Do you know #2

Fear

1).basic definitions

In this post fear anxiety and phobias are going to be the subject. Let us begin with listing their definitions. Fear is something that happens to us all, it is our response in the presence of an immediate threat.

Whether it is fight or flight or freeze. anxiety is our anticipation of a future threat and phobia are the exaggeration of an anxiety even at the thought of the threat.

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2).Fear

It is obvious why fear and anxiety are helpful as the fight or flight response can aide us deal with life threatening threats. your body does that by activating the sympathetic nervous system,

which stimulates the adrenal gland to release catecholamines which includes the infamous adrenaline and cortisol. these hormones boosts your body increasing your heart rate and blood flow and stop you from feeling pain and thinking of other problems. All of these efforts are to let you focus on surviving the current situation. Leading you to fight with every thing you have got or escape as fast as possible.

These emotions that accompany fear can make fear alluring for some as long as there are no real threats. Since fear is escorted with the inability to feel pain and the removal of other worries, which is a similar feeling to when someone is excited or happy. Thus relabeling the experience as positive would make that feeling you feel in a roller-coaster or in a horror movie appealing to some. Moreover the amygdala the region in the limbic system, that is highly related to the fight or flight response does not get when the threat is fake or real. so when you pass the experience of fear and face it you would be rewarded by your accomplishment.

The ways the fight or flight response occur might differ between species and even individuals in some situations they may even freeze which is not always a draw back.

For example a deer freeze when gazelles sense danger they generally freeze only twitching their ears and nostrils.This tactic aides them in detecting danger,

on other hand just fleeing might lead her right in the face of danger. Also some people and animals might try to yell scream or make themselves look bigger in an attempt to spread fear into the enemy to leave them be.

Here is an interesting bit of information considering fear. Fear can be processed unconsciously, as the information can still reach the amygdala without going through the cortex,which plays a role in thought and awareness it is the outermost region of the brain the wrinkly part and is the largest region of the brain, of the brain. Furthermore the processing of this stimuli by the brain takes considerably less time than the time needed for someone to consciously recognize something.

This shows that fear is something that does not need the person to be conscious about it making him be able to fear something even though it does not make sense like people with Ailurophobia, who can fear kittens even though they are petite and cannot harm them.

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3).Stress

Stress can be described as a lower tier of anxiety, where cortisol is still released and people are overwhelmed with their surroundings. Anxiety in this context can be described as a more chronic and severe type of stress. In fact one of symptoms of chronic stress is anxiety

Cortisol the hormone released in fight or flight can also be released in stress. The difference is when there is no physical release as in fight or flight problems can occur. There are two types of stressors eustress is stress related with a tangible goal which when accomplished would cease the release of cortisol. Distress on the other hand tends to be caused by some problems and tends to not give an outlet to cortisol and to appear as it out of our control. Distress can occur due to a copious amount of reasons which include death of a relative, illness, financial problems, job insecurities and many more.

When faced with danger and stress the hippocampus Pituitary adrenal axis (HPA) takes action and release cortisol. which as mentioned before helps making the person aware and ready for action. However cortisol can be destructive as it also has negative effects when present for long. Not only does it increase the neural connections of the amygdala, it also decreases the the number of connections in hippocampus decreasing your control on stress, and it would also recede the synaptic connections in your whole brain and the shrinking the prefrontal cortex which controls you learning, judgement and decision making abilities

Worse of all it is epigentic changes, where some genes maybe suppressed in your genes and can not have an effect unless something activated them, this makes the effect of stress hereditary passing through generations.

Nevertheless, the effects of stress can be countered, and one of the popular fixes are said to be exercise and meditation

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4).anxiety

Anxiety is the feeling of worried thoughts and it is mainly normal especially if it is caused by something that can adversely effect us.So for example feeling stress and tension as you pass in a dark alley is normal , as danger maybe lurking around. Anxiety would increase your heart beat and make you more aware of your surroundings to make you act to danger as fast as possible.

