Today we find ourselves living in a world where our lives are virtually shaped by fear. It’s been said that we live in a virtual culture of fear where social and economic fearmongering combines with cyberbullying to create an often toxic environment.
So threatening is our world that psychiatric epidemiologists estimate that over one-third of people will suffer diagnosable fear-related problems during their lifetime, making fear-related disorders the most prevalent of all mental disorders.
Other than the most prevalent phobias (irrational fears), this article identifies four of the most pervasive and crippling fears and how to move past them using wisdom from the past and the science of cognitive behavioral therapies.
Four Fears That Can Shape Your Life
Fear may be defined as a primitive, survival-oriented emotion triggered by the perception of threat. Fear is associated with the “fight or flight” stress response. Fear is designed to assist you in avoiding things that can harm you. So, in that sense fear can be a good thing. But sometimes rather than support you and keep you safe, fear can take on a life of it’s own and cripple you, holding you back from living the life you really want.
There are likely four significant fears that not only affect you on a daily basis, but may over time serve to shape your life in a way you come to regret later.
1. Fear of failure. How many times in life have you resisted trying something that you really wanted to do solely because you were afraid of failing? By not trying you were able to avoid the pain of disappointment and even a sense of humiliation. Or, a variation on this theme might be trying something half-heartedly so that when failure occurred you could say to yourself you really didn’t try – better to fail by you own hands than by someone else’s.
2. Fear of rejection. Human beings have a natural drive to be accepted. We are social beings. So, interpersonal rejection can be uniquely devastating. In order to avoid the pain of rejection, you choose not to apply to that school, or that job, or ask someone on a date. The fear of rejection is what makes cyber bullying so powerful and often devastating. This fear causes you to risk turning your happiness over to often faceless, nameless people who don’t care about you and may not even know you.
3. Fear of uncertainty. For some, uncertainty is exciting and motivating, but for many uncertainty is stressful as it makes us feel out of control. In order to avoid the stress of uncertainty, it is not uncommon to establish predictable if not compulsive routines, and seek the familiar while resisting the drive to seek new experiences, meet new people, and to grow as a person.
4. Fear of missing out (FOMO). FOMO is different than the three previous, as those three fears hold you back, inhibiting your happiness and growth. FOMO can lead to doing things you don’t want to do or taking risks that are unhealthy, simply as a way of being included in an experience.
Conquering the Four Fears
In 1933 the United States was in crisis. It was in the midst of the Great Depression and the banking system was on the verge of collapse. Franklin D. Roosevelt had just been elected president. In his first inaugural address on March 4, 1933 he famously said, “So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.”
The Stoic philosphers writing 2000 years ago asserted that fear results not from situations themselves, but from one’s interpretation of being helpless and out of control in those situations. Epictetus was a Greek Stoic philosopher. To Epictetus stoicism was more than a philosophy, it was a practical way of living one’s life. He famously wrote: “Men are disturbed, not by things, but the views which they take of them.” Stoicism serves as the basis for the subsequent development of cognitive therapies (see Ellis & Harper, 1975; Meichenbaum, 1977).
So, let’s return to our four fears. If the Stoics and cognitive behavioral psychologists are correct, what you say to yourself, that internal self-talk dialogue, matters. Here are some things you can say to yourself when facing those fears.
Fear of failure: “Anything worth having is worth failing for.” “Failure is not lack of achievement, it’s when I choose not to try.” “Only when I dare to significantly fail will I ever significantly succeed.”
Fear of rejection: “I refuse to surrender happiness to the will or whims of others.” “If I don’t ask, the answer will always be no.”
Fear of uncertainty and the unknown: “If I’m not willing to risk the unknown, I will have to settle for the ordinary.” “That which does not destroy me makes me stronger.”
Fear of missing out: “Appreciating that I’m unique and imagining who I can uniquely be is better than living my life by comparing myself to others, wanting what they want, and doing what they do.”
Perhaps we can borrow from the great American polymath Benjamin Franklin and conclude that fear, like beauty, lies in the eye of the beholder! In closing, remember the notion of regret. Research suggests that as we age and look back on our lives, our greatest regrets are the things we wish we had tried, rather than the things we did (Gilovich & Medvec, 1995). Said another way, “In the end, we only regret the chances we didn’t take, the relationships we were afraid to have and the decisions we waited too long to take.”
𝗙𝗼𝗹𝗹𝗼𝘄 𝗢𝘂𝗿 𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁𝘀𝗔𝗽𝗽 𝗖𝗵𝗮𝗻𝗻𝗲𝗹 𝗧𝗼 𝗚𝗲𝘁 𝗟𝗮𝘁𝗲𝘀𝘁 𝗡𝗲𝘄𝘀 𝗔𝘀 𝗜𝘁'𝘀 𝗗𝗿𝗼𝗽!
