Fear Is Not The Enemy

Very often I read about how fear is a negative emotion. Many take that the wrong way and think it means fear is “bad” or “evil”. Fear is actually a very useful and powerfully motivating emotion. It resides on the negative polarity scale of emotions, but this doesn’t mean it’s wrong or evil in itself. In the proper context, fear will save your life or give you the added adrenaline to escape a dangerous situation or deal with it more effectively. This is also known as the fight or flight response.

Problems happen when fear takes over and panic is allowed to set in. Allowing yourself to suffer at the whims of your emotions can cause a freeze instead of effective fight or flight. This applies to situations where fear is unwarranted or unwanted, like sexual performance anxiety. Left unchecked, it can drag you down and make you ineffective at many things. It also allows you permission to admit and even encourage weakness in yourself. This can be a bad thing if you allow it to fester and cause you to give up or give in, instead of transcending it.

Learning to control and eventually master your fears is a difficult but very rewarding thing to do. Instead of looking at fear as your enemy, look at it like a powerful servant. Use it to motivate you on to higher goals physical, mental and emotional. Learn to recognize it in others or even in writing to be of assistance or to prevent misinformation.

There are plenty of resources on PEGym on how to deal with fear, like Emotional Visualizations. If your fears are out of your ability to manage on your own then professional help would be needed. Don’t be afraid to ask for this help if you need it!