Nevertheless anxiety might get overboard, where anxiety begins crawling into the disorder territory when the amount of stress far exceeds the actual threat, where negative thoughts take over making the task at hand extremely harder. Someone with social anxiety for example would give exponential weight to something as a speech or presentation that he should present, sometimes thinking about a plethora of ways it could go down hill Of course the worse thing that could happen is getting a bad grade or being demoted, adding to that anxiety in that situation would only worsen the odds of success.

As someone who had social anxiety before, you would feel an uncomfortable increase in heart rate, your stomach would ache, you would begin sweating, shivering and worse of all you would forget everything you were planning. These symptoms occur even when only the possibility of speaking in front of the class, in an exam or even a mere useless quiz.

There are a multitude of anxiety disorders present which include phobias, OCD and PTSD. it would nonsensical to talk about all anxiety disorder especially that i am not an expert I just research data and try to understand it. Regardless General Anxiety Disorder (GAD) is an anxiety disorder where people feel continuously anxious with no apparent reason. This disorder is persistent, excessive and might keep you from doing everyday matters. to be diagnosed with this disorder you must have that kind of anxiety more than you do not in a period of 6 month. the patients understand that the fear is unreasonable, however they feel a lack of control and they must have three or more symptoms if they are an adult, some of which are irritability restlessness, and difficulty sleeping. Moreover these symptoms can not be tracked down to drugs taken or other disorder. It is treated through therapy and medication mainly antidepressants and benozodiapzepines

Social anxiety is a disorder that can impair social interactions, where people would feel distress when presenting, meeting new people or making small talk. Moreover like GAD it is persistent and might be disable people of doing things like going to work,yet it must only occur because of social interactions. People with this disorder understand clearly that there is no reason for anxiety.

While recovering from this anxiety I was told to ignore the negative thoughts and try as much as possible to replace them with positive ones. Furthermore I should try to make stuff that made me anxious head on and do not wait for it to come to me. Thus instead of waiting for friends to approach me and talk I just throw myself in and try to adapt this would mitigate the feeling of dread . Since every time you try to abide your fear and escape from the anxiety you brains fear of the situation increments as it believes more and more that it is a real threat, whereas facing the fear head on removes that illusion that this is a real threat and eases your interactions.

Phobias is an extensive fear of something that can include the mentioning of it. While normal fear might discourage you from doing something and makes you more aware of your surroundings and anxious, phobias might make you shun an entire activity for the possibility for the thing feared is present. For example you might fear climbing a rusty ladder and that is normal, in comparison someone with a phobia would not go to his favorite shop because it is up stairs.Phobia can be manifest animals, objects, situations, natural environments, blood and others.

The reason one might develop phobias is mainly unknown but it can occur due to traumatic events and having relatives with phobias spreads the disorder. Medication against this disorder varies from person to person however therapy greatly helps here and gradually exposing the person to the thing he fears also aides in resolving the issue.

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Fear is something normal that happens to us all, however when you have constant fear of something that is normal, or fear began invading your day to day life affecting it then you try to seek help. Bear in mind that i am no expert and i am someone who is passionate about knowledge and who loves searching and understanding more of the world so if i made any mistake in this post please tell me in the comments. and you may even suggest what i should search about next.

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5).references

https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-the-fight-or-flight-response-2795194

https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/denying-the-grave/201801/freezing-fear

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sympathetic_nervous_system

https://bigthink.com/going-mental/how-the-brain-fears

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/intense-emotions-and-strong-feelings/201112/the-complexity-fear

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-athletes-way/201301/cortisol-why-the-stress-hormone-is-public-enemy-no-1

https://www.mentalhelp.net/articles/types-of-stressors-eustress-vs-distress/

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6).Image Sources

https://www.pexels.com/photo/full-frame-shot-of-text-on-wood-326642/

Photo by Danish Muhammed from Pexels

https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-the-fight-or-flight-response-2795194

https://pxhere.com/en/photo/942073