Fear. How does it Show up in the Body?
Fear is revealed brightly in our body, we should learn how to notice it.
Body. The very first reaction of the body to fear is the increase of tension in almost all the muscles of the body. The muscles of the shoulder girdle are tightened, the shoulders rise up to the ears, the body slightly deviates back and freezes. There is some muscle tonus in the arms, legs, buttocks, lower abdomen, back of the thighs. You can notice fear expression in raised, tense shoulders. At a low intensity of fear, many small movements of the fingers begin to appear: touching hair, a face, a neck, clothes, etc. Small movements are a clear marker of anxiety. In order to look confident, men often hide their hands behind their backs, but fingers keep tugging behind their backs. A person often shuffles his feet.
Hormones. Adrenaline
Body language. The micro motion “eyebrows up” lasts literally a split second at a slight intensity of fear. Horizontal wrinkles appear on the forehead, the forehead is tense. The eyes widen precisely at the moment of fear, the lips are tense, the mouth is usually horizontally stretched.
Breathing. A vivid breathing pattern appears in fear: it is very superficial, breathing fades. It seems that a person breathed some air in the form of a resource and froze not to give it away.
Look. At a low intensity of fear, when there is no obvious danger, a person searches for the source of this danger, so his eyes are running, twitching and moving sharply from object to object. When the intensity of fear is increasing, the gaze begins to slow down, stop and lose focus. When a person has a very strong fear, he seems not to see anything neither outside nor inside himself, his gaze goes to nowhere.
Inner sensations. Anxiety begins with tremor, a vibration occurs in the body, which is expressed outward through small, fussy movements. Usually in the inner sensations this is accompanied by a strong heartbeat, constriction and pulsation are felt in the abdomen. When fear is increasing, the pulsation goes inside, it accelerates so much that the body becomes immobilized. If you imagine the rotation of the wheel of a bicycle, at first you see the movement of the spokes, but with an increase in speed it seems that it stands still, you see neither movement nor details. When the intensity of fear increases, twitching movements disappear, a state of “freezing” appears, the body is like a wooden one, you do not own it.
Direction. The body slightly deviates back and freezes. There is no motion.
Speech. The voice often has a high tone, phrases become interrogative, intonation rises “yes? …”, “will we go? …”, affirmation is lost, because a person is not sure. Speech becomes fast and steel. At high intensities of fear, the tongue gets numb, a person has lost tongue. At a low intensity of fear, there are fast changes in topics and distraction is observed.
There are people who hide their fear behind their anger “I am so scared that I am angry.” This is a characteristic of counter-phobic behavior. In such cases, the voice becomes louder, but the larynx is pinched and the voice becomes loud, sharp and steel. There is fear behind such allegedly angry behavior.
A fearful state is an insecure state.
It is said that in fear a person unconsciously chooses one of the strategies: fight, flight, freeze. But that is not quite right. In order to “fight” you need to find energy somewhere. We take it from a state of anger when you find aggression in yourself in order to fight back. In order to “flight,” the movements of the body must be very fast – it is also a mixture of fear and anger.
Pure fear without other defense reactions is a stop
And then when you choose a strategy of survival, you can fight or flight. But at first you will freeze.
Fear. Processing
Fear has many names. This emotion has over 20 titles – a record among other emotions. This suggests that we very often face fear in everyday life.
It is believed that anxiety and fear are different emotions and conditions, that anxiety, unlike fear, does not imply real danger. We adhere to the opinion that anxiety and fear are not differentiated. If there is no danger in the real world, we imagine it very real within ourselves.
Doubt is fear of low intensity. When a person doubts, it means that he is in a certain state of anxiety, he looks for the right solution and is afraid to make a mistake. The more fears a person has, the more doubts he has. The doubting person does not always realize that he is now experiencing fear.
Low levels of fear: anxiety, worry. There are a lot of slangy and colloquial words for such states: (he bitches out, he pusses out, I get cold feet).
High levels of fear are horror, nightmare, panic, shock. Moreover, there is still a lot of movement in a panic, but in shock, we become paralyzed.
When moving over the scale of fear intensity, the range of movements varies from an excessive number of fussy movements to complete immobility.
Fear always signals us that our need for security is not satisfied. This need may not be satisfied right now, or we may be afraid that it will not be satisfied tomorrow, the day after tomorrow. Fear is strongly connected with our future.
When does fear appear?
When a person faces with an unknown situation, subconsciously, he calculates whether he has enough external and internal resources to cope with the current dangerous situation.
Fear appears when you understand
that you don’t have enough resources now
For example, if you meet a child in a dark alley who is trying to fight you, you won’t be afraid, it will be funny for you, you will take him by his little thin hands and lead him to his parents. Subconsciously, you have calculated the resources that you own and which are necessary in this situation. But if you have met a person who is three times taller than you and behaves aggressively, understanding on whose side the physical advantage, you will most likely regard the situation as extremely dangerous. However, if you have additional resources in the form of black belt in karate or bits in a backpack that you know how to use, the level of your fear decreases.
There are cases when you are not so knowledgeable that you cannot calculate whether you have enough resources to control the situation. Then it happens that a person feels confident and calm because of his ignorance and self-confidence. For example, a person is interviewed for a job that he has never done, he does not even know what he may not know, as a result of it he feels calm. In the same situation, a person, who does such work and knows what level of skill he needs in this area, will value his skills and knowledge more adequately and critically and, of course, worry more. The effect is “the more I know, the more I know how little I know.”
If you were invited to an interview to be headhunted to another organization, you will feel extremely confident because you have a job and a large number of resources: your immediate future is secure (you have something to eat, where to sleep, where to rest), and in this confident state you talk to people about whether they can increase your amount of resources and how many times. The level of fear will be minimal. But when you have no work, you are searching for it, there is much anxiety and fear, you are constantly estimating the amount of your resources (think about what you will eat tomorrow and the day after tomorrow, how the situation that you don’t work will affect your professional level).
Our physical condition is also a very important resource. When we didn’t get enough sleep, didn’t eat on time, our body feels bad –