Fear: What are we so afraid of?

Photo by Racheal Lomas on Unsplash

Before I became a mother, I had some pretty run-of-the-mill, irrational, fears; snakes, heights, flying cockroaches, and snakes, to be exact. Well, not really heights, per se, but falling from great heights was a big concern. And did I mention the snakes?

Many years later, when we had our first child, these irrational stressors I had previously experienced, miraculously disappeared. It wasn’t that I was now somehow fearless, it was just that one cluster of irrational fears was replaced by a ginormous one that my psyche now interpreted as A CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER; protecting my newborn son. Who had time to worry about lions tigers and bears? I had this fragile, little creature to protect from the big bad world. There were germs, sharp objects, undiscovered allergies, hydrogenated oils, dirty sandboxes, processed meats, large purple dinosaurs, and kidnappers (To be fair, I grew up in the 1970s when we were told every white van was certainly owned by one).

With Hallow’s Eve and a Presidential election rapidly approaching, I started to consider the many ways we experience fear.

But first, some clarification. What is the difference between fear, phobia, and anxiety? While anxiety and fear can feel similar, according to Psychology Today, “Anxiety does not necessarily require a triggering stimulus.” In the simplest of explanations, what that…