Fear is the most important emotion that exists in the human psyche. Furthermore, fear is the most important emotion that exists in all animals. If it were not for fear, nothing would survive. Animals would not survive and humans would not survive. Fear has to be seen as “the most important” of the four basic emotions in order to fully utilize this life-saving emotion. If we, as humans, did not have fear as basic to survival, we would, for instance, would come to a precipice of a canyon and simply step off into the chasm below. Fear keeps us aware of the danger of doing so. Likewise, if we did not have fear, we would run right up to a ranging lion and try to pet him. If we did not have fear, we would not survive more than an hour in life.

I have written, in the company of several “feelings” blogs (now compiled into a book), about the “four basic emotions,” namely fear, joy, anger, and sadness. (Recall that I distinguish “feelings” includes physical feelings, emotional feelings, cognitive feelings, and active feelings.) Within this understanding, namely that we have these four basic emotions as well as cognates, I have suggested that fear is the only emotion that we have when we are born. Thus, an infant cries when s/he “feels” the danger of dying, namely when s/he feels hungry, soiled, lonely, or otherwise unsafe. The idea that fear is the only emotion that we are born with is central to the present argument that “fear is the most important emotion that we have in life.” It always has been and always will be. We must not denigrate fear as something that we have to get rid of or disparage as unnecessary. For us to mature in life, particularly emotional life, work life, play life, and relational life, we need fear as this most basic emotion that keeps us alive. That having been said, undue and unnecessary fear causes us such immense distress in life that fear, itself, starts to kill us. The task in understanding the centrality of fear is to see fear as this most important emotion that keeps us alive and then carefully develop the other emotions so as to have a meaningful life, albeit a life that is safe. A brief review is in order

The four basic emotions

1. Fear: the only emotion that we are born with. It keeps us alive. An infant should get pretty much everything that s/he wants. The infant is either afraid or calm, not joyful, not angry, and not sad. Wants and needs are essentially the same: an infant wants only what it needs. Fear should be the dominant emotion of infancy.
2. Joy: the second emotion that we develop, beginning in late infancy. Joy is related to having something and loving something, whether that be a rattle, cuddling with Dad, or mother’s smile. Wants and needs are beginning to separate: a one-year old or two-year old wants a bit more than s/he can have. A young toddler gets most of what s/he wants. Joy should be the dominant emotion in the second year do life.
3. Anger: the third emotion that we develop, beginning in toddlerhood and lasting for several years, until about 5 or 6. During these years the child’s world expands exponentially, namely because of his/her walking and talking, which were nonexistent during infancy and marginal during the second year of life. Anger comes naturally to toddlers because they are learning to defend themselves against restrictions, limitations, and withdrawal. Whereas they got all of what they wanted in infancy and most of what they wanted in the second year of life, they get very little of what they want…because they simply want much much more than they need.
4. Sadness. This is the fourth and final emotion that is developed in childhood. This occurs slowly as anger wanes and is replaced by the emotion of sadness as the child learns that s/he can’t have most of what s/he wants. If all goes well, by the time a child goes to school at age 5 or 6, s/he is aware that s/he won’t get most of what s/he wants, which then leads to social maturity. Social maturity, among other things, is learning to share with other people, getting some of what you want and the accompanying joy, losing much of what you want and the accompanying sadness. While fear is the most important emotion because of its survival value, sadness is the most mature emotion because everything we love, we eventually lose.

Obviously, no one gets through these stages fully developing all four emotions. People tend to get stuck in one of the first three stages. If I am stuck in stage one, which means that fear is the dominant emotion I have, it is distinctly possible that I was not safe during that year of life although there is the possibility that I was protected beyond infancy and came to believe that someone would care for me 24/7 like they did when I was an infant. Equally possible, however, is that I get stuck in stage 2, where I think I should have everything that I want and hence feel joy all the time. Frequently, especially for males, people get stuck in stage three where I am angry all the time because “they” won’t give me what I want, and I put up a big fuss about it. In this discussion I will concentrate on the effects of being stuck in stage one, fear. But before we tackle being stuck in fear, a brief note regarding the neuropsychological functioning regarding fear.

