Why fear is not a fundamentally negative emotion

Fear describes the feeling of being “exposed” as well as “uncanniness”. Although in most cases the feeling of fear is perceived as unpleasant, if not threatening, the feeling itself is also extremely useful: without fears our ancestors would hardly have been able to survive. And even in modern times, fear warns our brain of countless dangers. Fast approaching cars, abandoned parking garages at night, narrow dark alleys, angry faces and much more we unconsciously perceive as a threat. Our brain, especially a part of it: our limbic brain warns us at lightning speed, even before we cognitively grasp the situation. Our “feeling brain” is significantly faster than our “thinking brain”. But anxiety can also have its cause in a mental disorder and thus be of a pathological nature .

What is meant by fear?

The term “anxiety” comes from the Latin verb ” angere ” and the Greek “agchein”, which translated into German means “to close the throat” or “ to choke “. Internationally, this German word has become common in the context of existential philosophy and psychoanalysis. Unlike fear, which is clearly focused on an external danger, anxiety is considered indeterminate. It usually comes over people uncontrollably and involuntarily.

In the field of psychology, a distinction is made here between a trait and a state: in the first form, this occurs in situations that are classified as dangerous, although there is no acute threat. State anxiety, on the other hand, represents a temporary emotion due to an actual danger.
Anxiety comes in many forms. For example as

These are by no means isolated cases: many people report that they have already had to deal with one form of anxiety or another. And according to the German Society for Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Psychosomatics and Neurology(DGPPN), one in eight Germans suffers from pronounced anxiety at least once in the course of their lives. This anxiety behavior can ultimately also lead to an anxiety disorder and take on pathological forms. In this case, if the fear is targeted and associated with a fear-inducing object, it is often referred to as a phobia. The word phobia comes from ancient Greek and means something like “fear, terror”.

How does fear affect our health and well-being?

As mentioned at the beginning, fear per se is not a bad advisor, but fulfills a vital function as a primal human emotion. Because it is this basic emotion that allows us to recognize danger and react accordingly. It reminds us to be more attentive and careful. Well-founded fears provide us with the necessary energies to mobilize our forces, accept challenges, take protective measures and act decisively. In many cases, this is what makes top performance possible in the first place. Already our ancestors reacted thanks to this archaic emotion depending on the threat with attack or flight. Accordingly, object-related anxiety, for example, is not exclusively a paralyzing emotion, but also a mobilizing one.
Produced and controlled is this emotion with its associated body signals in the amygdala, which is considered in the brain to be the center of anxiety- and fear-guiding behavioral assessment. Together with the hippocampus, the amygdala also has another important function; namely, building emotional memory, also called body memory. Here, the somatic markers play an important role. People have different anxiety behaviors, which can lead to anything from a queasy feeling to significant outbursts of anxiety along with distressing physical sensations.
However, in the case of a recurrent, exaggerated and unfounded fear reaction, the boundary between non-disease and pathological fear may be crossed.

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