Theory of emotional relativity. Practical guide to the development of awareness and emotional intelligence

Fear. How does it Show up in the Body?

Fear is revealed brightly in our body, we should learn how to notice it.

The very first reaction of the body to fear is the increase of tension in almost all the muscles of the body. The muscles of the shoulder girdle are tightened, the shoulders rise up to the ears, the body slightly deviates back and freezes. There is some muscle tonus in the arms, legs, buttocks, lower abdomen, back of the thighs. You can notice fear expression in raised, tense shoulders. At a low intensity of fear, many small movements of the fingers begin to appear: touching hair, a face, a neck, clothes, etc. Small movements are a clear marker of anxiety. In order to look confident, men often hide their hands behind their backs, but fingers keep tugging behind their backs. A person often shuffles his feet. Body.

Adrenaline Hormones.

The micro motion “eyebrows up” lasts literally a split second at a slight intensity of fear. Horizontal wrinkles appear on the forehead, the forehead is tense. The eyes widen precisely at the moment of fear, the lips are tense, the mouth is usually horizontally stretched. Body language.

A vivid breathing pattern appears in fear: it is very superficial, breathing fades. It seems that a person breathed some air in the form of a resource and froze not to give it away. Breathing.

At a low intensity of fear, when there is no obvious danger, a person searches for the source of this danger, so his eyes are running, twitching and moving sharply from object to object. When the intensity of fear is increasing, the gaze begins to slow down, stop and lose focus. When a person has a very strong fear, he seems not to see anything neither outside nor inside himself, his gaze goes to nowhere. Look.

Anxiety begins with tremor, a vibration occurs in the body, which is expressed outward through small, fussy movements. Usually in the inner sensations this is accompanied by a strong heartbeat, constriction and pulsation are felt in the abdomen. When fear is increasing, the pulsation goes inside, it accelerates so much that the body becomes immobilized. If you imagine the rotation of the wheel of a bicycle, at first you see the movement of the spokes, but with an increase in speed it seems that it stands still, you see neither movement nor details. When the intensity of fear increases, twitching movements disappear, a state of “freezing” appears, the body is like a wooden one, you do not own it. Inner sensations.

The body slightly deviates back and freezes. There is no motion. Direction.

The voice often has a high tone, phrases become interrogative, intonation rises “yes? …”, “will we go? …”, affirmation is lost, because a person is not sure. Speech becomes fast and steel. At high intensities of fear, the tongue gets numb, a person has lost tongue. At a low intensity of fear, there are fast changes in topics and distraction is observed. Speech.

There are people who hide their fear behind their anger “I am so scared that I am angry.” This is a characteristic of counter-phobic behavior. In such cases, the voice becomes louder, but the larynx is pinched and the voice becomes loud, sharp and steel. There is fear behind such allegedly angry behavior.

It is said that in fear a person unconsciously chooses one of the strategies: fight, flight, freeze. But that is not quite right. In order to “fight” you need to find energy somewhere. We take it from a state of anger when you find aggression in yourself in order to fight back. In order to “flight,” the movements of the body must be very fast – it is also a mixture of fear and anger.

And then when you choose a strategy of survival, you can fight or flight. But at first you will freeze.

Fear. Processing

Fear has many names. This emotion has over 20 titles – a record among other emotions. This suggests that we very often face fear in everyday life.

It is believed that anxiety and fear are different emotions and conditions, that anxiety, unlike fear, does not imply real danger. We adhere to the opinion that anxiety and fear are not differentiated. If there is no danger in the real world, we imagine it very real within ourselves.

Doubt is fear of low intensity. When a person doubts, it means that he is in a certain state of anxiety, he looks for the right solution and is afraid to make a mistake. The more fears a person has, the more doubts he has. The doubting person does not always realize that he is now experiencing fear.

Low levels of fear: anxiety, worry. There are a lot of slangy and colloquial words for such states: (he bitches out, he pusses out, I get cold feet).

High levels of fear are horror, nightmare, panic, shock. Moreover, there is still a lot of movement in a panic, but in shock, we become paralyzed.

