Fear is never irrational, your emotions react to stimulus picked up by your senses. your brain functions very much on the same principle as a computer: input, processing and output.
Information comes in through your senses that data gets processed by your brain through thoughts and emotions and as a result of the processing you end up with a conclusion, that will shape the outcome like your behavior which is what we can consider the output.
So far phobias are considered by modern psychology a processing problem, most therapies are targeted to change the program, like the thoughts or the emotions. Some example of these therapies: cbt, hypnosis, exposure therapy
Your thoughts and emotions are the response of the information that you receive through your senses, you have very limited to no control directly over them, especially in critical situations where you become impulsive. This is why trying to rationalize a fear doesn't work, it is like you are arguing with the wind.
Your emotions are not a subject of confusion but a subject of precaution. For example if you walk on a dark alley and you hear a suspicious noise, that can trigger your fear response, if a couple seconds later you see a cat cumming from the direction you hear the noise, you now understand that there is no real threat so you can now relax.
That is not irrational, it is very important for your self preservation to over-react to threats, because if the noise was made by a monster and not a cat you would've gotten eaten. To that extent your emotions are always right. When it comes to the fight or flight response, your body operates on the principle better safe than sorry.
Phobias are an input problem, as the old saying goes: "you have to see it with your own eyes to believe it!". Like in the example above your fear won't stop until you don't perceive something that will indicate you that you are safe, and that your original assumption of that threat was falls, you just over reacted to it as a precaution.
The natural symptoms of fear are not only preparing you for escaping a threat or for fighting it, but you also become hypersensitive to receiving information. You become hyper-vigilant, your pupils dilate to let in more light and information etc.
You don't have manual control over the delete and edit function of your mind. The only thing you can do is to add more lines of code, and whenever you successfully added sufficient new better information things get deleted automatically.
Any fear which serves no purpose is irrational, some people are afraid of balloons, that fear serves no purpose and protects them from no danger.
Likewise, all available studies suggest people cannot alter their consciousness at will, changing one's mind requires a wide set of practises and changes to one's environment, to suggest otherwise flies in the face of decades of cognitive science.
I agree consciousness can be changed, but to suggest it's simply as easy as 'adding more lines of code' is empirically meaningless and unhelpful.
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You could get hurt with any object under the right circumstances. A phobia is generally formed with a negative or series of negative experiences with that object.
Changing the environment won't fix an "irrational" fear because there is no real threat in what is triggering your fear. It is a perception problem. I never said that you can change your thoughts and emotions at will. Is the experience that you are choosing to have that will eventually change your perception of that thing. And psychology is a pseudo science.
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Sometimes fear is rational. To be scared of a spider or snake when its leaping for you is rational. To be scared by a balloon is irrational. Fear of a balloon is an irrational fear. when you know logically the balloon wont harm you. Being scared of a harmless house spider, while irrational, is linked to a rational fear of spiders. Human emotion is complex.
Im not really clear on your intent with this post because you seem to say opposing things.
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What we call irrational fear is somewhat plausible because there is always some real danger involve with it. Like if you have a phobia of elevator there are people who die every year in an elevator, is just that it is a very small chance, so it is worth taking that risk.
If you had a past negative experience or a nightmare with an elevator, your body is going to anticipate that danger as a form of precaution. Which is a very important thing, because if you are wrong about it you are going to be dead. And that it is a very rational survival instinct.
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I agree in some respects. Some caution can be a rational behaviour.
Some fears are rational, some are not. Becoming scared of balloons even though you have never had a bad experience with them, that is what I would call irrational fear.
Im not saying its wrong or that I am immune to irrational behaviours. Not one person on earth is immune to being irrational.
For someone who can think rationally, so not counting those with a mental health problems or children, but for a rational person, unfounded fear of balloons is irrational without some other connected situation i.e. a balloon near a flame or sharp object or someone whom they suspect might pop it etc.
Sure there is the possibility of danger in everything, but rational people realise that to have fear of everything just because there is a possibility for harm can cause problems from stress to health and even cause you to badly misjudge a situation and actually cause more harm than you would just staying calm.
Fear is a rational behaviour but that doesnt make it "never irrational". I just wouldnt say its "never irrational". Never say never, as the paradoxical saying goes :)
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