Overcoming Different Types of Fears

I don’t know how many times I’ve heard negative things about fear. Like I alluded in the previous chapter, most people believe fear is a bad thing and that’s why they try to avoid it. But fear is a good thing. In fact, if used well, could be the best thing that could ever happen to you. Fear doesn’t only give you signs of what you should do, it gives you enough drive or push to do it.

What we are afraid of, most times are what will improve us or make us better. But because of the usual dogma that we’re used to about fear, we try to avoid it by all means, and worse still, ignore it and pretend like it’s not there, while we are supposed to take full advantage of it.

Fear has brought some people to their place of fulfillment. While it has also brought some people to a place of disappointment, when they don’t take the right action. Fear is what none of us can avoid. Even to the people who are highly successful and courageous. They would tell you that they also experience fear. Nobody can eliminate it. But we can always overcome it. And this is demonstrated in how we approach it. The kind of relationship that we have with fear is what determines the kind of result that we get from it. While some people have turned their fear to a blessing, some other people have turned theirs to a nightmare.

I’ve had different occasions in my life when I’ve turned my fears into blessings. There’s one of them I would love to share with you. My mom gave birth to me at a tender age outside wedlock. She told me of how she went through the ordeal and suffered deep emotional pains.

As, she wasn’t prepared to have a baby, she had to struggle and pull it through to breastfeed and groom me up so that I now become who I am today. While she shared that story, tears welled up in my eyes and I felt her pains. This is a story that I will never forget in my life.

As I began to grow and became an adult, the fear of what my mother went through began to grip me and I was always reminded of how much pain and agony she went through. This fear helped me to protect myself against any of such similar occurrence that may want to repeat itself in my own life. I guarded myself and avoided anything that could lead to such. Eventually, I ended up getting married as a virgin. I had avoided what my mother suffered because of fear. I used the fear to protect myself and let it keep reminding me of the dangers of falling into any relationship or situation that could ensue into such an incident.

Perhaps, there’s a situation or occurrence in your life that you’ve used fear to help you protect yourself and avoid danger or allow you to take the right action that you could have felt reluctant if there was no fear. This is a good way to connect the dots on fear and make use of the experience you have. Fear is a good thing on its own. And it has the energy to drive us into action. So, we can do what we feel we’re unable to do when it comes.

Types of Fears

There are many types of fears depending on the situations and what individuals are going through. But for the sake of this context, let’s discuss seven types of fear. They are –

1. The fear of the unknown,

2. The fear of failure,

3. The fear of poverty,

4. The fear of rejection,

5. The fear of death,

6. The fear of public speaking, and

7. The fear of success.

...to be continued!

Excerpt from Connecting the dots