feel pain, so fear helps you avoid it. When we view fear in terms of the function it serves in our lives, we can see that it is crucial for the survival of our species. Without fear, our species would not exist. Fear is like a piece of the puzzle that our mind must solve in a threatening situation:

• Conduct an analysis
• Identify the source of the threat
• Choose the most advantageous course of action to get out of the predicament
• Do this in a split second

Without experiencing fear and the energy mobilization it triggers in our body, this would be impossible.

Fear is also an important component of the learning process—learning understood as stimulus conditioning: if you once burned your hand touching a hot kettle, next time you will take precautions. The reason you do this is the fear that arises at the very thought of being burned again. Fear is a powerful tool that allows us to adapt quickly to new conditions and prevents actions that could accelerate the disappearance of our species from the planet. By equipping us with fear, evolution has created a highly effective survival mechanism.

Fear and Anxiety

Prolonged pain, especially that originating from our psyche, can transform fear into anxiety. Unfortunately, psychological pain can sometimes become a core element of socio-cultural training. I personally refer to this as obedience training, which involves more or less subtle shaping of an individual’s will and creativity until they become a compliant executor of a socio-cultural and parental life program. At that point, rational fear turns into irrational anxiety—an anxiety that settles firmly in our lives and compels us to avoid or restrain ourselves from what is deemed inappropriate, unacceptable, or unpleasant by those who have control or advantage over us. This can occur in parent-child relationships, teacher-student relationships, manager-subordinate dynamics, and any other type of relationship. A mechanism often used in such situations is blackmail and conditioning based on an emotional seesaw—granting and withdrawing acceptance, a sense of belonging, and love. Reward is given for conforming to expectations, while punishment comes for failing to comply.

Wilhelm Reich, the Austrian psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, described this mechanism brilliantly in his cult book The Murderers of Christ. Although he was a declared atheist, he chose the figure of Christ to illustrate the free, spontaneously feeling human, while society was depicted as the murderers—unable to tolerate individual freedom and independence, they must destroy it, or at least take away liberty and autonomy. In this allegorical form, the author aimed to show how our ego is ‘murdered’ by social norms during the process of growing up, and how a child’s free and spontaneous nature is ‘trimmed’ to fit a world constrained by the scruples of adults.

Anxiety

Fear and anxiety are often confused and used interchangeably, though they are not the same. Fear is rational and helps protect our lives, while anxiety is irrational and does not serve actual protection. Anxiety is like a rigid corset or armor. Since every person is a collection of completely unique experiences, each individual will wear a slightly different armor, which may press or restrict them in different ways and at different times. Psychotherapists and psychiatrists often refer to this type of armor as personality.
An interesting perspective on this topic comes from Stephen M. Johnson, who in his Character Styles described this phenomenon as the formation of character armor. According to him, its function in the past was to protect us from chaos. The more threatening the surrounding conditions, the stronger and stiffer the armor needed to be in order to keep us alive. One of the uses of this armor was learning to live without satisfying certain needs, such as safety, acceptance, warmth, or recognition of our individuality.
However, as we grow older, this function increasingly becomes an obstacle. One area where this is usually noticeable is in forming healthy, positive relationships. Imagine a young person, like anyone else, facing various difficulties. If their environment focuses on mutual conflict, there may never be enough time to address their problems. Such a person learns that they must either manage on their own or not at all. Over time, they master the art of ‘taking everything upon themselves and carrying all burdens alone.’ In adulthood, this can backfire, because carrying the world on one’s shoulders is difficult, and being unable to ask for or accept help leads to struggles in relationships with others.

In our lives, it is impossible not to experience fear, and I would not wish otherwise for anyone. People who do not feel fear tend to have short lives. Unfortunately, living in a civilized world, it is also impossible to completely avoid anxiety. Too many specialists have studied this for it to be otherwise. However, we do not have to remain powerless in the face of anxiety. Just as our brain is programmed to feel anxiety, it can also be reprogrammed so that we stop feeling it—perhaps not completely and not immediately, but it is possible.
To stop feeling anxiety, we must first recognize its irrationality. Then, reinforce this understanding by doing the very things anxiety was trying to protect us from. Rebel, stomp your foot, do something foolish, something daring. How else can we learn to live if we are constantly running from it? Let’s get to it.

Michał Śmiałowski

Bibliography:

Reich, W., The Murderers of Christ, Satorski & Co., Warszawa, 1995

Johnson, S. M., Character Styles, Zysk i S-ka, Poznań, 2012