Fear is a mental projection of something that has not happened.

fear is a visceral response to imminent jeopardy, real or perceived, threatening to come crashing down on you with devastating results.

Fear means being afraid of the future. When you are not ready to accept the future moments, it becomes fear.

Fear is a distorting mirror in which anything can appear as a caricature of itself, stretched to terrible proportions; once inflamed, the imagination pursues the craziest and most unlikely possibilities. What is most absurd suddenly seems the most probable.

A fear is a reaction to a specific danger, to which the individual can make a specific adjustment. But what characterizes anxiety is the feeling of diffuseness and uncertainty and the experience of helplessness toward the threat.

Fear is pain arising from the anticipation of evil.

Fear is an old word that derives from the same roots that give us “fare,” as in “thoroughfare.” Although it often causes people to run away from troubling situations, at a deeper level, fear means “to go through it.” The hidden purpose of fear involves bringing us closer to natural instincts for survival, but also for awakening inner resources and sharpening our intelligence when faced with true danger and the basic need to change.

13. Fear Fear can be real or imaginary. Fear makes people do strange things. It primarily comes from a lack of understanding. To live in fear is to live in an emotional prison. Fear paralyses and immobilises people. Fear results in insecurity, lack of confidence and procrastination. Fear destroys our potential and ability. We cannot think straight. Fear ruins relationships and health. Some common fears are: • Fear of failing • Fear of the unknown • Fear of being unprepared • Fear of making the wrong decision • Fear of rejection Some fears can be described, others can only be felt. Fear leads to anxiety which in turn leads to irrational thinking and this actually sabotages our ability to solve the problem. The normal response to fear is escape. Escape puts us in a comfort zone and reduces the impact of fear temporarily while the cause remains. Imaginary fears magnify the problem. Fear can get out of hand and destroy happiness and relationships. Think of fear as meaning: F A L S E E V I D E N C E A P P E A R I N G R E A L Fear of failure is often worse than failure itself. Failure is not the worst thing that can happen to someone. People who don’t try have failed even before attempting. When infants learn to walk, they keep falling; but to them it is not failing, it is learning. If they became disheartened, they would never walk.

Fear requires a desire to exist in the future.

Fear is incomplete knowledge.

Fear means you’re trying to move toward something you love, but your old beliefs, or unhealed experiences, are getting in the way.

Fear is always in relation to something; it does not exist by itself. There is fear of what happened yesterday in relation to the possibility of its repetition tomorrow; there is always a fixed point from which relationship takes place.

How does fear come into this? I had pain yesterday; there is the memory of it and I do not want it again tomorrow. Thinking about the pain of yesterday, thinking which involves the memory of yesterday’s pain, projects the fear of having pain again tomorrow. So it is thought that brings about fear. Thought breeds fear; thought also cultivates pleasure. To understand fear you must also understand pleasure – they are interrelated; without understanding one you cannot understand the other. This means that one cannot say ‘I must only have pleasure and no fear’; fear is the other side of the coin which is called pleasure.

Each person bears a fear which is special to him. One man fears a close space and another man fears drowning; each laughs at the other and calls him stupid. Thus fear is only a preference, to be counted the same as the preference for one woman or another, or mutton for pig, or cabbage for onion.

Fear. It's unacknowledged; shared by friend and foe if nothing else is.