Fear has many uses. It can be used as a warning to keep you from entering into a situation that might hurt you. It can be used to motivate you away from something, such as a harmful relationship or a dangerous situation. It can also be used by others to control you.
This is what most people think about fear. But they also say: when I feel fear I am stuck. I am like a deer in the car lights during the night. Frozen. I cannot think clearly, I cannot decide…. And they’re right.
Fear—A Powerful Agent of Control?
We hear a lot of the following:
You have to “Conquer your fear”, “Feel the fear and get on with life”, “Get to know your fear”, “Battle your fears”, “Address your fear”, “Confront your fear”, “Avoiding fear is bad” and so on ad nauseam.
What we don’t hear is how to LET GO of fear so we can really move on and be free of past fears. It is not a well-known fact that past fears accumulate in the body and create our reactions to life situations. But they do. So we learn not to do anything that once – in the past – scared us. But we’ve grown. We have learned new strategies. We have matured. We have gained experience…however the old fears are still inside of our memories. Therefore it is far more productive and far better for our own development to let them go and then we can move on and further develop and try new things.
We don’t hear too often that fear is a secondary response and that fear is not keeping you safe. It is the flight or fight response that keeps you safe. If you want to read about how this works here is an article where I explain this clearly.
But there is another angle to this fear business. How is fear used to control people? There are physiological changes happening inside your brain when you experience fear.
There is a part of your brain, the oldest part of your brain in evolutionary terms. It controls the body’s vital functions such as heart rate, breathing, body temperature and balance. It includes the brainstem and the cerebellum. It is commonly known as the reptilian brain. This part of your brain has a main purpose – to assure your survival. When all other parts of the brain are asleep (during the night) this part is awake, because it is always fulfilling its main purpose – your physical survival.
When you experience a threat, real or imagined, this part of your brain responds automatically. To its most extreme, it really shuts off the rest of your brain. That’s the flight or fight response. It supports your automatic fight or flight to escape the danger. But you see, most people don’t understand that flight or fight response is NOT FEAR. Fear is a secondary emotion AFTER the flight response fulfilled its purpose. If you don’t fight, you flee the danger. Then you experience fear. If you don’t fight or flee, you freeze and THEN you experience fear.
Here is something even more important: in the flight, fight or freeze mode your entire body goes through a massive stress period. All your blood is redirected to the essential organs in the body (heart, lungs, muscles, and the reptilian part of your brain). The rest of your brain is left with only enough blood supply to keep it on, healthy but not in active use. This means that you have no ability for rational thinking. You cannot make good decisions. You can’t make any decisions at all. You’re … frozen.
If you’re in a state of fear for long periods of time, your body ends up depleted of resources. You can get sick. You can end up with a lot of troubles in your health. Your immune system does not work well, is depleted. Your can experience high blood pressure, high cholesterol, adrenal burnout, muscle fatigue, depression, what have you.
So, you have to do everything you can to give up the past fear from your body. You must get out of the perpetual tension. It wears you down. You cannot find solutions to any problems. You cannot think clearly.
Can you get addicted to fear? Yes. You see this all the time. People go to see scary movies to get scared. Why? Oh, it’s simple – they experience the rush, and at the end usually the movies end up with some solution. So the fear is experienced for a short amount of time, it creates a rush in the body, and then at the end there is a solution. So people get addicted to the “rush”. Life is boring otherwise.
What you don’t know is that your Unconscious Minds records even the fears experienced during a movie and responds to the suggestions from the movie from there on for the rest of your life.
Where did the zombie myth start? Why are we talking about zombies in our society like it is something normal? And who are the zombies? Would you like to be referred to as a zombie? This all has a meaning and a purpose that escapes most people.
Here is another thing to consider: what control does fear extend over you, without you even being aware of it?
The answer will have to wait until part 2 of this article.
Until then, be well