Neuropsychological function of fear

This means the brain operation causing fear and during fear. Simply stated, the brain’s first operation is that of safety, so anything that the brain perceives as dangerous precipitates fear. Remember that the brain keeps you alive by keeping you from danger of any kind. The brain, for instance, churns up physical defense against any invading species, whether an ant that bites you or a virus that attacks you. Secondly, there are some intrinsic fears that the brain has, albeit is very few. The brain is automatically afraid of falling, starving, and being unable to breathe, so the brain churns up fear in order for you to do something about such things, namely step back from the ledge, get something to eat, or swim to the top of the lack if you’re drowning. There may be a natural fear of snakes, but that is yet questionable. Thank you brain for doing all kinds of things to keep me safe. But what about the things that are not natural, like starving and falling, that the brain things are dangerous. The brain has learned that some things are dangerous. The brain does not naturally know, for instance, that it is dangerous to walk in front of a speeding car.

There are many other things that the brain has learned are dangerous, like loud noises (ambulance sound), light flashes (fire), and deep water (drowning). Additionally, for our current purposes, the brain learns that there are practical and social things that are dangerous. It is dangerous to pick up hot metal, but the brain has to learn that. Much more complicated, however, are the things that are social, like social rejection, loneliness, disapproval, and shame. This is where the mind comes in. You might want to review my blog on “mind over matter,” where I discuss the desire that we see the brain as a machine with only concern for pleasure and safety, or the lack thereof. The concept I propose is that your mind has learned that some social matters are emotionally unpleasant and hence tries to avoid such things, like rejection, loneliness, disapproval, and shame. Simply put, the brain receives a message from the mind that these social things are “dangerous” or at least unpleasant. The brain then responds to such things, and churns up some kind of fear of them: fear of rejection, fear of disapproval, fear of loneliness, and fear of shame. Unfortunately and importantly, however, the brain does not distinguish between things that are dangerous. So, the brain eventually “feels” the danger of someone not liking you the same way it “feels” the danger of speeding car. The brain will churn up the chemical cortisol in order to keep the mind “vigilant,” i.e. hyperaware of the danger that the brains senses. Once the brain learns from the mind that social rejection and the like is “dangerous,” the brain will continue, all on its own, to equate the danger of social rejection to the danger of a speeding car. Then, we can get stuck in fear

Stuck in fear

Most people are stuck in fear. Most people. Undue and often unnecessary fear comprise the heart of what I do with most people. It is no small task to help people feel through and eventually get totally beyond unnecessary and undue fear. Unnecessary fear includes fear of the dark (which, by the way, is not natural), fear of goblins, and fear of all males or all females. There are reasons people are afraid of these things, but the reasons are historical, meaning that males, females, dark, or the alleged presence of goblins was somehow a part of their history. Undue fear is fear that should be small but has become large. It is necessary to be slightly afraid of a speeding car, but since most people speed most of the time when they drive, this fear should be mild, or modest at most.  It is the things that we have learned to be afraid of that most inhibit us in our daily lives and prevent us from succeeding in life. That which I deal with most frequently in my office is the fear of other’s disapproval together with the fear of failure. Over the past week I have heard:

• A man afraid of the disapproval of his boss with whom he needs to have a conversation about a potential move from one department to another, a fear that exists in this man despite the fact that his boss has previously given him the green light to make such a move
• Fear of doing Algebra. This young man, although bright and mathematically inclined, has avoided doing Algebra because he feels “retarded” (his words) when he can’t do something right or remember to put the minus sign where it belongs
• Fear of a wife’s rejection of his sexual overtures
• Fear of catching the coronavirus and keeping “social distance”
• Fear of being alone the rest of his life
• Fear of going back to work
• And many others

These people are “stuck in their fear.” All of these fears have had to do with history. The young man’s fear of his boss’s disapproval comes, interestingly, from a very fine childhood and adolescence where he received very little disapproval because he was pretty good at everything and very outgoing. Now, a young man in the real world of work, he is ill prepared for failing and/or being challenged. I told him that he “hasn’t had enough failures and challenges” to become resilient to them. Resilience to such things means that you feel hurt, feel sad, examine what you have done and what they have said about what you have done, and make adjustments. It doesn’t matter whether the possible judgment is right or wrong. It you are judged, you will be hurt and eventually sad. The man who is afraid of going back to work has never really found work exciting and meaningful. He keeps a constant vigil of “I should go back to work” while at the same time doing everything he can do to avoid looking for work. He is stuck in fear, something we all suffer from time to time. We need to get over undue and unnecessary fears, but how do we do that?