When moving over the scale of fear intensity, the range of movements varies from an excessive number of fussy movements to complete immobility.

Fear always signals us that our need for security is not satisfied. This need may not be satisfied right now, or we may be afraid that it will not be satisfied tomorrow, the day after tomorrow. Fear is strongly connected with our future.

When does fear appear?

When a person faces with an unknown situation, subconsciously, he calculates whether he has enough external and internal resources to cope with the current dangerous situation.

For example, if you meet a child in a dark alley who is trying to fight you, you won’t be afraid, it will be funny for you, you will take him by his little thin hands and lead him to his parents. Subconsciously, you have calculated the resources that you own and which are necessary in this situation. But if you have met a person who is three times taller than you and behaves aggressively, understanding on whose side the physical advantage, you will most likely regard the situation as extremely dangerous. However, if you have additional resources in the form of black belt in karate or bits in a backpack that you know how to use, the level of your fear decreases.

There are cases when you are not so knowledgeable that you cannot calculate whether you have enough resources to control the situation. Then it happens that a person feels confident and calm because of his ignorance and self-confidence. For example, a person is interviewed for a job that he has never done, he does not even know what he may not know, as a result of it he feels calm. In the same situation, a person, who does such work and knows what level of skill he needs in this area, will value his skills and knowledge more adequately and critically and, of course, worry more. The effect is “the more I know, the more I know how little I know.”

If you were invited to an interview to be headhunted to another organization, you will feel extremely confident because you have a job and a large number of resources: your immediate future is secure (you have something to eat, where to sleep, where to rest), and in this confident state you talk to people about whether they can increase your amount of resources and how many times. The level of fear will be minimal. But when you have no work, you are searching for it, there is much anxiety and fear, you are constantly estimating the amount of your resources (think about what you will eat tomorrow and the day after tomorrow, how the situation that you don’t work will affect your professional level).

Our physical condition is also a very important resource. When we didn’t get enough sleep, didn’t eat on time, our body feels bad – we have few resources. If you sleep badly, the next day you will be more anxious. If you had enough sleep you wouldn’t feel anxiety under the same conditions. We separate physiological needs from psychological ones, but when we talk about the need for security, it is important to understand that it is directly related to the amount of resources of the physical body.

After physical trainings, a person feels very calm, and if a person regularly goes in for sports, then his background condition is generally calmer, because the body is a very important resource. If you don’t eat on time, at the level of consciousness you understand well that you just don’t have time, you are busy with something. However, the subconscious mind will regard this situation differently: if you are hungry and do not eat, you have no food. And as a result, the level of anxiety increases. Due to prolonged dissatisfaction with physiological needs, you may notice that a person’s adequacy in behavior is lost. Typically, it happens to people with a leading need for security. People with other leading needs do not have such a strong connection of mood, diet and rest.

Fear. Ways to Cope

There are people who separate themselves from their emotions and live as if they don’t feel fear. If a person switches off his emotions, he agrees with himself: “There is nothing important in life to worry very much.” Accordingly, such people have no reason to really want something or to be very happy. The result is a computer mode when you logically decide what you need and what you don’t need. On the one hand, it helps you live more calmly, because you are not involved in your experiences, but at the same time your life is losing its color. In this case, a person does not understand his fears, he does not notice that he is experiencing fear, the mind blocks these states. Switching off the emotional sphere.

Such people feel their fears and perceive them as a trigger to give up doing anything. Even if fears are realized, they stop a person from acting. Internal doubts and thinking over all possible scenarios up to the worst, all possible negative consequences (punishments) capture the brain of such people. A lot of energy is spent on this, while the body is prostrated in fear, and actions are not born. Phobic model of behavior.

Such people feel, but do not realize their fears, perceive fear as a command to action. The desired goal is to free oneself from fears that are constantly prostrating and bothering from within. If such a person is asked whether he is scared, he will always answer: “Of course not”. Subconsciously, he creates dangerous situations in his life in order to cope with them and say to himself: “I am not afraid of anything.” At the moment when it is possible to overcome fear and the first dangerous step has been taken, you experience very intense euphoria, at this very moment you feel freedom from fear, so you strive again and again to fill your life with similar events. Counter-phobic model of behavior.

