Where do you feel afraid?
Inside a dark room?
In the centre of a very spacious area?
Alone?
Far away from home?
Being at home?
These are just the questions I pummel myself with on a day to day basis. I want to know what I fear, and why; and to do so, I need to know its origins.
The origins of fear.
What is fear? There may not be an exact definition to it.
Why?
What you believe is fearful, may not be for others, and vice versa. Yet why do we all understand that it is fear that makes us afraid?
According to the American Psychiatric Association (2000), commonly noted fears such as the fear of (nonsense) like death, failure, and all of the unknown; is in fact anxiety, instead of fear. The difference between fear and anxiety is that anxiety may be defined as a series of emotions that may lead to fear.
Fear is a evolutionary survival mechanism where the "fight or flight" defense mechanism kicks in when required to defend oneself or flee. It is known as a reaction to a threat, and is felt as a worrying dread. (Ohman, 2010).
After all, we aren't so different from the animals out in the wild.
So what about the geographical locations one may be in?
How does that affect fear?
(I couldn't find any peer- reviewed sources, so I'm just going to chip in).
Dead in the night,
Howl of the wolf.
Son of the God,
Steaming witches brew.
Flight upon a fight,
Traversing across a space,
Passing beyond our time,
Came a strange man.
Lacks of facial repose,
Stimulation may be lost,
A ghost reflecting the past,
The only man remains.
Far away in the West,
Spirits come to play.
Nights come and by,
The reaper turns away.
Erratic Behaviour
References:
American Psychiatric Association (2000).
Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (Revised), 4th ed.
Washington, DC: Author.
Öhman, A. (2010). Fear and anxiety:
Overlaps and dissociations. In M. Lewis, J. M. Haviland-Jones, & L. Feldman
Barrett (Eds.). Handbook of emotions. (pp.709-729). New York: The Guilford
Press.
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