Fear itself is simply an emotion. Then we label with different names, as described above. But the very simple way of fear recognition is through physical threats.

Imagine you are walking in a foreign country’s zoo and you are enjoying so much the surrounding and the animals. It is a beautiful place. You are walking on your own, feeling peacefully and curious while watching careless. As soon as you turn to the corner of the lion cage your relaxed eyes catch a confused tiger out of his cage! Your body state changes instantly. Your heart races fast, your palms sweat, you feel a clench in your throat and stomach, all your body tingles and you are ready to fight or flight.

What I am describing happens in almost any physical threatening situation. And to have fear in this moment is normal and human. Fear is part of our survival history. Human beings have survived through millions of years by facing danger and fear. And this is fine.

Fear is fine as soon as it doesn’t drive us nuts and crazy and unfolds into very dysfunctional and self-destructive behaviors. We must understand that it is ok to experience fear. In this article I am not describing physical fear but fear of any imagined situation that might evoke a painful emotion.

As Rhonda Britten explains, each of us has an individual Wheel of Fear that has been formed by our family heritage, the system of beliefs that we create since childhood and our personal life experience. And we keep feeding this Wheel of Fear with our proven facts that collect during our life. We grease it and help it spinning as this is the way that our brain is programmed.

This goes on and on, till we find ourselves somewhere stuck, without being able to have any more control on our decisions and behavior and change things. In this moment we start blaming everybody for not being our support, we blame politics, economy, our parents even the weather.