E110 SCARY STORIES

We experience and create our fears do to what we see in the world. The result from a story we watch unfold, or an event occur before our eyes. The idea and the word “scary” or “fear” is universal in the way that we experience as a society, as a world. We witness similar events, good or bad like a wedding or a funeral. It’s the universal idea, but the individual experience. One person may start to fear death after attending a funeral, while another fears loss. When it comes down to it all, we only share five fears together as a world. Extinction, Mutilation, Loss of Autonomy, Separation, and Ego-death. Beyond these categories sprout our own individual fears from what we have seen and experienced. We may witness an event together as a society, but take away different fears from it all. It is what our eyes and brains take away from a situation, but it seems to all stem down from these five concrete fears we all experience. What we fear isn’t the idea, action or object itself but rather an internal conflict you struggle to face. Gail Gross, in her article “The Psychology of Fear”, describes it as “If you are afraid of deep water, it may not be the water you fear, but an inner conflict symbolized by the water”. So what causes fears? What brings out our fears?

 

What causes a fear. According to Nadia Kounang, in her “What Is the Science Behind Fear?” article, “We are born with only two innate fears: the fear of falling and the fear of loud noises”. Fears are created from the start of childhood. Its identified by the discomfort and physiological arousal we experience when confronted by something. As children our fears are more fantastical, like monsters under the bed, and as we grow up those fears become more grounded, more realistic. Fears and anxiety can become interchangeable. Holding onto fears for too long become a source of anxiety, but identifying an anxiety can result into just a fear we learn to confront. Anxiety becomes something you have to identify in order to know how to cope with. It roots from our strengths and weaknesses. When we are unaware of our weaknesses which creates anxiety, in order to cope with the anxiety, we transform it into a fear becoming more aware of the problem we face. Transforming the anxiety into a fear allows a person to respond to the feeling and try to resolve the problem. Anxiety is often experienced through both thoughts and face to face interaction with the said object. When transforming an anxiety into a fear, psychologically you can cope with the fear because you only become afraid when faced with the said object or problem. But even though fear and anxiety are seen and dealt with in different ways, it is often times hard to distinguish.

 

The story of Trisha from Brooklyn, By Matthew Liddy interviewing on witnessing 9/11. “For the first time in my life, real fear. The real unknown. What on earth will be next? Grand Central. Empire State. White House. Everything? Where and when will this end? The possibilities are seemingly endless.” Start of a fear. “Everyone is terrified. Talk. Fear. Questions. Comforting. Then, as if out of nowhere, the second tower explodes and falls to the ground in a cloud of dust. This time we are all there watching.” Experience. “Haunting photo of a man jumping/falling from a tower. I still hold the image in my mind and will never forget it. That is someone's son. How did a parent whose son did not come home cope with that photo?” Coping with our issues. Fears are created as a story, a series of events that create a range of emotions and reactions. Here are quotes from Trisha’s experience, her story from that day. It is different form all others who witnessed the same event that day, these are her fears forming through her eyes. Thousands of people were there on the same day witnessing the event, but no one story will be the same, and everyone will take away something different. One may start to fear flying, another terrorism, and another death. We see that it all starts from experiencing one event, but it stems down differently in terms of what the person focuses on.

 

While we can relate the terms anxiety and fear, we cannot say that fear is anxiety, and anxiety is fear. They connect to each other in ways where they interchangeable with each other and form connections, but they differ in ways where they are still their own separate terms. Anxiety is like a fear which has gotten out of control. Anxiety is something you feel about a situation or object where you lose control and can’t quite fix the issue you’re facing, sometimes you don’t even completely understand what is causing such discomfort.

Often times the idea of anxiety or fear is hidden by other phrases expressing fear, worry, or stress. And many times fear and anxiety are mixed up or simply not seen as different terms. Anxiety is long-term. It stays with you and can appear at any given moment, it’s a consistent worry. While we can call it a fear, its very different from a fear. You can’t control it and sometimes you can’t even truly identify it. The biggest difference is that fears can by short-lived, and relate to more real life experiences, they can easily be understanding and coped with. You can then later on experience anxiety after an event of experiencing fear. Harriet Lerner explains in simpler terms, “You can have a short-lived fear response to the bee buzzing around your face, and you can wake up at three in the morning awash in anxiety that won’t let you get back to sleep”. It’s a fear which rests inside you and pops up at random times, reminding you of what makes you nervous, its uncontrollable.

 

Anxieties are the everyday situations someone will over analyze. “A man hates to go to work because a meeting is scheduled the next day. He knows that these meetings always involve co-workers talking with each other about their current projects. Just the thought of speaking in front of co-workers raises his anxiety. Sometimes he can’t sleep the night before because of the anticipatory anxiety that builds up” (Thomas A. Richards, Ph.D). It is a fear of social interactions, speaking in front of others, worry of rejection or exclusion among others. But it is the fear which he could not grasp onto and cope with it. It transformed into an anxiety which causes personal, mental and physical, issues within.

