The logic of fear

in my previous post I talked about fear...and I mentioned that there is a logic behind fear. In fact, there is a logic behind emotions. Some of you might be interested in reading a little bit more about the logic. Today I would like to get a little bit deeper into the topic!

You can get to know yourself a little bit more, you can explore your anxiety and you might even enlarge your abilities to cope with frightening situations in the future, if you understand the logic behind your emotions and fears.

The basic emotions

Fear, is one of the basic human emotions. There exist a lot of words about describing emotions but in the origin, there are just a few. Although there is always some scientific discussion about them, we normally refer to 5 or 6 basic emotions. These are always "happiness, fear, sadness, anger, disgust and surprise". They are called basic emotions because they are shown in every culture in the world.

The basic emotions in humans are: Happiness, Fear, Sadness, Anger, Disgust and Surprise. (Paul Ekman)

So, as you are born with two arms, two legs, a head, the ability to hear and see...plus, you are also born with the capability of feeling these emotions! Unfortunately, most of the people very often have some issues about their emotions... they don't like how they are reacting to situations, they don't like to feel angry or to feel sad. They hate crying or they think they shouldn't be feeling that angry or insecure. They feel ashamed of their emotions and try to hide from themselves. Some others work kind of hard on themselves just to get rid of emotions like loneliness or sadness. Nobody is complaining about happiness, though 😉.

That's why in the beginning I like to point out a different point of view, change your perspective. Because actually emotions are a human treasure. They are incredibly perfect and helpful! In their complexity they are even more, they are a human super power!

Changing perspectives...emotions are a human super power!

Have you ever thought about your emotions in that way?! Honestly, why not?!

My patients always look at me with a face like "what the hell?! 😳" when I say this. Try to think of sadness as a super power 🤔... Luckily at that time I have already earned the trust of my patients and they are not running away saying something like "she's crazy 😅". You will see that we will get there and understand that even sadness is an amazing emotion! A perfectly balanced system of a relieving reaction.

To make sure, your emotions are a kind of super power. All of them! Most of the time it's just your head messing around with them. Because you interfere with thoughts....emotions are pure, they are honest.

When reflecting your emotions you always have to keep in mind, that a human body is designed in the most efficient and complex functioning way. It has such a complexity that we still just understand a tiny little bit. We tend to overestimate the amount of knowledge we have 😄. In fact, all over the world there are billions of people working every day on the task to understand a little bit more about our body, our emotions and our brain.

Knowing this background how can we complain about our emotions?! How can we complain about something working so perfectly, smooth and reliable?
We are not complaining about our senses, right?! Indeed, our senses seem to be more than attractive to us, we love to listen to something, taste things, smell things and so on! That's so unfair!

Why don't we pay our emotions the same respect? Rather than complaining about them, we could get to know them, we could be interested in them and actually listen to them! We might be missing something really important by trying to ignore them or to get rid of them all the time...

Let's just talk about one of them a little bit more, show a little bit more interest in it, let's talk about fear. Step into the change of perspective!

About Fear

For our ancestors fear was a very important emotion. They had to remember fearful situations to protect themselves. It was all about living or dying. That's why even today experienced fearful situations have the tendency to stick in our memory for a long time. Sometimes even longer than happy situations. Weird, right!

That's because fearful situations have more relevance to our brain (to protect ourselves) than happy situations.

It is nice to find a strawberry, but it is more important to remember that this a place of snakes!

So whenever you feel frightened, your body is noticing something relevant for you. Something important. The information the body and brain can rely on is very very old and rich. It's like the best history search engine you could imagine.

Today the range of fears has increased. There are a lot of different kind of fears you can have and it makes the reactions and situations a lot more diverse. You could have emotional fears for example about your relationship or about being alone. You could have financial fears about loosing your job or financing your family. Furthermore there are situational fears like being afraid of heights or flying with an airplane and so on.

Today I want to give you an introduction to the topic of fear and in my upcoming posts I will talk about some kind of fears separately 😉! You will see they all share the same fear code and you can start changing the perspective with every kind of situation and every kind of fear!

Because in a frightening situation your body is comparing and reflecting the things happening around you as fast as possible! Your body's language is just limited at that moment, the body can only let you feel "fear" and let your body react after the "fear code" in your brain. So, for you it's simple and easy to recognise that "this is fear".

Like this, your body is filtering the information of the environment for you. You can not be aware or be conscious of everything happening in your body, it would be overwhelming! You should be thankful for him doing a great job in assisting you with this! Instead of being angry with him or feeling ashamed because in your opinion the information is not right 😉 or useful.

You wouldn't be complaining about getting a high temperature when your body is fighting a viral infection, or would you?
Actually in this situation your body is relying on the same very old history search engine 🤔!
In my opinion, I would rather say "thank you for watching me 😉".

Finally this is it, us starting to get interested in fear...it's an incredible emotion and a phenomenal body reaction, a message, maybe a warning. You should be alert by this, you should honour this!

After noticing this thankfully you can decide what to do with it. You can get to know why the situation is frightening you and what it is about! You can learn about yourself, learn about your needs and about what is really counting for you.

Or if you really think that it is an over reaction of your body (this can definitely be the case sometimes) you could think "thank you, but I am ok". Be nice to the hard working system. This could actually help your body and brain to relax and to help it remember that this situation isn't as bad as it seems. You, your body and your brain, you are supposed to be a highly effective team!

You will notice that after some time the body's overreaction will become less. The system just needs some reliable time to adapt. In my opinion it wouldn't be worth the trust if it wouldn't adapt and change as carefully 😊...just to be sure!

Thank you for reading! Next time I will write a little bit more about emotional fears. I hope you enjoyed it and got a little bit interested into your super powers. I am always very happy about comments!