What is fear?

Fear is an emotional response to tangible and realistic dangers. Fear should be distinguished from anxiety, an emotion that often arises out of proportion to the actual threat or danger involved, and can be subjectively experienced without any specific attention to the threatening object.

The Old English term fǣr meant not the emotion engendered by a calamity or disaster but rather the event itself. The first recorded usage of the term "fear" with the sense of the "emotion of fear" is found in a medieval work written in Middle English and composed around 1290. The most probable explanation for the change in the meaning of the word fear is the existence in Old English of the related verb fǣran, which meant "to terrify, take by surprise."

This is in line with the meaning of the prehistoric Common Germanic word feraz, "danger," which is the source of words with similar senses in other Germanic languages, such as Old Saxon and Old High German far, "ambush, danger," and Old Icelandic far, "treachery, damage."

Scholars have determined the form and meaning of Germanic feraz by working backward from the forms and the meanings of its descendants.

The most important cause of the change of meaning in the word fear was probably the existence in Old English of the related verb faeran, which meant "to terrify, take by surprise."How to fight your fears, frustrations and phobias?

Did you ever think about how life does not always run smoothly and many a step taken with the best intentions in the world does not turn out as well as expected!

Even under ideal conditions, in the midst of our modern social and economic system, we are faced with problems day after day that call for specific decisions. Some of them involve only minor adjustments, others necessitate drastic changes or complete reversals in habitual behavior. But whatever the need our feelings or emotions of the moment definitely influence our actions and greatly affect our final decisions.

Unfortunately, our fears may be controlling us more than we actually think.

To be able to meet conditions as they arise one must be prepared for them. But unfortunately many individuals are handicapped from the start. Whether it be due to environment, to personal make-up, to conditioned reflexes, to preconceived notions, to lack of self-reliance or to emotional instability, many of us cannot face realistically the everyday problems of life.

We look for a way out and seek to escape the pending changes or the new responsibilities. We try to ignore them, to submerge or to suppress them, and that often marks the beginning of a complex or a neurosis.

The Chinese are great believers in preventive medicine and we, too, may find it advantageous in days to come to utilize the vast resources of modern medical science and mental therapy to keep us physically, mentally and emotionally fit at all times.

When you believe that you can do it and when you make that decision deeply inn your heart you won't believe how simple it really is to get over your fears, worries and frustrations and how easily you'll start your climbing, day by day, step by step and hour after hour, on an imaginary stairway upward. Each riser in that stairway will introduce you to new concepts, to new vistas and horizons.

In fact, these stairs would become your own private stairway to success and happiness.

So, what are you afraid of? http://www.fightyourfears.com/