What Causes Fear And Types Of Fear 

• Fear stops you from reaching your true potential in life.
• You were only born with 2 fears! The rest you learnt!
• Courage means controlling your fear.

No two people are alike, and because we are all different, each and every one of us is uniquely capable of achieving some form of greatness.

You may look at someone and wish you had what they had, but if you look closer at yourself, at what makes you unique, you will see that you have things not even they have. And that you are capable of things not even they are.

Your uniqueness as a person therefore acts as your blueprint for what you are capable of achieving in life. And because you are unique, no one can achieve exactly the same thing as you, in exactly the same way.

What this means is that every person on earth has the potential to achieve something great, something only their uniqueness allows them to do.

However as you are already aware, not everyone manages to fulfill their true potential. And as a result go throughout much of their life never fully satisfied with who and what they are.

One of the main reasons for this lack of satisfaction and fulfillment in life, comes not from lesser qualities or traits that person may possess, but rather from an ignorance of them.

Instead of focusing on what makes them unique, and what they are individually capable of, many people make the mistake of comparing themselves to others who in their eyes appear to be more successful than they are.

The trouble with this is that whilst you can use other peoples success to motivate you, if you forget about your own uniqueness and just concentrate on their strengths, this comparison can lead to feelings of inadequacy and may even have the opposite affect to what was intended, de-motivation.

Eventually these thoughts inevitably lead to fear. Fear about themselves. Fear about what may come in the future, and fear about other people.

And as you already know, when you fear something it is a natural reaction to try and move away from it, to avoid it. So if your life becomes filled with fear, which direction do you think your life will be moving, forwards or backwards?

Put quite simply, fear holds you back from what only you are uniquely capable of achieving. And one of the main reasons for this fear is that people forget who they are and what they are.

In other words, they forget their own unique blueprint, and try to use someone else’s blueprint. What they don’t realize is that that you can’t use someone else’s blueprint, because each of us has our own blueprint which allows only us to achieve a unique form of greatness.

By ignoring your own blueprint, you are essentially ignoring your own potential greatness.

Because of the debilitating affects of fear, and the limiting beliefs associated with it, fear is therefore the greatest enemy of all human potential, and more people are held back by real or imaginary fears than any other factor.

In this, and the following articles, we shall be looking at the concept of fear and how it can control and restrict your life.

Later, we shall explore some ways of overcoming the fear that is holding you back from realizing your unique potential to achieve greatness in life.

What Causes Fear? Your First Two Fears

Did you know that when you were born you only had two natural inbuilt fears? A fear of falling, and a fear of loud noises.  These fears were built into your DNA, and passed from generation to generation as a survival mechanism.

Their only purpose was to keep you alive, by alerting you to potential dangers and creating an emotion within you that motivates you to avoid danger.

Now think about the implications of this, and the fears you currently have. If you were not born with the fears you have today, where did they come from?

The answer is that at some point in your life you acquired them. Some event in your past caused you to associate a pain or danger with whatever it is you now fear, and now you are strongly motivated to avoid experiencing those emotions again.

In other words, you learnt your fear.

The good news is that for anything you learn, you can unlearn. But first you need to understand your fear, what caused your fear and what options are available to you to overcome it.

So let’s now begin by briefly looking at the three main types of learned fear, external, internal and subconscious fear.

Types Of Fear

 

External Fear

Perhaps the most easily recognized fear is external fear. This type of fear is caused by something outside of you, which you are strongly motivated to avoid. These fears are usually called phobias.

Some examples of phobias, or extreme external fears, could include a fear of spiders, a fear of flying or a fear of rats. 

Generally speaking, all these fears tend to occur after some negative experience with them in the past.

For example, as a child I used find spiders fascinating. I would look at them in their webs, and collect them in jars.

However one day as I was trying to collect a spider from its web, it somehow managed to get on my finger, wrap its legs around my finger tip and then bite me!

I frantically tried to shake the spider off my finger for what seemed like an eternity. When I finally did remove it, I saw two small puncture marks where the bite had been made. I then quickly ran inside to my mum.

Since that experience, plus a few other bad experiences with spiders (and the film arachnophobia!) i soon learnt to associate spiders with pain and discomfort.

In other words, these bad experiences taught me that spiders were bad and I should avoid them. They taught me to fear spiders.

Fortunately external fears are relatively simple in principle to overcome (though by no means easy!) providing you have a lot of determination and courage.

In a later article we shall explore some techniques you can use to overcome these external fears.

Internal Fear

An internal fear is something outside of you that you link a negative emotion to, as a result of something inside of you.

This typically manifests itself as low self esteem, whereby you doubt your own ability and worth to do or have something.

Low self esteem is often a reflection of how your parents treated you as a child, and the things you experienced throughout your life.

The most important and influential years, in terms of character development, are your early childhood and teenage years of life. Because this is when your mind is most impressionable and still developing.

However it is important to understand that most parents do not deliberately try to make their children fearful later in life, but often parents do so inadvertently through their efforts to raise us in the best way they know how. Usually treating us as they were treated by their parents.

One of the most harmful things a parent can do is to use destructive criticism far more often than they use praise. They may spank their child, tell them off or even send them to the “naughty chair” as punishment.

All of these things are done in an effort to guide the child through life, so that they learn to associate something they shouldn’t do with pain (punishment) thereby becoming motivated to avoid doing it again.

Whilst discipline certainly is a necessary and important factor in raising children, an overbalance of destructive criticism and punishment in relation to praise and love, ultimately leads to feelings of inadequacy and insecurity in the developing child.

