Why Do We Get Scared!

From having acrophobia (fear of heights) to arachnophobia (fear of spiders), people fear from a variety of things throughout their life, sometimes even from harmless things such as small buttons (koumpounophobia).

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We can hide our fears but all of us will admit that we are afraid of something.

Whenever we face anything we are afraid of, our body behaves erratically. We freeze and our heart beats so fast as if it will burst out of our chest, our legs shake and we may even lose consciousness.

But why does all of this happen if nothing has touched us or harmed us in any way.

We never have fell down from a height and got injured but we still feel dizziness when we look down from a height. 

We were never bitten by a spider or any other insect but we still scream and run whenever we spot an insect.

We have never drowned but we still feel breathlessness whenever we are near water.

So before understanding why are we scared of these things, let's understand why our body behaves in such a way whenever we are struck by fear.

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The part of brain which becomes active when we feel fear is called amygdala. It is one of the two almond shaped bundle of neurons located deep in the temporal lobes of our brain.

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When we see something that frightens us, amygdala becomes active and send signal to hypothalamus. Hypothalamus then triggers the release of hormones, such as adrenaline which are responsible for the erratic behaviour of our body.

From here, a neurotransmitter called glutamate then carries the signal deeper into the brain which may cause us to freeze or jump, the fight or flight response.

The hormone released during the situation of fear is adrenaline, which increases our heartbeat and blood pressure so that we get enough energy to face the situation if required or run away from it if we can.

Due to adrenaline pumping, more blood is flowing through our muscles than required, that is why our legs feels a little bit shaky during scary situations, and excessive adrenaline can faint us out of fear as we can't handle that much flow of blood through our muscles.

This response is automatic and present in our body from ancient times, when humans had to face wild animals while hunting for food. As the response is automatic, we can't control the outcome, but if the situation is not life threatening, the parasympathetic nervous system acts to counter measure the excessive adrenaline release, so as to calm our body down.

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So now we know why we shiver, scream, run, jump while we face sudden fear from anything. All these responses are involuntary and been present in our body from millions of years.

But we have to find out why we are scared from certain things while others are not.

There are many reason why we develop fear from a certain object or action. The two main reason for humans to develop fear from anything are indirect association and fear transference.

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In indirect association, we carry some negative experience from the thing we fear from our past. 

Like we might have fallen from a small height and got scratches while we were a small child. So we always connect height with falling. 

Similarly we might have seen someone stung by an insect and then he/she suffered from pain, so we connect all the insects as creepy and stinging contrary to the fact that most of them can never harm us.

We are always carrying those memories in our subconscious mind although we can't remember them clearly.

In fear transference, we derive fear from other people, or mostly the people around us.

It is pretty common that if your room mate fear from spiders and cockroaches he/she will pass the fear into you. And it does not matter if you have had any weird experience with the insects previously, you will fear them for life.

If your family is afraid of water, there is a high possibility you are afraid of dying by drowning in water.

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So most of the fears are either from our past memories that are exaggerated subconsciously or picked from the fears of people around us.

Now, how do we get rid of our fears?

The most effective and obvious answer is to repetitively face our fears.

If we are afraid of heights, we can do paragliding, bungee jumping, so after a few times we get used to heights and we don't fear heights anymore.

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We can do underwater diving to remove our fear of water, we can visit insectarium to get rid of our fear from insects.

The more we face things we fear, the less we get scared of them and the next time we face them, we don't get scared.

Taking your fears with a head on will adapt us to that situation and it will be normal for us after a few times. That's why people like adventurous sports and paranormal movies so much. It gives them an opportunity to face their fears while being safe.

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