Each person felt fear and knows what feelings and thoughts are visiting at the moment. Fear is typical for all life on earth. In most cases, fear causes a rather strong sympathetic discharge: screaming, flight, grimaces. A characteristic symptom of fear is the trembling of the muscles of the body, increased heart rate, palpitations, dry mouth( because of this, hoarseness and muffling of the voice), increased blood sugar, etc. It is worth noting that, for all this, the hypothalamus secretes a neurosecret, which in turn stimulates the pituitary gland to release adrenocorticotropic hormone. This hormone also contributes to the emergence of the syndrome of fear.
Plan of the article:
- What is fear?
- Three main types of fear
- Characteristics of fears
- The essence of fear
- What is an alarm?
What is fear?
Fear is itself is an emotion that arises in situations where there is a threat to the biological or social existence of the individual and in turn, directed at the source of a real or imagined danger( experienced as a real danger).Affective mental state of expectation of danger, in which the real danger threatens from an external object, and the neurotic - from the requirement of attraction. Unlike various types of suffering, including pain, which are directly caused by the real action of dangerous factors, appears during their anticipation.
Fear alone is simply necessary for a person. Its biological purpose is to protect a person from risk and help him get rid of danger. The immediate full-fledged existence of each person is associated with the experience of a large number of feelings and emotions, including emotions of fear. Emotions, in turn, are one of the forms of evaluation, cognition and, at the same time, reflection of the world around us. Feelings, sensations and emotions are related, quite often their definition simply does not have clear boundaries. Therefore, sometimes it happens that emotions are called feelings. The essence of fear directly is that a person is afraid and does not crawl into trouble, in other words fear removes a person from risk, but the strong and lasting effect of fear carries negative consequences.
Fear arises when a person has a conscious purpose or motivation to leave the situation, but continues to be for some external reasons. In such cases, local fear can become generalized. On the basis of localized fear, learning takes place and fear takes the form of personal non-localized anxiety, or, by communicating with a wide range of more or less random objects or situations, isphobia( according to the experiments of IP Pavlov and J. Volpe).Prerequisites for the emergence of anxiety are high rates of personal factors such as introversion and neuroticism( according to H. Ayzenka).
It is typical for a person to foresee if he thinks he is able to foresee the future state of affairs and the development of the situation, thus refusing to predict the future, a person may experience fewer fears, but then he may simply not experience something pleasant. Since we can not completely isolate ourselves from this, a person will not stop thinking and analyzing the situation. But in the case when a person imagines that suffering has no end, then in such cases he experiences an even greater fear, but at the same time, if he can see the positive aspects of it, or if the situation ends well, then in that casehis fear will be much reduced.
Quite often it happens that the cause of fear is unknown, a person is afraid to go to the dentist, or is afraid to speak to the big public, etc. Very often a person simply does not understand what he is afraid of, and when asked about it, he simply replies: everyone is afraid of me, too. It can be safely said that fear is a social emotion, which in turn can be transmitted to other people. Mass acquisition of this emotion most often occurs in the crowd, that is, in public places. A person on a subconscious level can smell fear. It is he who distinguishes people who are afraid.
This is directly due to the fact that at the moment when a person experiences fear, certain physiological processes take place in his body, and, consequently, our body starts to smell absolutely differently, for good reason it is said that dogs and other animals feel well, when a person is afraid. In addition, they also see the emotions that our face transmits, these emotions, in turn, are seen by other people. At the subconscious level, this expression is perceived as the right and most accurate, even if at that moment the words speak about something else. Human fear is in turn a testimony of how we think, it is the product of our imagination.
It should be noted that in social education fear is used as one of the methods of education: thus, the formed fear of condemnation is used as a factor in the regulation of human behavior. Since in the conditions of society a person can enjoy the protection of legal and other social institutions, an increased propensity to fear loses its adaptive value and is traditionally assessed negatively.
Already formed reactions of fear are relatively stable and can persist even when their senselessness is quite understandable.
Three main types of fear
It is accepted to distinguish three main types of fear, namely: fear of conscience, fear of real and directly neurotic fear.
The only place where fear is centered is directly the person. Basically, the fear of a particular object acts as a fear, in pathological cases as a phobia. One of the important types of fear is fear free. To the affective state of fear, which arises directly in situations of unexpected danger, is fear. The hysteria of fear is in turn characterized as a neurosis, its main symptom is a variety of phobias.
