Our page on Understanding Emotions explains that fear is one of six ‘core’ emotions that are recognised widely across cultures. These core emotions can also be distinguished by particular patterns of activity across our brains. Together, the recognition and brain patterns suggest that these emotions are important enough to have evolved very early in human history and need to be shared quickly with others.

Fear is the emotion that is generated by danger, by something that could threaten or hurt us. It is therefore extremely important, because survival of a whole group could depend on being able to recognise and respond to this emotion quickly. This page explains more about fear, and why it still matters to us.

Defining Fear

The dictionary definition of fear is fairly bland (see box).

However, that bland definition does not seem quite right when we think about being frightened. It seems to lack a certain ‘something’ about the fundamental nature of fear, and particularly how uncomfortable it makes us. There is very little question that genuine fear seems to demand activity from us in order to reduce the threat.

Paul Ekman, the psychologist who first identified the list of six ‘core emotions’, including fear, suggests that there is a ‘family’ of fear-related emotions. This ranges from trepidation through nervousness and anxiety, right up to terror (see figure).

Ekman suggests that these emotions vary in three ways:

• The intensity, or severity of the likely harm,

• The timing, and whether the threat is immediate or merely potential; and

• The ability to cope, or what actions can be taken to mitigate the threat.

The figure makes clear that higher intensity makes something more alarming, as does more immediate timing. Although the figure shows intensity along the bottom axis, it would also make sense if that was replaced by immediacy. Similarly, when you can do something about a threat, that makes it less alarming.

Causes of Fear

Fundamentally, fear—or feeling one of the family of fearful emotions—is triggered by a threat.

There are many things that are threatening: wild animals, for example, or falling off a cliff are genuine threats. However, one of the most common fears is public speaking—and it is hard to find a genuine threat to life and limb in standing up in front of people to talk.

This makes clear that a threat does not have to be ‘real’ in the sense that it is something that would genuinely harm us. The dark, for example, will not harm us. Neither will (most) spiders, especially if we don’t mess with them. However, plenty of people are frightened of both spiders and the dark.

Why does this happen? It is because our emotions are not controlled by the logical part of our brains.

Instead, as our page on Recognising and Managing Emotions explains, they are controlled by the limbic system. This part of our brain is thought to have evolved early in human history, making it quite primitive. Emotions—especially the six core emotions—are therefore both simple and powerful. They tend to drive rapid, but basic action: screaming, freezing or running away, for example.

The limbic system is also closely linked to memory and experience. In other words, if we remember something being frightening, we tend to find it frightening again the next time that we are exposed to it. This is a good shortcut for identifying threats, especially those that need immediate action.

Fear is therefore a good thing when it helps to save lives by driving immediate and instinctive action, such as jumping out of the way of a car.

However, our memories aren’t always rational.

Suppose your mother was frightened of spiders. When you were a small child, you might have heard her scream because there was a spider. That would probably make a big impression on you as a child, because we tend to see our parents as ‘all-powerful’ at that stage. You might therefore develop a similar fear—simply because your mother’s fear ‘infected’ you.

It is also possible that some phobias and other irrational fears are evolutionary in origin.

It would not be unreasonable that a fear of heights, snakes or spiders was an evolutionary advantage. After all, plenty of people are likely to have been killed by being bitten by snakes or spiders, or getting too close to the edge of a cliff, over the course of history. Many animals also share a fear of snakes, suggesting that this may be a reasonable supposition.

Signs of Fear

Fear is associated with a very particular facial expression:

When you are frightened, your muscles become tense. Your voice tends to be higher and often less controlled because the muscles of your larynx (voicebox) are also affected. Screaming is a common response to fear—and many animals also make a very high-pitched noise when frightened.

Fear also triggers the release of adrenaline, to prepare you to run away. This means that people who are frightened are likely to either freeze in place, or run away. The adrenaline reaction results in other physiological effects, such as feeling cold, getting ‘butterflies’ in your stomach because the blood supply is withdrawn to supply more important muscles like your legs, and shaking or sweating.

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Managing Fear

It is worth saying again that fear in the right place, and at the right time, is good.

It can save lives, or at least prevent harm, by acting as a shortcut to identifying possible threats based on memory and previous experience.

However, it is also worth saying again that our memories and experiences are not always a good guide to genuine threats. Sometimes they might produce what we might call ‘false positives’: that is, they may identify a threat where none really exists.

When this happens, we will feel fear, even when there is no genuine threat.

The key to managing fear lies in rapidly identifying the false positives, and then applying logic to the situation to move beyond the fear reaction.

This is especially important in a world where surveys consistently find that around one-fifth of the population of the UK and US says that they feel anxious ‘all or most of the time’. As Paul Ekman’s graph reminds us, anxiety is one of the ‘fear family’. This low-level anxiety, or more intense fear-related emotions, can prevent us from doing things and limit our potential.

It is therefore important to find ways to manage anxiety and other fear-based emotions. Many authors of self-help books have tried to address this (see box for an example).

Susan Jeffers’ approach is perhaps more ‘tough love’ than more recent authors have embraced. However, several books and websites about managing fear and anxiety agree that:

• There are some short-term approaches that may be helpful to managing fear, especially if your reaction approaches panic-level. These include taking time out and breathing exercises. Our pages on Relaxation Techniques may provide other useful options.

• It is important to apply logic to your fears. This will often mean that you can move beyond them and act despite initially feeling nervous or anxious.

• Positive self-talk can be an important part of that (and there is more about this in our page on Managing Your Internal Dialogue). Mindfulness can also be helpful because it enables you to consider things more rationally.

• Learning to take controlled risks can also be helpful. This helps to build resilience to fear and anxiety, and show us that we can cope.

• However, fear-related emotions can also be an important signal that something needs to change. Instead of trying to ignore or move beyond them, it may be better to use them to identify action that you need to take. This might be, for example, lowering your expectations, working less hard, or re-negotiating a deadline.

Responding to Fear in Others

As one of the six core emotions, fear is inevitably ‘catching’.

If you see someone else is frightened, your initial reaction is likely to be fear-related. However, if you then perceive their fear as irrational, it is tempting to simply dismiss it. For example, if your friend screams when they see a spider, and you are not frightened of spiders at all, you are likely to be somewhat impatient with them. You might say,

“It’s only a spider. It’s far more frightened of you than you are of it!”

However, this may not be helpful. Instead, it might be better to be reassuring and compassionate (and our page on Compassion may help here), as this is much more likely to help them to cope.

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A Final Thought

We often think of fear-based emotions as unpleasant or uncomfortable.

This is certainly true—but they serve an important purpose in helping us to avoid threats that could harm us in some way. The key is to identify which threats are real, and which are irrational. It is also helpful to use your fear as a sign that change is needed, whether in you and your approach, or in something around you.

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