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The Dichotomy of Fear

Updated: Aug 4


“Of all the liars in the world, sometimes the worst are our own fears.” — Rudyard Kipling



The catchy title for this article came from the realization that unsuccessful people have an unhealthy relationship with fear, and successful people know how to use it to their advantage. For example, some will hear the common adage “don’t fear failure” and understand the deeper message, but others will use it as an excuse to be apathetic. Others yet will fear failure so much that they will work much harder in their preparation, doing everything possible to ensure victory. Words have power, and we need to be clear in what they mean to us.


To me fear is a sensation, a mere biochemical reaction my body feels. Thus, I understand that sensation is the same thing I feel when preparing to fight as well as before doing a public speaking engagement. Sky diving may feel like a life-threatening experience the first time, and merely exhilarating the tenth time you experience it. The key is in how you frame it!


Public speaking is something I do quite often, and am very comfortable with, yet in much of the literature it said to be one the most common fears people have. When one of my martial arts students was tasked with making a public presentation, he intimated to me that he was terrified and asked for advice. So of course, I went into the spiel about fear being a sensation, but also reminded him about how he felt during his earliest competitions. I then asked him how he felt when approaching his latest competitions. He remarked that he now recognizes the “butterflies” in his stomach as excitement. The last bit of advice I gave him was that if he felt like he was losing his nerve to remind himself he could most likely defeat anyone in the audience in hand to hand combat so he really had nothing to fear. He chuckled, and said “better than visualizing them naked for sure!”


Now while most fears are mostly mental constructs there are some very real dangers in the real world. Sometimes we simply can’t dismiss it as simply a psychosomatic event. For example, having a large menacing looking man brandishing a large knife will certainly trigger your fight or flight response. In this type of reality the chemicals coursing through your veins will have quite an effect on you. If you’ve never experienced it, it can be quite unnerving.


We use a three-part approach for managing fear or phobologia (fear management) as coined by author Steven Pressfield in his most excellent book "Gates of Fire". First is understanding it’s three parts (biochemical, mental, and psychological) intellectually. Then learning techniques to blunt its physical effects. Two of the more powerful ones are box breathing, and cardiovascular fitness. Finally inoculating ourselves through training. Of course, we can train for the specific fear directly such as is found in survival, self-defense, and first aid training. Think of fire drills for example. But also, we can train ourselves generally by making it a habit of tackling things that normally scare us. This is something I started doing many years ago, and I call it my black belt challenge. The black belt challenge has found me rappelling, and zip lining in the Mexican jungle to overcome my fear of heights, and competing in archery tournaments to steady my nerves among other things.


In future articles I'll delve more deeply into this subject of phobologia, but for now let me close this article with box breathing. It works because breathing is the only autonomic function that we also have conscious control over. So, by reducing our breathing rate we can also reduce our heart rate, and thus our over-all arousal level. Simply inhale for 4 seconds, hold for 4 seconds, exhale for 4 seconds, hold for 4 seconds, and repeat. Practice this often, and especially before stressful events, and you will have a very useful skill indeed!

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