Later in life these feelings translate into fears of failure, rejection, lack of self worth and self doubt. In other words, low self esteem.

The good news is that by understanding, examining and learning to improve your own self esteem, a lot of these internal fears can be overcome.

Subconscious Fear

A subconscious fear is a belief that has been accepted by your subconscious mind, usually as a result of something you experienced or were told as a child. The most common manifestation of a subconscious fear is self sabotage.

Self sabotage occurs when you begin to achieve more than your subconscious beliefs think you should achieve. So for example, if you always seem to get close to success, or even experience success for some period, but then do something to “mess it all up”, then it is likely your subconscious beliefs are sabotaging your life.

Like internal and external fears, self sabotage tends to occur when some negative emotion is linked to change or a particular event in your life.

As a result, these “subconscious fears” motivate you (at the subconscious level) to avoid this change or event, and go back to where you subconsciously believe you should be.

A good example of this can be found with money. A large majority of lottery winners spend all their money within a few years, and end up back where they started before they won the jackpot.

Because of their limiting subconscious beliefs that told them they were unworthy of such wealth, their subconscious takes them back to the level they subconsciously believed they should be by getting rid of all their millions.

I like to call this process your “subconscious thermostat”, as your subconscious beliefs will always cause you on average to achieve a certain level of success or happiness in life. That is of course, unless you actively take steps to adjust that thermostat.

You can read more about self sabotage, and the subconscious thermostat in the article below.

Why Do People Self Sabotage?

External, Internal And Subconscious Fear

Let’s quickly recap on the different types of fear, so that you fully understand what they are.

External Fears

An external fear is something outside of you that causes you some degree of pain or discomfort. An example of this type of fear could include a fear of flying or a fear of spiders.

It is usually caused by some negative experience you had in the past, which subsequently lead you to link a negative emotion to it, thereby motivating you to avoid it.

Internal Fears

An internal fear is something outside of you that triggers an internal response, whereby you question your ability to do or achieve something.

An example of this could include a fear of asserting yourself, and is generally shown by a lack of self esteem.

This type of fear usually occurs as a result of early childhood and teenage experiences, which influence the highly impressionable and developing young mind. It is closely inter-related with subconscious fears.

Subconscious Fears

Subconscious fears involve limiting subconscious beliefs that cause you to sabotage yourself when you are close to achieving something, or are achieving more than you subconsciously believe you are worthy of achieving.

An example of a subconscious fear could include a fear of success.

Like internal fears, subconscious fears are generally formed during your early childhood and teenage years of life. The most influential people being your parents.

Are You Controlled By Fear?

Since we are largely controlled by our dominant emotions, if you have been raised from childhood to be fearful, or experienced things in the past which created fear within you, then that fear will, to varying degrees, control your life and dictate your future actions.

Depending on the type of fear you have, this control will often come in the form of some kind of restriction on your life.

Which then prevents you from doing or achieving the things you would like to do, thereby preventing you from realizing the full potential of your own unique blueprint.

Breaking Free From The Shackles Of Fear

If fear is a natural reaction to avoid something, then the opposite to fear is a natural desire to experience or accept something. In other words, the opposite to fear is love.

When your life is driven by love, it is expressed as desire, and strong desires will always overcome any fears you may have.

For example, if your house is burning down a natural reaction would be to fear the fire because it could burn you.

However if your son or daughter was inside the house, your love for them, and the desire created by that love, would more than likely be strong enough to overcome that fear and save your child.

For internal fears love is expressed as self love, or high self esteem. It is a strong belief in yourself, and your ability to do what you set out to do, regardless of any obstacles that may lie in your way.

When you truly love and believe in yourself, your desire will be strong enough to overcome any fear that comes your way.

For external fears, love is expressed as a desire to experience something, rather than to avoid it.

This does not mean that you must fall in love with the thing you fear, but rather that you accept it for what it is and are able to react appropriately around it. It means being able to control yourself, rather than your fear controlling you.

Later on you will find out ways of dealing with these fears. However for now, you must learn to develop love so that you can break free from the shackles of fear. But in order to do this, you must first develop courage.

Courage And Fear

Throughout history all great human achievement has been accomplished by people who faced their fears, acted in the face of uncertainty and still dared to move forward.

These people were no different from you or I. They had a particular fear, but learnt to control it and overcome it, so that they could move their lives forward rather than allowing those fears to hold them back.

Take Winston Churchill for example. During the 2nd World War, the small island of Britain was threatened with invasion by the seemingly unstoppable German army. An army who had already conquered most of Europe.

Rather than giving in and surrendering to what seemed like almost certain defeat, Churchill defied the Germans in one of his most famous speeches by saying:

“…we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender…”

Was Churchill scared or fearful when he made this bold and defiant speech? You bet he was! For there was a lot to fear for a tiny island like Britain, who at the time stood alone against Hitler’s dream for global conquest.

It was Churchill’s willingness to keep fighting, and the belief he inspired in the British people, that ultimately kept Britain a free country throughout the war.

Had Churchill wavered, and given in to his fear, Hitler would most likely have conquered Britain and the war could have ended up very differently.

Through this example Churchill showed that courage comes not from a lack of fear, but rather from a control of fear, and the ability to react in an appropriate manner.

This is the very basis of overcoming any fear. It is the development of courage, from which comes self control in response to a fearful situation.

And it is only by learning to control yourself, will you remove the control that fear has on your life.

Part 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9

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