Self-Improvement Resources Sample Chapters - Dominate Your Fears and Phobias

When you think that some things, people, or places can produce undesirable consequences when you are near them, that’s the result of fear. When you think some things, people, or places can do things that can result to major harm, pain, or even death to you when you are near them, that’s the effect of phobia. Fear can produce an overly self-protective and cautious individual, while extreme phobia can entail feelings of death.

Phobia has an element of fear. Fear per se is not phobia, but it can lead to phobia if it worsens. Unchecked fear, when fed with more imagined dangers, may soon turn into phobia. Most phobias are extreme fears.

Some phobias can haunt us as long as we allow them. Their power over us is entirely dependent on our capacity to handle them. We can give them the power to dictate what is dangerous for us, or we can dominate them to our advantage.

Fear is really designed to warn you. It is your biological security alarm to keep you from treading unknown territory unprepared. If you re-discover the true role of fear in your life, you would find it a real friend in times of danger.

Fear is not meant to forbid you. It means to warn you for early preparation. Fear tells you to think twice before you launch into an adventure. It gives you time or another chance to prepare so that you can be better equipped the next time around. This is the correct perspective on fear.

Children are also trained to fear their parents, especially the father in a patriarchal setting. This is not to stop them from approaching their parents, but to keep the kids disciplined, in order to please the parents.

All types of fears have the element of a stern warning: the “think twice” principle. Healthy fear makes you carefully prepared for a try, but alarming and debilitating fears make you stay out of it all. In the sense of making you prepare carefully, healthy fear is an optimistic feeling, while alarming and debilitating fears are pessimistic. Healthy fear instills wisdom and respect, while alarming and debilitating fears result to tyranny.

You fear someone you highly respect. In this sense, fear is a byproduct of wisdom and high esteem. You don’t fear the person because you are afraid of him. You fear him because he excites admiration and reverence. You fear the 8 president of your country, for instance, because he is a figure of power and authority. You dare not offend the president, yet you like to meet him personally. You appear your best when he is around, carefully shake his hand, and make sure that you say only nice things. Then you tell everybody the honor of being able to meet the president personally. This fear has a way of bringing out the best in you. Fear, in this sense, is actually awe or wonder.

In the same sense, a young man who has romantic feelings for a young woman may have some kind of fear whenever he approaches her, more so when he faces her parents. But this fear doesn’t stop him from pursuing his good intentions for her. Likewise, an employee, even without having committed an offense, may fear his boss. Yet, he keeps reporting for work everyday. Job applicants also experience the same with their interviewer. Just the same, they go ahead with the interview. School children often fear their teachers and principals (oftentimes even more than their parents), but these students enjoy school. It is said that children treat school as a second home, and teachers as their second parents. A Healthy fear births respect and propriety in relationships.

Nevertheless, once healthy fear is consistently fed with wrong information, it may lead to alarming fear. For healthy fear to remain healthy, there must be healthy contact with the object of fear.

Alarming fear occurs when you sense some threat or danger in a place, person, or thing. The idea is not to stop you, but to make you very careful in your undertakings. The idea is to dissuade you from pursuing a wrong direction. It makes you ask yourself, “Am I going to proceed or abort?”

If it is for a good cause (like self-preservation), and you proceed, you do it with utmost caution. If you abort, you delay your plans for a more opportune time. You do not give up. You wait for a more favorable time and condition.

If some misunderstandings or petty quarrels stand between two sweethearts, alarming fear starts to set in. This fear is not to keep them away, but to check their ways and attitudes toward each other. If a pupil fails to do his homework, his teacher will employ disciplinary measures. If he gets low grades, his parents may issue some warnings accordingly. The pupil may begin to feel alarming fear and try to do better next time.

Alarming fear is not admiration or reverence. It is being aware that something is wrong. In another sense, it is recognizing that some kind of danger is lurking somewhere, and you have to be ready (like when you hear something go bump in the middle of the night). When you feel alarming fear, you prepare for the worst decidedly. You don’t freeze, but you become more alert. You may decide to detour to delay confronting the danger now. Then you think of measures to improve yourself in case the danger surfaces again. You don’t let the danger confine you to a prison or limitation. You keep yourself in control. You are not afraid; you just want to be safe and secure.

