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Everyone is afraid of something, but these fears vary greatly depending on age, experiences and emotional state.
Sometimes our fears are based on our instinct for self-preservation. For example, many people are afraid of heights or driving fast. Both can indeed be deadly.
However, there are other irrational fears that come out of nowhere, take hold in the mind and burst out at the most unexpected moment.
What people are afraid of
If you think of works of fiction, be it movies, games or books, you can easily name a dozen scary characters. Some people are afraid of alien monsters like Alien or the monster from The Thing. Other people are more impressed by serial killers: Freddy Krueger, Jason Voorhees or Pogo the Clown.
The fear of such images is fleeting, passing almost immediately after the movie ends. Real, realistic, albeit unlikely scenarios are quite another matter. Things that could actually happen in everyday life.
Unskilled surgeons exist. We don't think about these people until it's time to go under the knife. That's when anxiety arises, which can turn into primal fear.
Some are frightened by long airplane rides or the pressurized atmosphere in the subway. Someone is more afraid of police officers than any fictional monsters.
Of course, there are also more generalized fears, characteristic of a particular society or group. Residents of coastal cities are afraid of floods, citizens of a country with an unstable political system are most worried about possible riots, high inflation and the possibility of civil war.
In any case, the fictional monsters are rather entertaining - a movie about real fears would be quite boring.
Where irrational fears come from
The most eloquent horror story unfolds not on TV screens or the pages of a book, but in a person's head.
Your imagination is the best and most eloquent storyteller, creating scenarios of personal hell.
It is the mind that speaks to the likelihood of getting into a ghastly accident on the way to work. In a spare moment, it also casually asks if you have cancer. Do your friends really appreciate you or secretly despise you? Suddenly there's just a lot you don't know about.
All of the above is hypothetically possible. Moreover, the world could end tomorrow, but what is the probability, what are the prerequisites? This question is omitted.
The voice of inner fears is almost always louder, because the mind is one hundred percent aware of your weaknesses, areas of insecurity and anxiety. These points are used as reminders of the worst days of life that didn't actually happen.
Meanwhile, the mind does not take pleasure in your torment; instead, it becomes a loyal companion. Its primary purpose is not to intimidate, but rather to inform. Thus there is an attempt to anticipate and preempt possible calamities.
This mechanism once helped our ancestors survive. Cautiousness with gradual accumulation of experience created civilization.
The tendency to weigh decisions and think over actions slows down movement, but allows us to move forward.
However, healthy fears often grow into real paranoia. A self-reinforcing mechanism emerges, where irrational, but still fear requires an appropriate reaction and at the same time is proof that you really should be afraid.
How to deal with irrational fears
Despite the fact that the mind has good intentions, trying to protect you from any, even the most improbable scenarios, in practice it becomes a barrier to a full life.
Fear encourages you to abandon your plans, isolates you from society, and constrains you to a level where all activity is reduced to maintaining biological functions. Everything else is perceived as optional, rather even harmful elements.
In such a state, life turns into existence. In order to escape from personal hell, it is necessary to establish a rational dialog with the mind.
Attention
To effectively combat internal fears, you need to pay attention to trends. They do not appear overnight. Feelings and thoughts grow on a certain soil. Gradually, the roots penetrate deeper, reaching the consciousness.
It is important to notice the stages of development of fears: when they turn from an intrusive thought into something all-consuming.
Pause
Usually irrational fear arises suddenly, when thoughts wander in free flight. Therefore, an unprepared person easily succumbs to pressure, begins to fear even more. In such moments you need to shut down, take a pause.
Most likely, you really do have something to think about to reduce the feeling of anxiety. There are some pending matters, unfulfilled obligations. Come back to these reflections on your own when you're in a calm environment.
Be ironic
Try condensing a scary scenario down to a simple sentence of a few words.
For example: “I'm going to die old and alone.” Then change the tone - let the inner voice repeat it, but in a particularly cartoonish way. You can choose the voice of your favorite comedian or a character from a parody movie about villains.
The essence of the mechanism is simple: when it's funny, then it's not scary.
Take action
Some fears disappear once requests are met.
Go to the doctor, call relatives more often, obey traffic laws. Minimize the number of situations that excite feelings of irrational fear.
Other terrors can be defeated by statistics and counterarguments. A surgeon in a hospital has the least interest in a patient's death, because he or she will personally be criminally liable. Airplanes fall, but extremely rarely, and the subway is one of the safest places in the city.
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