Why am I afraid of life? Possible causes and what to do

Fear of life leads many people to adopt passive attitudes and miss opportunities.

Everyone has big dreams in this life. Regardless of age, gender, culture or race we all want to become happy and achieving our big life goals is a good way to get closer to happiness.

But in the same way that these goals satisfy us enormously once they are achieved, the path that leads to them, with its efforts and sacrifices, is not comfortable and even scares us, but of course, if we do not dare to risk or suffer on the way to our success, we are simply not going to achieve it.

Many people want to achieve their goals but fear the effort that comes before reaching them. They say to themselves, "If I can achieve what I want and be happy by making an effort, then why don't I do it? Why am I afraid of life?"We will address this issue in depth below.

Why am I afraid of life?

Fearing life is something quite common but curiously goes largely unnoticed.. Virtually everyone has felt it at some point in their lives, manifesting itself with very deep feelings, with an unpleasant feeling in the chest and seeing the world worse than it really is. The fear of life is not, in itself, being afraid to live, but to start the stormy path that leads us to be able to enjoy it.

Life is not a path of roses. To be able to enjoy it, to be able to live with all its letters, it is necessary to take risks in the decisions we make, to invest in our happiness by putting effort and sacrificing some immediate pleasures to achieve our long-term goals. These are changes that are not comfortable and the uncertainty that accompanies them is scary, especially if we move far away from our comfort zone, but we must understand that if we do not change our habits we will not change our lives, having to resign ourselves to our current situation.

It is true that fear can act as a protector against making crazy decisions, however, being afraid of anything that moves away from what we are used to, even though we know that doing it will bring us closer to what we have set out to do, limits us a lot. Feeling fear is natural, but letting it stop us from achieving our dreams and goals can become a real tragedy.. If fear controls us and convinces us that making an effort won't do any good, we won't move forward. We will have given up before we take the first step.

But living does not only mean achieving great life goals, but also being happy being the way we are. Being afraid of life can also mean doing the same as others, "playing it safe", going with the flow fearing that if we show how we really are others will judge us. No one wants to feel that they don't fit in but it is much worse to deceive ourselves to please others than to show how we really are and not be understood by others. We can't be happy if we don't take risks and behave the way we really want to by seeing what happens.

Understanding fear of life

Fear, as an emotion in general, is necessary for our survival. When we feel fear it is because we feel that something bad can happen to us and we should be careful. Both human beings and other animals feel fear in the face of dangers that make us either fight or flee. Whatever we do, fear motivates us to protect our physical and mental integrity and, in essence, to survive with as little damage as possible. and, in essence, to survive with as little harm as possible.

However, a peculiarity of human beings is that we can feel fear of something that has not yet happened, interpret it as more threatening than it really is, and therefore avoid it when it may not be necessary. What we interpret as "dangerous" may not be dangerous at all or, if it affects our physical and emotional integrity, it may do so in a milder and more temporary way than we thought. We may be depriving ourselves of a great experience by thinking of it as a potent threat..

As we said, feeling fear of life limits us, prevents us from moving forward. For example, let's think of someone who wants to get in shape because they are not comfortable with their body and this lowers their self-esteem. He believes that being in shape will make him look good in the mirror, he will feel more self-confident and will be more successful in his social relationships, and for this reason he decides to join a gym to fulfill his dream.

But although he tells himself that he will go three times a week and do strength exercises, such as weight lifting and body pump, he doesn't follow through. He makes excuses saying it's because of lack of time or because he has other more important tasks to do, but if being fit is his dream, something he thinks will make him happy, isn't going to the gym a priority? Your current situation makes you have low self-esteem and you don't enjoy life, so you are prolonging your life.and you are prolonging your current suffering.

Digging deeper we discover that although staying in his current comfort zone makes him feel bad, he imagines that going to the gym could mean more emotional suffering than he already feels, even though he is aware that it is necessary to get in shape. Yes, he does want to be in shape, but he is afraid that when he goes to the weights corner he will do the exercises wrong and the other users will look at him funny, making fun of him inwardly. That is his fear, to feel humiliated, even if it is an imaginary fear.

As we can see with this example, the steps that lead us to success can be perceived in such a threatening way that our natural reaction is to avoid them. The problem is that on many occasions, because we have not faced those steps necessary to achieve what we have set out to do, we do not know how "dangerous" they are.. In fact, we do not even check whether the situation we have imagined is remotely real or merely a product of our biased mind.

With this case we have just discussed, how real is your fear of being judged by other users? You don't know how real it is because you haven't checked it to begin with, fear blocks it. Fear of what we do not know is something natural and until we do not test it we will not know if there were reasons to fear it. For this reason it is necessary to get out of our comfort zone to be able to live life because, as we have said, without taking risks and making an effort it is not possible to know to what extent the situation is as serious as we have imagined it to be.

Possible causes

One of the reasons behind the fear of life is the person's own experiences, as well as the perceptions he/she has of him/herself. He or she has had experiences in which he or she has "learned" that he or she is not worth it, that success is for other people, or that if he or she tries, there is a good chance that it will turn out badly. Y even if it does not go wrong, he or she may also think that he or she will not do it perfectly, and of course, to do it halfway it is better not to do it at all..

