Lecture
Fear and anxiety are two closely related emotional states that can affect a person's psychological and physiological well-being. They are often interconnected and can arise in response to various situations and events. Here is how they interact:
Fear as a source of anxiety: Fear is an emotion that arises in response to an immediate threat or danger. When a person feels fear, the body mobilizes resources to cope with the threat. This may include an accelerated heartbeat, increased breathing, muscle tension, and other physiological reactions.
The transition from fear to anxiety: If fear persists or does not subside once the threat has ended, it can turn into anxiety. Anxiety is a prolonged feeling of unease and tension that can persist even after the immediate danger has passed. For example, a person may experience fear during a road accident and then continue to feel anxious and uneasy about driving afterward.
Fear as a source of anxious thoughts: Fear can also become a source of anxious thoughts. For example, a person who has experienced fear during an act of violence may constantly worry about their safety, even when there is no immediate threat. These anxious thoughts can intensify the state of anxiety.
Anxiety as a source of fear: The reverse relationship can also occur. Persistent anxiety and worry can create a feeling of unease and fear. For example, constant worry about one's health can give rise to a fear of illness.
Common factors and mechanisms: Fear and anxiety also share common factors and mechanisms, such as activation of the sympathetic nervous system and the release of stress hormones. These physiological reactions can be common to both states.
Anxiety and fear share a common ontological basis, but they
are different.
Fear has a definite object. This object can be seen,
encountered, analyzed, endured, overcome. The main point in this
relation to the object of fear is that a person can act upon that object,
and, consequently, participate in it, join with it. In this way,
a person has the opportunity to accept this object and, through it,
affirm himself. Courage can take into itself the fear caused by any
particular object. Why? The acceptance of fear, regardless of the degree of
horror the object evokes, is explained by the fact that the object already, by one of
its sides, participates in us, and through that side we participate in it. P.
Tillich formulates this as follows: “as long as there exists
an object of fear, love (in the sense of “participation”) is able to overcome fear”.
With anxiety everything is different, for anxiety has no object. Its object
is the negation of any object. That is precisely why struggle,
participation (love) with respect to this object is impossible. A person
gripped by anxiety is deprived of any support. Helplessness as a result of
anxiety is expressed in disorientation, inadequate reactions, and the absence
of intentionality (that is, the connection of knowledge and will with meaningful content).
Such unusual behavior is caused by the absence of an object on which
the subject, being in a state of anxiety, could focus.
The only object is the threat itself, not the source of the threat, because
the source of the threat is “nothing”.
Fear and anxiety are different, but inseparable. The sting of fear is anxiety, and
anxiety strives to become fear. Fear is the fear of something, for example
suffering, rejection by a person or group, the loss of something or someone,
the moment of death. But faced with the threat with which these phenomena
are fraught, a person does not fear the negation itself that these phenomena
carry within them — what troubles him is what may be hiding behind that negation.
For example, the fear of “death”. The object of the fear of death may be
the premonition of a fatal illness or an accident,
of dying agony and the loss of everything. But insofar as it is anxiety,
its object is the absolute unknown of the state “after death”, non-being,
which remains non-being even if it is filled with images from our
recent experience.
Anxiety can be represented as a painfully experienced
inability to cope with the threat concealed in a particular situation.
There are events of a crisis-like nature that potentially
carry a threat to human life. However, if one examines
this thesis more closely, it turns out that anxiety about
any particular situation is not anxiety but fear, behind which stands
existential anxiety about the human situation as such.
It is precisely the anxiety generated by the inability to preserve one's own
being that underlies all fear and creates what is terrifying within fear. Thus,
the objects of fear carry within themselves not only the stimulus for fear
itself, but also implicitly contain the symptoms of a person's basic anxiety.
In this sense they are invulnerable, even if the most
courageous struggle is waged against them.
Anxiety strives to turn into fear.
In the events of life's course, situations often arise in which
anxiety strives toward fear. Why does this inexorable striving pursue
a person throughout his entire life? Man – a finite being, unable
to endure objectless, naked anxiety for more than a moment.
Therefore anxiety strives to turn into fear, where courage is able to
meet it. The human soul is a factory of fear, existing in order
to hide from anxiety. We ourselves produce fears in order to escape
the horror of the terrifying, thereby objectifying existential anxiety.
To face life with dignity, a person requires considerable courage.
It is important to note that fear and anxiety are normal human emotions, and they can be useful in situations of real danger. However, when they become excessive or prolonged, they can cause additional problems for mental and physical health. Coping with them may require the support of a psychotherapist, medical treatment, or the development of self-regulation strategies.
Comments