Fear isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Buddhists, for example, believe in healthy and unhealthy fear. In general, fears are unhealthy if they are directed at something that doesn’t actually pose a threat (like moths) or if they are directed at something unavoidable (like death). These unhealthy fears don’t make us happy – indeed, they can stifle us in day-to-day life. By contrast, healthy fears are directed at real dangers (like lung cancer) – if someone stops smoking because they’re afraid of getting cancer, that is a rational, positive response to something which can be influenced.
Many healthy fears relate to more immediate dangers, and these often seem to be embedded in our biology – they are the result of evolution, knitted into our being at an evolutionary level. Fear of falling, which prevents most people from doing a range of potentially fatal things, is one such example. Other healthy fears are the product of our social conditions – fear of debt or losing your property may be one of the factors influencing your decision to get up and go to work every day. Healthy fears help us make prudent decisions both when the consequences are instant and when they are long-term.
Conversely, unhealthy fears can stop you from progressing in life. These fears are irrational responses to dangers that don’t exist in any material sense. If you are unable to do anything that would mean confronting an unhealthy fear, you are essentially paralysed.
Calculated risk-taking is an important part of life, but fear of failure, for instance, can prevent this and stop you moving forward as a result. Fear of loss or rejection is another fairly typical problem – this can cause you to keep people at arm’s length, and means you will exclude yourself from potentially fulfilling relationships.
If you feel that your life is standing still, this may well be due to irrational fears that can be overcome with professional help.
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