We fear "loss" and "future hardship". But with proper perspective we can see that 99+% of all fears have no real basis and the rest is all adjustable.
The BuddhaKahuna
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Process Diagram:
Belief → Fear → Anxiety → Depression
(There is a threat.) Emotion, Worry (habit)
(Physical response)
Excessive
↓
Stress ↓
"Breakdown" &
Unhappiness
Cure - Same For All Of These! - And it is also the path to happiness!
Correct my belief system
Gain "having" and "enough" perspective
Create sufficient certainty foundation
Change in habits, especially frequency; rewire brain
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SECTION CONTENTS/LINKS:
STRESS SECTION - Fear's body impacts, creating abnormal psych reaction
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CONTENTS, THIS PAGE
Introduction To Fear: Discussion, High Points
The cycle
The costs
Eliminating the fear
Understanding the process; see the changepoints
How Does One "Manage" His/Her Emotions?
Continue on to:
Tests - Take these two tests to see where you are at.
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Definition: A distressing emotion (agitated feeling) aroused by thought of impending danger, evil, pain, etc., whether the threat is real or imagined.
Purpose: To implement action to prevent injury and to assure survival
DISCUSSION
Fear is the biggest factor in determining the quality (or lack thereof) of life!
Other than a few instinctual fears related to actual physical danger, 99% of fears are created from a false belief about there being danger. If we add an element of believed powerlessness to that, then we add the fear that we won't be able to deal with things when they happen (as opposed to Fearlessness).
(Somehow, we have to convince you that your belief that your fear-beliefs are real and accurate is just not true. You can actually get to the point where you see through them with a perspective of their not being real, but just made up. This is one of the things taught in all major disciplines, such as Buddhism, as discussed on this site.)
And then, we take most fears too seriously, as they are of minor consequences which need to be accepted as part of life. (See Accepting Reality as a primer.)
Since fear is "anticipated loss", there are two elements to handle:
1. Our prediction that we won't be able to handle what comes up (we dramatically exaggerate our 'inability')
2. Realizing that there are only a very few real losses, and all the rest is simply a "lessened gain". When you see that your "base" is solid, then 90+% of your fears are just brief passing thoughts with zero charge. The perspective: What I Have, For Sure.
THE VICIOUS CYCLE
The cycle is simple:
Believed threat --> Fear emotion --> Stress --> Hyperalarmism
The vicious cycle is perpetuated and exacerbated by our adding programming of ourselves to be hypervigilant, essentially hyping up our natural emergency alert system (which is already finding far more things to be concerned with than actually merit concern).
We clearly must intervene in the cycle at some point and preferably at several points. But if we change the core cause, the fear-stress process has no beginning, so we would emphasize changing beliefs. This is discussed further, below.
THE COSTS
The amount of completely unnecessary stress is immense.
Fear shows up in subtle ways from choosing not to do something that would be beneficial and/or enjoyable to an assessment of one's worth or how good one is - a positive version of the latter is essential to being happy. Essentially we 'make up" something, such as 'I must be worthy to have people like me so that I will be fed since I am powerless..' - and then we spend our time in fear of losing something that doesn't exist.
Fear can destroy relationships or at least highly reduce how good the relationship feels.
And we spend lots of time "spinning" in the fear thoughts.
ELIMINATING THE FEAR
It is vital that we
1. Understand it thoroughly, first, then
2. That we understand how to deal with it, and, finally,
3. Thoroughly practice what works - in other words, do the work to implement what works and to change your life dramatically upward!
Incidentally, our criteria for how much fear to eliminate is 80% or more - you can keep up to 20% if you prefer, but your life will be much better nevertheless.
Why 80%? Because it is a reasonable, attainable standard - and we want to stop the fear-based practice of having to be limitlessly perfect or better and better.
UNDERSTAND THE PROCESS; SEE THE CHANGEPOINTS
Fear (the thought of loss) causes the body to emit emergency emotions (chemicals). These emergency emotions create a spiral of fear thoughts and more emotions, so intervening to manage those emotions is essential. This is discussed below.