Getting over fear

The very first thing you do to get over fear is to admit to it. We used to say in the 60’s, “If you can name it, you can claim it.” So, this first step in overcoming fear is to admit that you are afraid. Admitting to what you feel, no matter what the feeling, is always the first step to being in control of the feeling. Joy doesn’t require a lot of control although there are occasions where joy can be so great that you do or say something that is harmful. Sadness doesn’t need much control except for time and place for being sad. Anger needs a fair amount of control until you can get to the place where you are not angry, but rather afraid and sad. But fear is very hard to deal with because it is “the most important emotion” that we have and the most basic to our survival. So, notice that you are afraid.

Then you need to guard against trying to fix the fear or rationalize yourself out of being afraid. You can’t fix fear, you can’t push it away, and you can’t figure it out, not until you accept that you are afraid. If you find yourself afraid of the dark, for instance, just notice it, admit to it, and you will find that you become almost immediately less afraid.

Having acknowledged that you are afraid and guarded against trying to fix it or quell it, you will note that almost immediately, that as your fear subsides naturally, you feel a kind of sadness coming over you. What has happened is this: you are afraid of something that might happen in the future, whether the future is seconds away or years away. When you then imagine that something might happen in the future that is bad for you, you will be imagining that you will lose something. This “something” could be money, property, opportunity, success, or someone’s approval. You are now thinking and feeling about this future loss even though it hasn’t happened. We talk a lot about this conquering fear with allowing “anticipatory sadness” in our former book, and address it more in our current book. This process of allowing anticipatory sadness to replace fear takes a lot of practice, and it is very hard to do mostly because your brain does not want you to be sad; the brain just wants you to have pleasure. The brain does not understand the love-based nature of sadness, which can be very life-enhancing as we give up what we have lost, are losing, or might lose. If you do this, you are ready to think.

Thinking should come only when you are no longer afraid and no longer sad. You can really think about what you are afraid of and what you might lose if you can truly look at the present, the past, and the future. Looking at the present means where you are in the immediate moment seeing something that you are losing in the moment; looking at the past means looking at the losses you have had; looking at the future means looking at what losses you might incur in the future. This is a time to think: past, present, and future. As you do this thinking…after you have finished feeling…, you can truly see the things you love and be better at loving. When you’re better at loving, you will be better at losing: past losses, present losses, and future losses. In doing so, you will find that you have overcome your undue fears and your unnecessary fears, and have retained the ones that are truly valuable, like getting out of the way of the speeding car. Maybe even getting away from an undue critical person in your life. But this means doing something.

Doing something is the final element to conquering undue and unnecessary fears. You have to do something to get over being afraid of what might happen, be it failure or criticism. Doing something can come only after you have felt, finished feeling, thought, finished thinking, and have come to a place where you  need to do something. Sometimes, you will find that you really don’t need to do anything at all. Sometimes you will find that you need to do something drastic like moving out of town, leaving your spouse, or quitting your job. Most of the things you are afraid of are between these two extremes of doing nothing and doing everything.

As you process the fear in your life, you have to admit to it, feel it thoroughly, note the anticipatory sadness that is always under fear, think a bit, think more clearly, and eventually take some kind of action. Note this: it is a lot easier to go on being afraid than doing something. This is the essence of being stuck: feeling afraid instead of doing something. It is easier to imagine what I might lose and be afraid than to actually step out and say something or do something and face the real possibility of failure or rejection.

Just for fun, look up a Maltese saying about worrying.

I wish you well