The Source of Fear

The topic of our conversation today concerns everyone — it is fears and anxieties. Everyone is afraid of something in their life. As we grow up, we already know how to hide it from others, but in small children it is very openly revealed. They have a multitude of doubts, questions, and completely incomprehensible problems. We are going to discuss the problem of fear: what it is connected with, its root, its source. There is no person who is afraid of nothing. In roughly every fifth person, it is not just fear that develops, but even some kind of pathological fear. Throughout all the years of human development and all the millennia of humanity's development, these figures are constantly rising. Fear is constantly growing. There are methods by which we help our patients somehow cope with these fears. The question is: how can we understand the root of this problem? It feels as though we do not quite understand it, and we are afraid of something all the time. Why?

This protects us. It keeps us from doing foolish things, from harming ourselves; it helps us preserve our life, our existence. And this is exactly what we tell our children: "Be careful, watch out, be a good boy, don't go there so they won't hurt you, he's a bad boy, don't go near him, there's a policeman there" — and so on. We are teaching our children to be afraid all the time.

We see this in Nature as well, among animals. Suppose some lioness takes her cubs out on a walk somewhere in the savanna in order to teach them the wisdom of life, and instructs them in all the necessary things. First of all, these are the things that are unpleasant and dangerous to life. And only after that does she teach them how to obtain food; but while they are still small, and she obtains food for them, she teaches them only how to be afraid — to be afraid of real things and not to be afraid of illusory dangers.

Fear lies at the foundation of human nature. It divides into several types. Fear of this world — that is, that I or those close to me might feel bad — the sources of this fear are located around the person, in this world. Fear of the afterworld, of judgment and punishment. In our world there are more than 700 types of fears and anxieties.

Since we are egoists, made up of the desire to enjoy, our desire to enjoy is afraid all the time — will it be able to enjoy, will I have everything I want, at least partially, in some way at all, will I suffer? I always have the fear of whether I will feel bad. That is, this sensation is fundamental, and against this background all our actions, plans, programs, and deeds unfold. And people suffer greatly.

On an adult's level it is clear, as you have explained, that there are different types of fear because some harm may be caused to my desire to enjoy — this is the most ordinary fear. And it is a fear of the lowest level. And then there are higher and higher fears. But where does a child's fear come from, since he does not know what will happen in this world or what will happen later on?

We can safely speak of information being transmitted from generation to generation, together with the drop of semen and the mother's intrauterine nourishment. After all, everyone can see how each subsequent generation is more developed and more ready for the new world, even more so than the generation that gave rise to it. Thus, if we do not correct our fears and problems, then we pass them on from generation to generation, and they repeat in our descendants. Moreover, these problems obviously accumulate from generation to generation. We find ourselves in an ever more uncorrected time, in a perception of the world and of life that is even worse than before. That is why we see that the younger generation runs away from life. It develops various artificial shells for itself; it does not wish to be connected with earning a living, with children, money, or industry. It runs away into more artificial domains. It is no accident that we invented the Internet — it is no accident that the younger generation developed for itself such an artificial environment, such a medium in which one can dwell, running away not only from fear but from anything unknown at all. And there they feel as though they are living. They do not simply connect to the Internet in order to use it; they simply go off there, as into another world. And this is the result of the fears and anxieties that would otherwise have taken hold of them.

There are several psychological causes of fears. One of the fears is behavioral; it says that a person is born as a blank slate, and everything he goes through, everything we write on that slate over the course of his life, is what he will ultimately turn out to be.

I would say that there is a combination of two causes. When a person is born, then within him, as in a drop of semen, there is all the information about the future person who begins to develop. Of course, there are things that lie at the foundation, which we cannot change, and they will develop just as they are. But much also depends on society, on the environment — how much and which things will develop more, in what connection to one another, and whether we will be able to bring out that connection. There is a rigid structure; a person comes into the world like an imprint from a seal. But how each quality develops in him and the connection between these qualities depends on society, on the environment. Therefore, if we can organize the right environment for a person, we will not see people with such problems of phobias as exist today. I am certain that the right upbringing in a suitable environment will help us get rid of them.

What is the right upbringing?