If you do not accept the cycle, it will be hard to break out of it. You must learn to accept this model:
Event --> Thought/Belief --> Emotion --> Action
1 2 3
(Interpretation Physical Seek relief
Thru Belief Filter) Chemical Reaction (or more pleasure)
Changepoint 1 = Solve the cause (initiator) of the problem
Changepoint 2 = Solve the reaction level so that the emotion is not so
heightened
Learn peace of mind techniques, including changing the brain
Changepoint 3 = Change the strategy (belief about what to do) so that the
resulting action behavior is a better one
Learn anger management techniques
Learn what works in relationships
Learn what works in coping with fears
There will be more detail later, but basically the event is almost always "neutral", but we perceive it through a belief filter that includes a prediction that could be of loss or hurt or of pleasure. At that point an emotion is created by the body to either repair the threat or to continue the pleasure. If one has alot of fear beliefs, one experiences "stress". If one has a hypersensitized alarm system and/or body reactivity, one experiences more extremely painful emotions.
This is a "causal chain", where the extreme cycles can be broken at the belief level and/or at the physical reactivity/response level. It is imperative that one understand this in more depth if one wants to be the true master of one's emotion and, accordingly, of one's life.
You should understand how the perception of a threat is almost always not based in reality or truth and understand the process. Read the piece called THREATS AND FEAR .
Understand how we experience life and the effect of love and fear on the quality of life: Read THE EXPERIENCE OF LIFE.
HOW DOES ONE MANAGE HIS/HER EMOTIONS?
Mostly, by managing the beliefs that cause the emotions! (See the Beliefs section.
Note especially the three primary underlying beliefs that sabotage us.)
Three parts:
1. Rework the underlying beliefs that cause the "negative", unhealthy emotions.
(There's three primary overlays that when dealt with disappear others.)
2. Rework one's underlying philosophy of life to create a super strong
foundation!
3. Manage/eliminate the emotions in the moment, effectively!
Using these techniques, which have been proven over and over to work, will help you live a more stable, more powerful life where the emotions no longer rule. Managing one's emotions well can enhance one's motivation and one's thinking so that one is actually and feels very powerful and effective.
The ability to see and manage one's emotions is called Emotional Maturity, or Emotional Intelligence. See what your level is by taking this test:: The "Emotional Maturity" test.
As a part of your learning and implementation process, read and understand CONTROLLING THE EMOTIONS IN THE BODY - SIMPLE AND QUICK , as these actions and techniques are directly doable and practical and don't require some quantum leap in thinking - i.e. they're not hard to do.
You'll find that the Stress section has a number of methods that you can use to manage/eliminate your fears and to reduce stress dramatically.
Fearlessness. It is actually possible to become virtually fearless, by realizing a few key realities. Read below. See especially those pieces related to Fearlessness.
REDUCING OR VIRTUALLY ELIMINATING FEAR
Fear is a natural (wired in) emotion/reaction to something that fits the picture of a threat of anticipated harm happening to oneself. However, in most cases, it occurs from something that is not actually harmful to oneself. This takes some "convincing" to have you see that, but it is definitely "seeable". We can modify fear
1) Ahead of time (Changing Beliefs)
2) While it is occurring, (Thought or
3) Once it has occurred.
All "wired in" behaviors and responses came about from those genes which happened to help us survive, quite appropriately, surviving - fear being a major one of those. Fear helped us engage in fight, flight, or freeze, all of which contributed to us surviving in some way. Because of its importance, the emotions from fear are extremely powerful, and very negative. (Read how the mind evolved and developed, under Managing The Mind section. Then read Rewiring The Brain and The Rx For "Psychology".)
However, real fear is only about avoiding harm to the body that would hurt our chances of surviving. (If we weren't concerned about future survival, we would have no fear. See Fearlessness.)
We've added to the true fears a whole panoply of made-up fears, which, if we looked at them with reasoning, we would choose to no longer keep!
To reduce or virtually eliminate fear, the following are necessary (and the strategies chosen actually accomplish these:
1. Reducing the oversensitivity (and hypersensitivity) of the physical mind to danger signals, so that the false alarms are no longer going off.
2. Reducing the "triggers" for fear (eliminating the belief that one will be harmed by things that are not truly harm, such as temporary loss).
3. Reducing the intensity of those triggers, which helps us keep our ability to reason, in order to better handle and eliminate the unnecessary fear reactions and actions. Examples would be calming/coping thoughts set up ahead of time and available immediately to us
4. Using reason to handle the situation (modify it, make it into something non-threatening, solve it).
5. Using methods which reduce/eliminate the feeling and/or body impact of the fear.
Incidently, the opposite of fear and something that when inserted in life pushes aside much fear is Gratitude - I recommend that you read that section and start the practices as soon as possible!
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Continue on to:
Tests - Take these two tests to see where you are at.
