Fear

We are all scared of something or the other. In fact, most of us probably share the same basic fundamental fears that are biologically predetermined. These are fears such as a fear of snakes or spiders. However, many of us develop these fears to an extreme and some of us even develop irrational fears such as a fear of clowns. When these fears become irrationally extreme they become phobias. The question is, however, why do some of us develop these fears?

For some people, developing a phobia of water maybe the result of an accident where you almost drowned. Some psychologists may suggest that phobias maybe the a response to a trauma we may have repressed since childhood. Nevertheless, people can have other conditions associated with fear. For example, a person who is suffering from General Anxiety Disorder (GAD) or Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) can actually completely change the way they behave and the way they live their lives, through their anxieties and fears, to an extreme in some server cases. Moreover, a mental illness which is often associated with conditions such as OCD is Depression, and, well could you blame them?

Even so, our fears can be useful if they are those which tell us to run away from the great big bear that looks very hungry. If we didn't evolve some of our most basic and fundamental shared fears then we could all have been killed off very easily long ago.

However, if you are somebody who has an irrational fear (e.g. mine is spiders. It maybe rational if I lived in Australia, but I live in the UK and house spiders cannot kill us) you just need to remember that it is all in your head. Our minds distort reality in so many different ways from time to time, but fear is one of the major distortions. So, (unless you have a phobia or other condition diagnosed by a mental health professional) next time you see your fear, man up (as long as its not anything that can kill you (LION) or harm you) and face you fear or you could run away, like I most probably will, but you should most definitely man up because it is just in your head.