An environment that gives the child a sense of confidence and mutual guarantee. A human being is a social creature. He is so dependent on society that there is no problem whatsoever for society to make up for all the deficiencies he feels while experiencing fears. This applies even to such fears as the fear of enclosed spaces or the fear of heights. Through its examples, society can give a person such models that he will absorb from his environment its attitude toward these fears and will stop being afraid.

And what should be done when it concerns parents who suffer greatly because they cannot help their child? I came to the clinic with my child, and there a father was yelling at his three-year-old son to make him stop being afraid. I looked at this from a professional point of view and thought that this father does not understand the root of the problem, the child's suffering. What can be said to him so that he grasps this understanding?

You psychologists ought to conduct lessons on television — open a TV channel and broadcast programs, teach parents, do it well, pleasantly, and attractively; teach how to raise children. I ask myself: why should we watch all sorts of horrors on television and listen to what is said there? Is that really more important than becoming good parents? Teachers, psychologists, and lawyers alike — organize your own channel. After all, that father who suffers because his child experiences fears will surely turn on a channel where he can get explanations. On that channel there should also be an explanation of what to do about children's fears, how to live in society.

What is the right approach to fears that we should develop in a child; what explanation should we give him?

Parents are not capable of this. We must organize a good environment for children, place the child in a group, in a sports team, so that there, with the support of his friends, he gains confidence.

There are children who are more prone to fears compared to others. What is the reason?

We said that fears lie at the foundation of creation, in our desire to enjoy, which is the material of creation. In sensitive people, abnormalities are noticeable in childhood, for the more the desires are developed, the greater a person's receptivity, and therefore also his apprehensions, in his acute sensation of the surrounding reality. It is known that great people suffered from certain abnormalities in childhood. The sensation of reality always comes together with a subconscious or conscious fear about what I sense: "Is this good or bad? Won't it bring harm?"

We must respect this fear, for without it we would immediately destroy ourselves. That is, we only need to know how to work with it. There are no bad fears. There are no fears that we must banish or lull to sleep. We do this out of an inability to use them correctly. If there is some fear, some problem, then a person must rise above it.

I must rise above my fears and see that I am growing thanks to fears, problems, deficiencies, emptiness, helplessness — precisely above them. I rise above them, because the importance of rising above my own nature attracts me and becomes the most important thing. And then, in these fears, I will see help.

Can this be explained to a child?

No. But we must not suppress fears directly. We must only compensate for them with the help of society.

And what should be done about those children who are afraid of nothing — is that truly an extreme?

Yes, that is truly frightening. It is an even greater problem than fear. I have seen a child like this throw his bag into the road and run after it. And come what may. That is, he knows that he could be run over, but in this he wishes to tempt fate. Here there is a different problem, a deeper one: the search for one's fate and the testing of it. Within us there is such a striving, arising from the absence of contact with something higher, and by such an act the child challenges fate.

In psychology there is such a topic, when people speak of children who find it hard to accept social frameworks. That is, this is connected with this phenomenon.

Perhaps they do not wish to accept the general attitude toward life. They wish to feel its program of governance, life's attitude toward themselves.

In one of the conversations you said that fear develops a person. This surprised me greatly. I searched the literature, but I did not find the reason for it.

It is not the fear itself that matters, but how we relate to it. Envy, hatred, ambition, deception — everything that is in us — all these qualities and inclinations, good or bad, we can manage correctly and well, because nothing is created in us in vain or in order to cause us harm. It is all so that we may learn to manage them correctly.

Therefore we must manage fear — not by suppressing it, but by directing it within us; we must rise above fear. It will grow higher, and we will rise still higher above it.

You say that one must rise. I do not understand what it means to rise. How can we correctly tell a person what it means to "rise"?

A person learns to realize all his qualities correctly. He manages them, rather than they managing him. And then he understands why Nature created them in him.

Let us sum up. We spoke about fear, about the fact that we must learn to use it correctly. We are afraid on the material level when we do not know how to use fear correctly, but if we can "play" with it, then we will discover in it an instrument for managing our egoism. In practice, children who are afraid should be placed in groups, in sports clubs, so that, through play, they can gain confidence from those around them. And likewise, they need to be surrounded with warmth and love at home. And in order to help a child rise above fear, we need to talk with him about how much fear develops us — not to concentrate on what I am afraid of, but to try to understand that this sensation has a key role in my development, and that it should raise me to a better state.