Unreasonable Fear?

You and me were taught that fear is irrational, not understandable. We believe this so that a fear elapses to a baggage, a psychological or emotional affliction. Airsickness during two or more plane rides might lead a person to think that she’ll get sick, anxious, or stress out every time she's airborne. So she avoids any activity or transport by air. Avoidance leads to fear-habit or phobia and at the same time, limits us to experience many simple pleasures of life as well as the opportunity to face and overcome aerophobia.

The long list of phobias ranged from A to Z like acrophobia,claustrophobia, papaphobia, xanthophobia, xenophobia, zoophobia. Some people even die from their fears, familiar in the Philippines as bangungot (similar to nightmare).

However, there are many people who “overgrew” or “conquered” their fears. Most of them are ordinary people. They have, unintentionally or consciously, endured experiences that led or wherein events moved them to overcome their fear. Their stories or those of contemplative persons and hero tales illustrate fear as not mere impulse. That simple fears, even phobias, follow a logic which stems from a person’s belief.

Take a man who, out of fear of losing the woman he loves and married,lied about his undergraduate education. The wife could never understand why he seems laid back at his job or without ambition in life, don‘t understand her need to build a career, anti-intellectual in his arguments with her, jealous, very tribal, and wondered how come he has no real friends from his university. Because this man failed to live up to the measure of his conventional beliefs on social success and acceptance such as having a Bachelor’s degree to owning a car or a house, even a “brains-&-beauty“ wife -- consequently, distressing emotions and situations follow him and those near him.

Since fear is tied to a belief, it has reasons, and those reasons have logic (of its own). Fear is logical and thus understandable. Let's ask our self, why am I scared? Perhaps we can look for ways to think and organise our self on specific fears to make sense of what is happening around us. The man can start by thinking that his wife loves him for what he is, go over his best qualities and reclaim them by actualisation and immersion. By examining fear, we can change it. By changing the reasons, we can kill fear and develop fearlessness. To remember the point of this topic, here's a helpful saying: Change your beliefs and you change your life.