Men and fear: use fear as the catalyst in your life story

Fear holds us back. Fears are often ingrained in our brains and hard to overcome. Use fear as a catalyst in your life story or memoir to write it out of your system.

DEFINITION OF FEAR

An unpleasant, often strong emotion caused by anticipation or awareness of danger. Fear manifests as alarm, anxiety, dread, fearfulness, fright, panic, horror, terror, or trepidation.

HOW MEN DEAL WITH FEAR

In my book Eugene de Kock: Assassin for the State a young man is initiated into “a man’s world” by rites of passage involving military and police training. Some men are initiated from a very young age into gang related violence. In extreme cases, like in the example of Stewart Wilken, his childhood fears and experiences lead to him becoming a serial killer, as we have seen in the documentary Boetie Boer. In many interviews with policemen, I found that the men dealt with fear and other unpleasant emotions by engaging in destructive behaviour.

FEAR AS A CORRUPTED FILE DOWNLOADED BY ACCIDENT

Mona Lisa Schulz, a Ph.D. in behavioural neuroscience, explains the phenomenon of illogical fear as a “corrupted file that you downloaded by accident that keeps coming up.” And that file, scientists say, is nearly impossible to erase. Schulz notes that fear is so powerful, so deeply ingrained, that it is resistant to pharmaceutical treatment.

It is worthwhile to look fear in the eye and write it out of your system in a memoir of life story. That is the way to treat your fear: by hacking your own mental hard drive.

WHAT DO MEN FEAR MOST?

According to The Good Men Project, men risk their lives serving in combat, fighting fires, and performing dangerous stunts, but fear these three things: rejection, irrelevance, and disappointment. Together they add up to the fear of failure and being a man.

PHYSIOLOGICAL REPONSES TO FEAR

“All mammals share this powerful and very specific early-warning system. Any fearful person—or monkey, or rabbit, or rat—will exhibit a similar autonomic response: an increase in heart rate and blood pressure, raised hairs, rapid breathing, and an instinct to freeze in place. These aren’t just warnings. They combine to create a heightened sense of awareness and, by pumping blood, oxygen, and stress hormones more quickly throughout the body, prepare us to either fight back or evade the danger. This is the famous “fight or flight” response.”

HOW DOES FEAR TRANSLATE INTO MEN`S EVERYDAY LIVES?

Fanselow explains that we can view many of these fears through the prism of evolution, like things we encounter at the office: asking for raises, making cold calls, or challenging superiors. To understand, he says, we need only look to our fellow primates, which abide by dominance hierarchies. “Knowing your position in that hierarchy and keeping to it is very safe,” he says, and since safety equates with survival, that’s a powerful instinct. “To do things that come out of that hierarchy are very threatening.” Asking your boss for a raise is exactly that. “You’re going to the dominant animal and trying to get something from him. In evolutionary history, those are the peers that beat us up.”

This same logic works for public speaking. “I think instinctively we are born afraid to face a lot of people, because evolutionwise, that means we were being hunted,” says Jeansok Kim.

MEN AND FEAR: USE FEAR AS THE CATALYST IN YOUR LIFE STORY

Use it, don`t lose it. Sharing your story might be more helpful than you think. Imagine the effect it can have on others. Remember that, as an author coach, I am available to assist you in your writing adventure.