When alarming fear seems to surround you, you must prepare yourself to overcome it. Try to talk yourself into facing the fear once it recurs. The moment you give in to fear and it becomes a habit, the tendency for cowardice begins to settle in. You lose the urge to overcome your fear. Instead, you simply accept the fear as your way of life. The fear then limits your freedom, and soon dictates what you can and cannot do. When fear dictates on you and makes you helpless, it becomes too alarming. Fear that gets too alarming tends to change your character negatively. It must be seriously dealt with.

Abused children who run away from abusive parents or teachers can indicate a sign of being afraid. A frustrated suitor may never want to have anything to do again with the girl who rejected his love because he is afraid of being humiliated. An employee who is guilty of an offense may just suddenly not report for work because he is afraid.

Debilitating fear is synonymous to being afraid. In simple words, it turns you into a coward. It makes you want to suddenly disappear from the situation at hand. Debilitating fear makes you give up in fighting the thing you’re afraid of. The thing, place, or person you are afraid of has become a tyrant punisher that you want to stay away from or easily give in to. You have become a prisoner of the danger.

When fear takes out the joy in you, it’s debilitating. You tend to be withdrawn, or you lose interest in whatever incites the fear. You avoid the subject matter, or show repulsive reaction when the thing, person, or place is brought out.

Debilitating fear must be dealt with soonest. When ignored or encouraged, it can lead to phobia. A child who has experienced burning his tongue with hot milk in his feeding bottle may become too alarmed by it. The mere sight of the feeding bottle with milk may give him chills in his bones. His health could be greatly affected by this, especially when he becomes hysterical each time he sees feeding bottles. Many children have phobia or irrational horror about injections. By just seeing women in white coat or overalls, they have tantrums. They think every woman in white dress is an injection-wielding nurse.

There are people who seem to be fearless — or at least they claim to be so. Some believe them, but others do not. There are people who claim that bravado is not the absence, but the conquest, of fear. This means fear is still intact; but brave people are able to conquer their fear masterfully.

Some experts say only dead people do not fear. They assert that as long as you’re alive, your emotions (including fear) function. You can either rule over emotions, or let them rule over you.

Some people are genuinely brave. They won’t react negatively even at the point of death. They have mastered how to expertly manage their fears. They claim that they have no fear of the most terrifying things; but actually, they may have encountered similar experiences before, and they have just learned to tame them.

There are also people who claim to be fearless, but they cowardly hide behind their claim of fearlessness. This may be a sign of inferiority complex. It is their way of getting attention. They terribly fear not being recognized as a toughie, or not being respected as such.

Phobia is considered a mental disorder. Experts say it is an anxiety disorder. It is ranked along with obsessive-compulsive disorders, general anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorders. Anxiety disorder occurs when the joys of life are taken away from you by real or imagined fears. People suffering from this ailment are often unable to cope in healthy ways with life’s changes, traumatic experiences, and losses.

Phobia is present when you bother with extreme measures to avoid a fear and you react in ways that limit normal functioning. Some experts say phobia is often related to a past event in your life that really upset you. You have created a ghost out of an undesirable experience and you let it haunt you. Although it may no longer pose any threat, the overwhelming fear remains so real that it rules your life. In short, you fear something like crazy, and it drives you mad!

When a thing becomes an obsession and is a result of compulsion (urgent, repeated behaviors), you have a serious problem. When you wash your hands 30 to 50 times a day for fear of getting germs through your hands, chances are, you have OCD. When you watch out for cracks on the ground or pavement each time you walk for fear of being swallowed up by the earth, you probably have OCD.

When you are always afraid and restless for no apparent reason, and you are always at the verge of panic, you probably have a case of GAD. Some people, especially women, have this feeling and attribute it to their intuition. Many experts are of this opinion. However, if the anxiety is near panic accompanied by slight body tremors, it may be GAD.

When past tragic fears recur in your dreams, imaginations, and guilt, and cause anxiety that lasts for months and even years, it might be a PTSD. The tragedy may be brought about by war, rape, natural and unnatural calamities (flood, tornado, or accidents) that have embedded themselves in the subconscious being of the victim.

If you complain of an ailment or disease that may just be a result of your imagination, you may have SD. You think you really feel the symptoms of the ailment; but when the doctors test you, the results are negative. When you are afflicted with SD, you feel frustrated with having to suffer some ailment; when in fact, you don’t have any sickness. You may even get irritated when people find nothing wrong with you.

These disorders may accompany a phobia. When you see these symptoms, consult a professional counselor. Better yet, visit a psychiatrist. Professional help, along with techniques in this book, can help you counteract such disorders. You can choose to master your fears and phobias and make them bow to you, instead of you bowing to them.

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