It’s Okay
Transforming fear one breath at a time
Lately, I’ve been contemplating fear. Not specifically my fears, or contemporary collective fears — though, I’ve spent plenty of time there. Instead, I’m interested in understanding the essence of fear itself. What is it and why does it manifest? How is it processed by the human psyche? Can it be released, maybe even transformed? What happens when we don’t resist fear? What happens when we do?
Oxford Dictionary defines fear as “an unpleasant emotion caused by the belief that someone or something is dangerous, likely to cause pain or a threat.” Fear is one of those big umbrella emotions, where lots of other fear-like feelings reside. It can be unclear and amorphous. Yet, we know it when we sense it. We might even know what triggered it — a snake, a pandemic, the loss of a loved one, a painful memory, the lights of a police car…
Psychologists are right to point to trauma and previous unpleasant experiences as bearing considerable responsibility for the fears we carry around with us. “Irrational” fears, paranoia, or Pre-Traumatic Stress — feeling into (sensing) or anticipating potential danger, pain, or suffering in the near or distant future — also trigger a fear response. The term Pre-Traumatic Stress, not yet officially listed in The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM–5), is more…
