In our article “Fear. What to do with him?" We talked in detail about fear, as well as what significance it has for a person. It was there that we explained why it is so important and necessary in the lives of each of us, why it is so good that it is characteristic of all of us. Today we would like to talk about fear, mostly non-judgmentally.
Regardless of whether fear is rational or irrational, you need to understand it in order to determine your further actions and generally be able to assess your condition. Therefore, it is necessary to learn the main features of fear. Next, we will tell you about what forms of fears exist and introduce them to the most common types.
Forms of fears
Fears can be classified according to different criteria. We will talk about some of them below, but for now we will consider the classification of emotional states that are in one way or another related to fear, based on the intensity, objectivity and strength of perception. Everything here is extremely simple, because you yourself are familiar first-hand with such things as:
- Calm. A state of complete emotional peace, when nothing worries a person, he is comfortable psychologically, he does not experience any negatively colored states associated with fear.
- Anxiety (fear, worry). A state in which a person feels the uncertainty of the situation and expects a bad turn of events. Most often, anxiety has no objective stimulus and is irrational.
- Excitement. A condition arising from anxiety and representing its intensified form. With it, a person experiences more intense nervous excitement, because doesn’t know what could happen to him and is afraid of it.
- Fear. A condition caused by a real or perceived threat. Let us remember that there is a healthy fear that warns against danger, and there is an unhealthy fear that has no basis. This is what you need to be able to cope with.
- Horror. A condition caused by intense fear. It can plunge a person into numbness, trembling, shock. A person’s active reaction to horror is absent; he is unable to eliminate the source of fear.
- Panic. A condition that is another extreme form of fear, but it is not expressed in numbness, but in the fact that a person begins to be controlled by his feelings. His actions are not subject to any logic and often harm him.
We can also identify another condition associated with fear. This is a state of fearlessness. In the case of a real threat, it can lead to extremely dire consequences. A state of fearlessness can be observed in people with an exaggerated and unhealthy sense of self-confidence, people who do not have a sense of self-preservation and suffer from mental disorders (we are not talking about situations where circumstances require being fearless).
But this is only an initial classification of fears, giving a general idea of how fear can be expressed in general. Next we present another classification - developed by the Soviet and Russian psychiatrist and psychotherapist Boris Dmitrievich Karvasarsky. He divided fears into eight large groups:
- Spatial fears (this includes bathophobia - fear of depth, acrophobia - fear of heights, agoraphobia - fear of open space, claustrophobia - fear of enclosed spaces, etc.)
- Social fears (this includes neophobia - fear of any change, heterophobia - fear of the opposite sex, etc.)
- Fear of diseases.
- Fear of death.
- Fear of sex.
- Fear of harming others.
- Fear of fears (it is this fear, by the way, that causes all phobias).
However, the classification of fears by B. D. Karvasarsky is quite complex and relative. The Austrian psychologist and psychiatrist Sigmund Freud approached the categorization of fears more specifically, dividing fears into two classes:
- real fears;
- neurotic fears.
Canadian-American psychiatrist Harold Irwin Kaplan classified fears in a similar way. He divided them into:
- constructive fears;
- pathological fears.
But the most interesting thing is that these two scientists agreed that the first fears (real and constructive) are necessary for a person so that he can save his own or someone else’s life, and the second (neurotic and pathological) can be considered as a sign of an illness that destroys a person .
There is also an interesting theory from stress research specialist Yuri Viktorovich Shcherbatykh, proposed by him in 2000. According to his concept, there are three types of fears:
- Natural fears. This includes everything that is justified by natural phenomena (hurricanes, earthquakes, tsunamis, thunderstorms, etc.). Such fears are completely justified and even adequate people are susceptible to them. It is human nature itself to fear everything unknown (we repeat once again that we talked about this in the article “Fear. What to do with it?”, as well as in the article “Psychological foundations of fear”). Despite the fact that today people perfectly understand the origin of most natural phenomena, fear of them remains, and it is natural. This category of fears also includes the fear of various animals, insects and other living creatures.
- Social fears. Yu. V. Shcherbatykh, taking as a basis the results of various sociological surveys, came to the conclusion that the greatest fear among people is, of course, the threat of war. And this fear is characteristic even of those who have never participated in hostilities. Among other social fears, he names fear of crime, hooliganism and disorder, fear for one’s loved ones, fear of death, fear of poverty, fear of public speaking and publicity in general, fear of change and some others.
- Inner fears. As children, many of us were frightened by some kind of woman or little gray wolf who would come and take us away if we did not obey. We have grown up, but many people still have the fear of looking in the mirror at night, looking under the bed, or pulling their leg out from under the blanket. A person’s imagination, which received the corresponding message in childhood, is capable of generating a variety of monsters that no spiders or hurricanes can compare with. And it is very, very difficult to stop being afraid of such things (by the way, read our article “What Famous People Were Afraid of,” where there is a lot of confirmation of what was said).
The line between these three groups of fears is very thin and extremely difficult to see. For example, if a person experiences internal fear of the quagmire that is sucking him in, it can to a certain extent be attributed to both social and natural fear. Fears can cleverly intertwine with each other and have an inexplicable impact on a person.
But the classification of fears does not end there, because there is also a gradation by age:
- Childhood fears. When a child just begins to live, his gene stock of reflexes works. So, the baby may be afraid of being thrown up when he hears loud noises or sees strangers. Such reactions are normal and constructive, but life moves on. If parental upbringing was incorrect or the child was influenced by some special circumstances, he may develop neurotic fears. For example, if a child was punished by being locked in a closet, he may develop claustrophobia, and if his mother once lost him in a shopping mall, he may begin to fear open spaces and large crowds of people.
- Fears of an adult. An adequate adult understands perfectly well that there is no Boogeyman in a dark closet, but he can be terrified by the mere sight of snakes, spiders or praying mantises. Likewise, he may be afraid that a loved one will leave him, or experience stage fright; to be afraid of being worse than others or to consider oneself unworthy of many benefits; overly control your other half or constantly worry about your children, etc.
- Fears of older people. The fears of older people may differ from those of children and adults. They are specific. In addition to the fear of the dark, mice and hurricanes, there may be a fear of getting sick and becoming a burden to your family. But at the same time, the fears that previously bothered us disappear, for example, the fear of being misunderstood by others, the fear of not experiencing love in life. However, some fears can go to extremes: grandmother, afraid of strangers, does not open the door even to her relatives, grandfather, fearing transport, does not come closer than 200 meters to the road, etc.
This is the primary classification of fears. In fact, this topic is worthy of more careful study and serious scientific work. But we only set ourselves the task of showing how diverse this unique phenomenon called fear is, and we hope that we were able to accomplish this task.
You can read about how to work with fears in the articles “Fear. What to do with him?" and “Method of systematic desensitization to combat fears,” and we will continue this material with very interesting information. As you know, fear can become uncontrollable and obsessive, i.e. develop into a phobia. So below we will talk about the most common phobias of people.
Psychologist Ekaterina Dmitrienko will help us deal with this type of fear:
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