Fear of life can limit us so much that we not only consider our current dreams as impossible, but we also stop looking at all the good things we have achieved. It may happen that we have had so many recent failures that we believe we are absolute losers, and we stop doing anything new assuming that it will also go wrong. By focusing on recent failures, we ignore or belittle the successes we have had in our lives and fall victim to a powerful negativity bias, a negative view of our personal history that makes our self-esteem lower than it already is.

Another factor that contributes to the fact that we do not get down to work on our way to achieve our goals is the fear of failure. We all know that failure is something very unpleasant, perceived by many as a real physical pain. Many people are so afraid of feeling the Pain of failure that they go out of their way to avoid it.The "safest" way is directly not to start the path towards their goal. If the path is not started, there is no suffering, but there is no success either. For this reason the fear of failure is a great obstacle to achieve our goals.

How to overcome the fear of life?

Everyone knows stories of famous people who have achieved what they have set out to achieve, great achievers whom we envy because we feel that they have achieved goals and dreams that have made them happy. Although we know that these people are flesh and blood, we attribute special abilities and skills to them, we think that they are very different from us. Because we convince ourselves that they are made of different stuff, they succeed naturally, while we simply won't make it..

It is true that everyone is different and has their strengths and weaknesses. There will be things that we are better and worse at, but this does not mean that people are better than others, but that they excel in different skills. As real people that are successful people, they have also been afraid of life as any other person, only with the difference that they have known how to handle it, they have overcome their fear of life and have simply started to live it.They have overcome their fear of life and have simply started to live it. They know that without risk, suffering and effort there is no gain and they got rid of the fear that hindered them.

Just as they learned how to manage their fear of life, we can do the same. Basically there are two aspects to take into account when it comes to overcoming the fear of life, one being to change the attitude and the other to stop focusing on the past, besides being very clear that everything in this life implies suffering a little, a necessary suffering to be able to succeed later.

Changing the attitude

To live without fear of life it is necessary to change the attitude in front of the day to day.. It is essential to let go of the negativity that makes us see things worse than they really are, in addition to stop convincing ourselves that we are not worth it. To be able to do this it is necessary that we ask ourselves and find out where the feelings of fear came from, what is the origin of the fears to initiate the change so necessary to be happier and to achieve what we want to achieve.

Maybe we were raised in a very strict family where mistakes were seen as symptoms of weakness and uselessness. It is possible that in our mind our desire to achieve what we have proposed clashes with a fear in which it is thought that any failure is synonymous of the most absolute failure, a sensation that as we have commented, is the result of a fear of failure.This is a sensation that, as we have mentioned before, some people feel as a real physical pain.

It can also happen that we have had so many disappointments lately that we do not see ourselves capable of initiating a change because we are not willing to experience new ones. Even if we have had some triumphs, it may happen that we have been on such a bad streak that we do not want to feel any more pain and, therefore, we remain paralyzed, static. But as we have insisted before, if we do not do something, we will not be able to progress.

However we perceive failure, we must change our attitude towards it. Far from being synonymous with absolute incapacity, we should see it as something we can learn from, something that teaches us how not to do things or that motivates us to try more times. As we said, life is not a bed of roses and if we stand still we will not succeed. It is not possible to succeed without suffering and we must never give up. If you fail a fifth time, try a sixth.

If our way of seeing the world is too pessimistic and no matter how hard we try we cannot change our way of seeing our small failures, the best thing to do is to turn to a professional.. Psychologists are experts in encouraging changes in habits, helping their patients to progress in life. In fact, most of the winners value very positively the psychological therapy since it has been what has made them change the course of their lives, a change that is also within our reach.

Focusing on the present

In many occasions it happens that these fears are the result of having a mind too focused on the hypothetical and not focusing on the present moment. The mind often sets traps for us, tries to put us in the worst of situations, overwhelms us with all kinds of intrusive and irrational thoughts that despite being very unlikely overwhelm us, making us think all the time about all the bad things that could happen. This is why one of the best strategies to deal with them is simple: live in the here and now.

In fact, the experience of living in the here and now is a protective factor for our mental health. There is only one moment in which we can act to change our future: the now. Instead of thinking about the bad things we did in the past and the supposedly unpleasant situations in the future, it is best to try to initiate changes right now. If we have the opportunity to enjoy life now, now is the time to do it.

On the other hand, if it is necessary to do something unpleasant in order to enjoy life much later, it is appropriate to do it as well. Whatever has to be done now, we should think of our present behaviors as influencing what the future will be like, not how we imagine it will be.

Bibliographical references:

• Hofmann, S.G., Dibartolo, P.M.. (2010). "Introduction: Toward an Understanding of Social Anxiety Disorder". Social Anxiety. pp. xix-xxvi.
• Goleman, D. (1996). The practice of emotional intelligence. Barcelona: Kairós
• Oñate, M. (1989). The self-concept. Formation, measurement and implications in personality. Madrid: Narcea.
• Schiraldi, G.R. (2016). The Self-Esteem Workbook. Second Edition. Oakland, CA: New Harbinger.