 

However, both anxiety and fear are triggered from the response of threat. The only difference is that fear creates an immediate response to shut down the threat. Anxiety brings alert to a future threat; you avoid it in the moment but it eventually comes back. And often times anxieties last within us for long periods of times, even when that initial fear was created a long time ago. It’s more of an irrational fear. However, that doesn’t mean a fear is any less powerful or demanding on us psychologically. You still become uncertain about a situation, scared of the outcome, feeling as if you’re in danger or threatened and need to protect yourself.

9/11 was a day where America mourned and witnessed the tragic events happen which brought a fear across the country, it was a real world fear we all faced together.  Fears and anxieties grew within people, and feelings of threat and fight or flight responses rose as our country was put in danger. It was an event which spread fears among many, some similar to one another but each person had their own response. And even several years later some still stand with fears and anxieties from that day. On the tenth anniversary Matthew Liddy interviewed some who shared their story several years prior talking about witnessing the event and what their perspectives are now, do they still face issues due to witnessing the tragedy. Steven Brown beings by talking about the effects the day had on his son. “He did well in high school and at university, but has now turned his back on Manhattan and is attending graduate school at the University of Melbourne”. We ran from the fear of being in a city where a tragedy occurred and felt it could happen again. “There was a brief period when I suffered significant anxiety attacks during turbulent flights” (Elizabeth Schorn). Everyday routines and activities were second guess due to uncertainty of the safety around us. These events that occur, which happen personally or within our society, cause reactions, fears and anxieties within each person differently.

 

Fight or flight. What exactly does this phrase mean and how does it connect to fear. Fight or flight is the idea of how your body will respond to contact with a fear. It is a type of impulse. There’s a stress hormone called cortisol, as well as your adrenaline, which starts pumping so that you can react quickly to danger (Gross). It brings to the idea of survival mode. We have this reaction of fight or flight because our fears bring about an idea of danger approaching. Fears are something we don’t want to face, particular because often times we don’t always understand our fears or know how to handle them. They tend to source from and surface when we feel we are faced with a threat. This initial impulse occurs when part of the brain feels threatened, whether it is a real threat or just a perceived threat, which brings the fact that it is not always an accurate response. In knowing and understanding your fears, you prevent the impulse reaction of fight or flight.

 

It’s not about overcoming, it’s about facing the fears and anxiety, coping with the fears and anxiety, understanding them. We all cope with our fears and anxiety differently, through personality and through our brain functions we all react and respond differently. One brain may be more hyperactive than the other resulting in different responses to facing a fear. Do you want to face your fear or runaway? It also relates to how big our fears are. Are they something small we can handle and tackle, or is it something to a bigger extent where we must come face to face with several times in order for the fear factor to go away. As we wait to face our fears and they continue to grow, they eventually become a source of anxiety that never truly leaves, whether faced with the fear or not, but it challenges the person to then cope with their anxieties. How do you control them from surfacing at sporadic times? That is up to the person to find out and learn their own solution.

 

But we must not let fear control us. If we do, we will begin to live in a world of fearing fear, scared it will control our lives. These terms are something we need to grasp onto, and identify within ourselves. By coping we control. We must understand where our fears stem from. Understand that the world shares these five broad categories of fears but within those stem our own personal fears. Why live in a world where “fear is fear itself”? If we become consumed in our own fears and anxieties, we would live our lives based on fight or flight. Without believing that we can overcome this idea of fear we will never move on from our own. Living in a world with fears that we cannot understand or grab a hold of allows the power of anxiety to take over our lives. We must see in order to control. Our eyes become our source of power to allow us to see the truth and see our strengths of defeating our fears and anxieties.

Works Cited

Gross, Gail. "The Psychology of Fear." Huffington Post. N.p., 17 July 2015. Web. 11 Nov. 2015.

Kounang, Nadia. "What Is the Science behind Fear?" CNN 29 Oct. 2015, U.S. ed.: n. pag. Print.

Liddy, Matthew. "Life after 9/11: Perspectives from 4 Australians." Australian Broadcasting Corporation 11 Sept. 2011: n. pag. Print.

- - -. "'Real Fear': Your September 11 Stories." Australian Broadcasting Corporation 8 Sept. 2011: n. pag. Print.

Richards, Thomas A. "What Is It like to Live with Social Anxiety?" Social Anxiety Institute. Ed. Justin Bashore. Social Anxiety Institute, n.d. Web. 24 Nov. 2015.