People with this pattern of behavior love dangerous, extreme sports. At the moments of extreme peak, hormones are produced and create a feeling of euphoria. The body perceives the unknown situation as dangerous, and throws out all the hormones just to mobilize and anesthetize as much as possible. In such situations the hormonal cocktail will consist of adrenaline, norepinephrine, endorphin, serotonin, dopamine. Thus, a model of behavior is creating “I will always overcome dangers and it will be cool”. Many people consider this type of drive as fullness and brightness of life. Not being able to appreciate other less intensive, but diverse emotions.

Fear. The Need and Strategies for Satisfying

The need that fear speaks of is security. Let’s see what security is.

If the level of satisfaction of the need for security is high you feel calm in any situation of uncertainty, i.e. you have so much control over your body, mind and feelings that you don’t care what the next moment will be, you probably know that you will act in the best way. Of course, there is a share of fear in such a life, but it does not work as something that stops, but as an interesting, exciting, tickling feeling that makes life more spicy.

A person who lives in contact with himself, does what he loves, eventually comes to a point where he trusts himself and the world so much that he is ready not to control and spontaneously express himself in even an uncertain moment. But this is only possible with very clear goals and full self-awareness, because there is no control without awareness. Otherwise, it will go with the stream in the bad sense of this word – it doesn’t matter for you where to swim, you are neither good nor bad anywhere, life has no taste and there is no quality of life. A good sense of this phrase is to be in a stream, i.e. know what you want, use the current moments to move to the desired.

Let’s talk about those for whom the need for security is leading and very important, because there are people who give up on security.

Ways of satisfying the need for security:

• Little security

With this model of behavior, a person lives his life and avoids any danger. However, any development, any way out of the comfort zone is always associated with danger. Desiring to maintain a small safety zone, a person limits himself in development, and, accordingly, in pleasure, in achievements. Over time, such a life leads to the fact that you have a feeling of resentment at other people, at life, at yourself, it is quite possible that a person will feel some guilt. Thus, the quality of life begins to decline.

For example, you wanted to be an actor, you have the ability to do this, and the theater department is located next to the house. But there are disturbing thoughts: “Oh, everything is so uncertain there. Only a few people can feed themselves by this profession. But an accountant is an understandable, terrestrial activity. I’d better go there and I will definitely know that every month I will have some money for bread and milk.” This is that little security that you create for yourself, while limiting yourself in the quality of life, in development and pleasure.

The main fear is to remain completely without resources, not to come up to the expectations of significant people.

When your life passes in dissatisfaction, when work does not bring joy, when income is modest (you have money for bread and milk, but you can’t go somewhere to rest, you can’t afford some quality thing), you begin to shift responsibility to someone from the outside or to eat yourself from the inside: “Why I didn’t do it then, now it’s too late”. Most often it is a phobic model of behavior.

• Surrender security

Subconsciously, in such a model of behavior, a person declares: “I do not need security.” He looks outwardly fearless, he is constantly poking his nose and provoking various situations. For example, he may leave for another country without knowing anything about it, without a plan on how he will work and where he will live. In other words he creates deliberately unsafe conditions. Their main fear is the creation of long-term relationships. Strong, loyal connections and self-confidence are a real challenge for such people.

When you do not trust yourself, you yourself do not know what you want tomorrow, you avoid any responsibility and decisions. Faithful relationships become unsafe because they are weighed down by certain expectations.

Such people are prone to inconstancy, are in fear of being unfaithful and unreliable. With such a position in life, the most terrible word is always.

Of course, everyone understands that we cannot guarantee at least something forever. There are very few things in the world about which we can say “this is forever.” But the very intention of “forever” is very important in business and in personal relationships. But for people who are characterized by a state of anxiety and distrust of themselves, this “forever” seems impossible: “How can I guarantee you anything? Don’t trust me much, for me it’s too big a burden.”