Description of fears
Fear is directly manifested in the form of feelings of internal tension, the expectation of danger to life and health, or social well-being, in anticipation of threatening events and actions. Pathological fears are directly attributed to those fears that lack psychological validity, but at the same time there is excessive intensity, duration in time, not compliance with the force and the reason for which they were caused. Depending on the time of onset, the mechanisms and peculiarities of the manifestation are distinguished:
Obsessive fears or in other words - phobia .This type of fear quite often arises suddenly, and without a reason for this, at this moment our mind understands that there is nothing to be afraid of, but it does not pass, quite often it can be connected with anxiety. Neurosis-like fears are fears for health and life, one's own, and also of one's relatives and friends. Supervalued fears are associated directly with values and perceptions that are valuable to people's minds, usually this fear is preceded by a situation in which the body responded with fear, after which the affective reaction to this situation is replaced by fear and disgust. This type of fear is most pronounced in children.
Paroxysmal fears of , a manifestation of psychomotor epilepsy, are often accompanied by a feeling of imminent death or anxiety.
Undifferentiated fears - non-objective fears, with somatovegetative design, occur mainly with diencephalic crises. Delusional fears are generated by consciousness as a result of distortion of the worldview. These include: fear of persecution, delirium of jealousy, fear of observation, etc. Night fears arise from a sharp awakening from a night, sound sleep, at a time when consciousness is still directly in the severed narrowed state. With such fear, children can scream, tremble, drive away something from themselves, that is, clearly in a state of fright. Most of the morning they do not remember anything.
The essence of fear
In psychology, assume that fear is a negatively colored basic emotion. It is usually called the base one, since it can not be divided into components, but at the same time other emotions are based on it. Fear is also called the emotional process, because it does not just appear, but in addition to everything causes the body's reaction. Fear, in turn, is transmitted to the neurotransmitters in the brain, and from there follows the answer, what actions should be taken in this situation.
The human body, under the influence of fear, begins to intensively isolate hormones, hormones in turn in skeletal muscles are processed into energy, this happens directly so that a person has the opportunity to protect himself from danger or to escape from it. It is also worth noting that there are both internal and external manifestations of fear, external - this in turn is what a person looks like, and internal - this is directly the physiological processes that occur in the body.
As a result of these processes, fear is called negative emotion, since it exerts its influence on the whole organism, it increases the pulse and heart rate, as a result of which it increases by pressure( in some cases it happens on the contrary - it decreases), sweating increases, and directlythe composition of the blood changes: in moments of fear hormones are released, including adrenaline, which in the muscles is converted into energy. In addition to all this, strong fear is also considered a toxic emotion, as it contributes to the development of various diseases, metastasis of cancer cells, throat diseases, diabetes.
Everyone has fear, and accordingly courage does not consist in not experiencing fear at all, but in learning to overcome it. Neurotic fears are inherent in every third inhabitant of the planet. But in the case when fear reaches the power of affect, it becomes terror, and this in turn takes the person out of the control of his consciousness, and as a result provokes panic, flight, stupor or some other protective reaction.
Every fear for something is necessary, it arises not just so, for example, the fear of heights protects a person from falling from a balcony, etc., the fear of pain does not come close to the fire, so as not to get burned, includingprotects against injuries, and in some cases from death. Fear of speaking in public, prompts for more thorough preparation, for the passage of rhetoric courses, which in turn can help in career growth. Of course, your fears need to be overcome, although fear helps to some extent to avoid responsibility, for example, you do not make reports, presentations, and you simply do not instruct them, because you can not overcome fear, you can just sit in a corner and nothingdo. In other words, for fear you can make an ally, but you can just leave it as it is, and do nothing.
Depending on the nature of the intensity of the experience, fear ranges from fear to horror, including fear, fear, etc. In the event that the source of danger is uncertain or unconscious, the state arising in this case is called alarm.
What is an alarm?
Anxiety( causeless fear) is , in turn, the emotional state of a person that occurs when there is no danger as such, or when the source of danger is unconscious, anxiety manifests itself in anticipation of unfavorable developments. For a person, this is usually associated with the expectation of failures in social interaction. Quite often, anxiety does not arise in the event of danger, but in the absence of the possibility of avoiding it. A person who has increased anxiety reacts much more often and more strongly to neutral situations with anxiety, fear, anxiety.
In order to determine the degree of pathological fears, it is customary to use parameters of the adequacy( validity) of intensity, duration, degree of control of a person's sense of fear. Reasonableness is, in turn, a correspondence between the degree of expression of a real danger, in a particular situation or from people around them. Intensity, in turn, is determined based on physiological reactions( palpitation, intensity of sweating, a feeling of suffocation, vomiting, weakness, trembling in the whole body, etc.) of a person's well-being and disorganization of his behavior, at a time when the person has mastered this emotion. Controllability is the ability not to obey and overcome fear. Duration is the duration of this period.
The following psychological characteristics directly influence the feeling of fear: temperament, neuroticism and accentuation. As for neurotics, they in turn are inclined to experience the emotion of fear more than others. Who are neurotics? So, neurotics are usually called healthy people, but who have some emotional disturbances. Quite often, neurotic manifestations are directly related to feelings of guilt or initiative. For this type of personality, the main feature is that he is inclined to think that all the problems that he has are only his difficulties, that the problem lies in himself, and also such people have too mechanical and not flexible psychological defense.
Temperament - the main characteristics of thinking in this case are expressed in temperament. Speed, speed of reaction, pace, rhythm. From the strength of temperament, the power of manifestation of emotions also directly depends.
Accentuation of is, directly, strongly pronounced character traits, which in turn are on the verge of norm. Accentuation is what the emphasis is on character.
To date, there are many tests for fears, for example, the test of Zakharov, Lusher, Spielberger-Khanin, but among them the test of Yu. Shcherbatykh and Ye. Ivleva is most notable. In turn, they developed a special questionnaire to determine the intensity of fearsand the presence of phobias.
Scientists have found that the cause of the appearance of fear is a reaction to the increase in carbon dioxide in the blood. In extreme conditions, the human body begins to work on the verge, of course, for this work, oxygen is needed, which in turn is quickly wasted and does not have time to replenish. When the amount of carbon dioxide in the blood begins to exceed the norm, then the brain signal receives a warning signal, which in turn activates the state of fear and, accordingly, the desire to escape.
This theory was confirmed as a result of experiments conducted on mice. Thus, the blood of mice artificially increased the concentration of carbon dioxide - it affects the amygdala, the area of the brain that is directly responsible for the appearance of fright. Scientists also found that after special sensors in the amygdala detect a drop in pH caused by carbon dioxide, mice immediately begin to give alarm signals.
In order to test this assumption, scientists observed mice with different concentration of carbon dioxide in the blood. At a 5% concentration, the animals were in the open area, with an increase to 10%, the mice came to a state of stupor, died off and hammered into corners - in many animals this is an indication of serious fright.
As a result, scientists have proved that it is the sharp increase in carbon dioxide in the blood that is the cause of the appearance of fear, this kind of carbon dioxide drop can be caused by various factors, from active physical actions as a result of an attack, to mental efforts, as a result of a mental assault.
It should be noted that American scientists have discovered that a person's sense of fear is completely cut off when one of the areas of the brain loses functioning, this directly affects the cerebellar amygdala, which can directly be used to develop methods to combat fears and phobias.
The nature of fear, of course, comes from the instinct of self-preservation, which in turn helps a person avoid situations that are potentially dangerous to health and life. A person who is completely devoid of the cerebellar amygdala does not have the ability to detect danger. Mostly such a person will not live long.
In a normal state, the cerebellar tonsil constantly sorts the information that enters the brain through the sense organs and on the basis of life experience a person tries to identify situations that threaten life. In the event that a certain amygdala is detected, it is the source of a direct signal to the brain, which in turn spreads throughout the body, preventing damage.
Scientists who observed a person whose cerebellum amygdala is completely devoid of work capacity subjected him to various situations in which he had to feel fear regardless of the strength of mind. For example, it was a meeting with a snake or a spider. In addition, the researchers drove this person to various scary attractions, showed horror films. He filled in the relevant questionnaires and questionnaires. Within three months of constant observation, scientists have never been able to record the emotions of this patient, though somehow connected with fear.
The feeling of fear in psychology has been studied for a long time and quite successfully. It is not difficult to free yourself from fear, it is just necessary to know how it arises in you, how it works and, accordingly, where you hide.
Do not constantly scroll in your head depressing details of your current life, do not make a scenario is not quite happy tomorrow, just try to forget about the troubles that surround you. Agree, because in fact you are not worse than all, as possible, you previously imagined. You have loved and loved people, a roof over your head, arms, legs, head, hope for the future, etc. And this is not so little as it seemed. Be braver, then it will be easier for you, and more opportunities.
