How to deal with your Fear

                              How to deal with your Fear
As a human being we all have to go through different range of emotion like sadness, joy, anger, frustration, jealousy and fear. In this article, we would try to understand the psychology of human fear. So now, in order to understand your fear, we have to first understand the anatomical as well as physiological basis of fear at the level of brain.

We have to first understand what is nervous system?
Our nervous system is composed of a basic unit called “neuron"at anatomical level and, this cell has the function of taking signal from the environment and, then giving information about what that signal is on the basis of information if that particular signal is stored in the brain as a memory and, then producing a particular response.
Our nervous system is divided into two parts, The Central and Peripheral system. The Central nervous system includes brain and, spinal cord which is the center for every function of body which receive and, process the signal and, prepare a particular response and, then send it to the peripheral nervous system which is associated with different parts of body and, then direct it to function. Peripheral nervous system further divides into somatic which have a function for voluntary movement and, automatic nervous system which further divided into sympathetic (for flight, flee and freeze response) and parasympathetic nervous system (for rest and digest response).
Now to understand your fear we have to focus mainly on two part of brain and, their function. The main part of our brain is cortex which is the outer wrinkled gray matter (like walnut) of brain, so   the function of cerebral cortex is to process the information receive through senses like vision, auditory and, as well as other senses and, it is involved in thinking process (cognition) or in layman language you can say it interprets the stimuli receive through senses by the retrieval of information that is stored in brain as a memory. The second part is called amygdala which is present in the center of brain and, it forms emotional memory and, recall the emotional memory. It is involved in attaching the emotion to an event, both positive and, negative one. But in this article, we only consider fear.
Root Causes of fear

So, now we can divide causes of fear in the genetic and, into cortex based. Now if we try to understand genetic one that is about, we perceive certain situation and, things as threatening by birth, or you can say you got that fear of certain things or situation from our ancestors. For example, fear of height, fear of insects and fear of depth or water. The purpose of this type of fear is to protect our, survival which is the natural instinct programmed in all creature of this world.
The second one is generation of fear by interpretation of certain situation or things in such a way that brain see it as danger or in layman language you can say that you speak constantly in your mind or make images, imagine particular sound, and even you can create whole movie that is running in your mind. For example, the most common situation which everyone could easily relate to that is when our loved one get late while returning to home because of some genuine reason
we instantly start chattering in our mind negatively and, create images or imagine as if they are robbed or badly injured and, there is no one to help them in that tough situation and, even we at last imagine them as confronted with death because at that moment any thought can enter in our mind stored in library of brain. So, this feature of creating fear by human cortex is because of the highly developed human brain as compared to animal as you can easily see that animals are fear of actual dangerous event like dear fear of tiger when it perceives the typical sounds of approaching tiger which is the actual danger present at that moment. But with human brain the ability of predicting outcome is the main advantage as well as disadvantage in case of generating fear or anxiety. And again, the problem is not that it creates threatening images or speaking negatively but, the  main problem is that our brain makes us feel it as if it is true or that particular event is going to happen with to us and, this process is called cognitive fusion.
Type of interpretation which leads to fear.
Now, perception is the process where you interpret the situation through stimulation received by our senses and, this is the process which help human beings to deal in their life by performing particular response on the basis of memory(collection of responses stored from childhood through our experiences or learning). So, by this we can easily draw the conclusion that interpretation is necessary for us but with the development of fear or anxiety it is not required at all. Like For example as you can see people who suffered from social anxiety try to avoid social gathering because somehow, they interpret that they had no value among group of people because they have shaped these thoughts from their childhood experiences by the type of words used by their family or friends in the past or may be at present also and, it seems true to them even if that person has grown so much at level of experiences that is the reason why it is always said that
we should think before speaking because spoken words are so impactful in one’s life either in negative way or positive way. Sometime some certain kinds of interpretation are good like if you fear of not doing anything in order to avoid any kind of wrong doing so that is good fear and, it
must be there in every human being. We can also look back to our covid experiences there were different type of people one type was people who were ready to face challenges and, they had to completely bring shift in their life, another category was people who had lost their loved ones
or was in completely fear due to losing them and, that fear of losing their loved ones is inevitable, third category of people was who were getting very much anxious and fear of facing challenges of uncertainty of life. These differences of responses were due to perspective of people and, of course, most important, support of people to deal with their deep-rooted emotion during pandemic.
Another the most common reason is that people fear of having fear and, they interpret the symptoms of fear like increase heart rate and, other symptoms as not normal or some people even perceive it as they will have heart attack due to lack of knowledge of physiological response of fear. Sometime people even fill ashamed to develop symptoms of fear in front of public because as it considers as sign of weakness which also the part of our conditioning and, the fact is that it is a human natural emotion and, a balance of it required where it is necessary logically.
HOW TO DEAL WITH YOUR FEAR
So, if you are having problem with your fear or if it is creating hindrance in your life, so first there must be curiosity from your side to know every aspect of fear, to have that urge to change and, grow in life, to know its scientific basis or psychology behind fear because half of the work is done with the knowledge of what fear is all about. Initially you have to start with the knowledge aspect of fear, but then you have to apply that knowledge in your real life because then it will be
like merely words in your head. So, by studying about fear you can easily get to the conclusion that this is just my interpretation of situation or thought process of particular event that seems to me to be true, but only this will not completely free us from the actual fear because our brain needs real life experience in order to change or rewire your brain networking and, merely information without fact will not work. So, you have to change your interpretation (thought process) by facing the situation again and, again in the real world intentionally, let say people with social anxiety should try to attend social gathering as much as possible in order to give some time to brain to be watchful of situation and, then with passage of time you will observe that the level of fear is diminished or there is no more fear of that situation and, this all because mind is not finding now that situation dangerous due to new thought process. You can also replace the thought of that ashamed feeling of developing symptoms of fear by observing it as if you are learning about the practical experience of human fear and, looking it in a way that how human body is so connected through thought at the level of mind and, then producing those sensations at level of body.
Another way could be also that being mindful of what we are chattering in our mind as this technique help in identification of our thoughts and, by this way, we can redirect our thought according to our choice.
Another one could be even simple possibility of fear generation due to imbalance in neurotransmitter at biochemical level or damage to certain areas of brain at anatomical level and, the evidence to this point is that there are some scientific researches regarding post covid anxiety due to inflammation of blood vessel of brain, so you have to go through complete treatment for this problem to resolve.
Now the last one but the most important one is few lifestyle changes which you can add to your routine like simple exercise will help you in shaping your body including brain as most of the people consider it as an isolated or somewhat mysterious part of our body. Daily exercise helps in increasing brain neuroplasticity, it means ability of brain to form new brain neuronal network and,
also some breathing exercises helps in alleviating symptoms of anxiety by reducing activity of sympathetic nervous system.