El fear It is a feeling of mistrust that prompts you to believe that something negative is going to happen, it is about anguish in the face of a danger that, and that is very important, can be real or imaginary. The relevance of this nuance is that although the danger does not exist because it is imaginary, the fear, on the contrary, can be very real.
Fear is a very useful emotion to escape or avoid dangersHowever, it is also a barrier that can get in the way of a person’s enjoyment and, if it is excessive, it can block and impede the course of a normal life. In fact, many of the most common disorders are caused by fear of a real or possible situation, such as anxiety, phobias or panic attacks.
The fear response is autonomous, that is, we do not consciously activate it voluntarily. The experts establish four automatic responses: flight, aggressive defense, immobility and submission. In addition, there is another physiological response in which cardiac pressure increases, sweating while the body temperature drops, the pupils dilate and muscle tone increases, leading to stiffness.
Anything can scare a certain person and it can be a real fear, in the face of a real danger and that has an adaptive or unreal value if it has an imaginary, distorted and catastrophic origin, such as the fear of flying or speaking in public. These are not adaptive fears since there is no real danger and they can turn into phobias.
Thus, according to your level, fears can be normal or pathological. The first are those that appear before harmful stimuli, have a short duration and do not interfere with daily life. The pathological are the fears that are activated even if there is no danger and that can last indefinitely in time.
Brain
Reactions to fear have been recorded in the brain since the beginning of time and in fact, many parts of this organ are involved. The thalamus decides where to send sensory data, the sensory cortex interprets that data, the hippocampus stores and retrieve conscious memories and establish context, the amygdala (where the memories and emotions of fear are stored) decodes the emotions and determines the possible threat and the hypothalamus activates the fight or flight response.
phobias
- Zoophobia: irrational fear of an animal such as snakes or spiders
- Acrophobia: to the heights
- Astrafobia: a las tormentas
- Pluviophobia: to the rain
- Amaxophobia: to drive
- Aaerophobia: to fly
- Agoraphobia: to open spaces
- Claustrophobia: to closed spaces
- Erythrophobia: fear of blushing