With time, such a life leads to the fact that all relationships, both professional and personal, become like a strange dance “one step forward, two steps back”. Forward – closer relations, back – estrangement. There is no certainty in development either, such people try a lot of new things, learn a lot, but constantly depreciate their own experience, starting from point zero again and again. Most often, this is a counter-phobic model of behavior.

• Depreciate security, depreciate resources

In such a model of behavior, a person, having no resources, claims that he does not need them. For example, if a person does not have money to go abroad to relax with his family, he will say: “Why do we go abroad, nobody needs it, there is nothing to do there, I don’t like this type of vacation,” if he does not have the necessary things for a comfortable camping trip (tents, sleeping bags), he will go to the forest with one knife “Because I am an adrenaline type”, if someone builds a house, he immediately begins to condemn, etc.

In conversations, in the behavior of such a person, denial of his values will always be traced. A whole life strategy is taking shape: to depreciate those goals that you cannot achieve because you have neither material resources, nor internal.

The main fear is to see your failure.

With time, such a life leads to the fact that everyone ceases to take such a person seriously, avoids together activities, and close people cope with all things, including development, on their own. This is also a counter-phobic behavior, but with a different connotation.

• Accumulation

Because the uncertainty is terrible, it’s not safe to not know what will happen tomorrow, not to know how everything is arranged. So the value of information and knowledge is very high for all people with a leading need for security.

But there are people who ensure their safety in this way: they are protected from the outside world and collect information about everything until they consider its quantity sufficient to reach the world and people. They often send themselves to isolation and loneliness. As a rule, these are very erudite people, well-read and educated. Often they are not adapted to an ordinary, simple life, but have a large amount of knowledge. Well, if there is a person who can use their mind in practice, but in the worst case, such behavior leads to an encyclopedic life detached from the real world.

The main fear is to be unprepared, not to know, to be stupid.

With time, such a life leads to the fact that… a person limits himself in spontaneous actions to a narrow circle of people and defends himself from the world with pronounced intellectual arrogance.

Could there be a mixture of traits of each behavioral model? Of course, we described the extreme expressions, more often there is a tendency to a greater extent to one of these strategies, while others manifest themselves from case to case. For example, a person can usually move bravely towards fear, but can sometimes be scared.

Fear. A Healthy Way of Processing

Each emotion carries information about our current state and has unique energy. If you use the energy of emotion in order to get what you want, to move towards your goals, which you accept at the level of consciousness, then emotion performs its true function.

What is the energy in the emotion of fear? Even if we realized why it appeared, our body is filled with energy. The question arises: where can we use it? We must understand why our body is straining and mobilizing in fear, because the main idea of this state is not to immobilize us and make us ill. We usually freeze when we misuse this energy.

Adrenaline is responsible for fear at the hormonal level. Inside the body, this hormone works very interestingly. At the first stage of the release of the hormone, the blood rushes to the head: the pupils dilate, the eyebrows rise, some people may have a red face or spots on the neck. This moment lasts a split second, the body feeds the brain as much as possible in order to instantly decide at the moment of danger how to proceed. But very often in the modern world in a general atmosphere of security, a person experiences fear and is not aware of the danger that the subconscious mind perceives as a threat and, accordingly, cannot decide “What should I do next?” and take the necessary actions.

At the second stage of the action of the hormone, the blood goes to the extremities, because cannot stay in the head for a long time. At this moment, a very strong flow of blood strikes from top to bottom, as if the body was poured with a bucket of cold water, heaviness is felt in the pelvic area, knees become weak. Such a feeling is usually described as “my heart is in my throat right now” or “I am shit scared.” When the blood was in the head, it was necessary to make a decision, and then, when it goes into the body, the head is no longer able to make decisions and think, you must follow the decision that you have already made. When all the energy sinks into the body, the muscles become tense, the body says: “I am ready, let’s act!” They often say “if you don’t know what to do, do at least something” and this is true. In such situations, it’s worth doing at least something not to get stuck, your body muscles are ready for focused actions.

It is important to ask yourself for: