Fear, Stress and Worry

Fear, worry, and stress – are you a victim?

Tim Connor

If you are not aware of the simple fact that fear is the major contributor to stress, illness, failure, worry and a whole host of other negative circumstances and outcomes, well, you must be living in the wilderness.

There are no fewer than 1000 books on the market today that focus on this simple emotion and the consequences of not successfully managing it.

What is fear exactly?  For starters there are only two fundamental emotions – love and fear.  The brain is a very complicated device but in simple terms it is wired to default to its fear agendas before love.  In other words, no matter what us going on in your life, your mind’s first response is to trigger a fear reaction setting in motion a variety of both physical and emotional or psychological behaviors.

No matter how hard the average person works at it, their brain will always respond to every circumstance first from a fear perspective.  I won’t go into millions of years of physical programming, evolution, physiological and psychological research but all of the evidence today suggests - no - certifies that we are all wired the same way – fear, fight or flight to most of life’s uncertainties.

Here’s the fundamental problem with this mindset.  A person when operating out of fear tends not to be rational, mature or even lucid.  These often unrealistic responses based on this mental fear mechanism will almost always move us from fear, to worry, to stress and then just keep re-cycling – fear - worry - stress.

Stress is the number one contributor to all illness.  Worry is the number one contributor to stress.  Fear is the number one contributor to worry and fear is always a person’s initial reaction to unknowns, uncertainty or anything they feel might threaten their safety, security, health or even happiness.  See the connections here?

So to better manage our stress and worry it is critical that we do a better job of managing our fear emotional responses.

Back to my original question – what is fear really and what contributes to it?  There are any number of issues, but I believe that there are six major ones; unmanaged expectations, feelings of the lack of control, victim mindsets, pessimism, arrogance and emotional immaturity.

Let’s take a brief look at these six.

-          unmanaged expectations

Unrealized expectations is the number one contributor to disappointment.  Unmanaged expectations cause more conflict, hurt feelings, anxiety and negative emotions than any other cause.  You can never control what you can’t control – other’s behavior, the weather, life – get it – some stuff just isn’t worth fretting over.

-          feelings of the lack of control

Everyone wants to have some degree of control over the areas of their life that are important to them – careers, money, health, relationships etc but the problem is it will never be possible to totally control any of these.  Yes you can live right, save your money, eat right, exercise, etc but in the end stuff happens.

-          victim mindsets

To see yourself as a victim is to wish your circumstances would continue.  A victim mindset is very closely related to an entitlement mentality.  It says essentially – no matter what I do, think, believe, or say bad stuff will happen to me, stuff that will break me no matter how hard I try.  I deserve this.

-          pessimism

Optimists live longer and get sick less than pessimists.  Optimists are generally happier more often than optimists.  Optimists have more fun and enjoy life more than pessimists.  Optimists are usually more successful than pessimists.  So you ask, why would anyone want to be a pessimist?  Great question and I don’t really know, but I do have an opinion if you want it – pessimists like to be pessimists.  They are more comfortable in their own skin believing the worst will always happen no matter how hard they try.  Win the lotto?  They will lose the ticket.  Find the love of their life?  They will screw it up sooner or later.  Get a promotion.  They will never feel worthy and will apologize for their poor performance. 

-           arrogance

Arrogance is a very close relative to ego.  Arrogance fails to take responsibility, it always blames.  Arrogance feels invincible.  Arrogance needs to be in control and arrogance always feels superior, conceit or even haughtiness.  Arrogance is generally rooted in insecurity.

-          emotional immaturity.

      Emotional immaturity is simply the inability to grow up emotionally.  I don’t  

      mean that people who cry in public at a funeral or special movie are insecure.

      Emotionally immature people just never seem to be able to cope with the

      realities of life.

Any one of these behaviors, mindsets, attitudes or life approaches, when not understood, controlled, managed and overcome will contribute to increased fear, worry and stress and all of the negative consequences of these; such as health issues, career issues, relationship issues, financial issues etc.

 So, the real question is – what can you do to better manage or even control your fear?  Consider –

-          Read the book – Brain Rules by Medina.  In it he covers why fear is the dominant emotional reaction by humans and what you can do about it.

-          Read the book, What happy People Know by Dan Baker.  In this great read he covers the importance of appreciation and many other ways to fight fear.

-          Start using the techniques of prayer, meditation, affirmations and visualization.

-          Create a vision board and spend time each day reviewing it.

-          Set specific short and long term goals with action plans and follow them.

-          Surround yourself with only positive people.

-          Monitor your word use, thoughts and emotions to see where you need to change.

There is a whole lot more you can do and a lot more great resources.  If you want help with any of these, give me a call.