Fear can be crippling in the way it affects your thinking and begins to push its way into your conscious and un-conscious thoughts. The fear of the unknown is one aspect that can be dealt with in a logical way, i.e. if it is unknown then there is an element of being able to contain and explain the fear.
However, where fear is about exaggerating existing ills or troubles and making them many times worse, this can be destructive to those experiencing the fear as well to the people around the person with the fears. You know that the damage from an accident has been limited to a certain amount, or that the nature of the relationship is such that when one person says this the other always says that, but does nothing more. Yet, when fear takes hold of a view on perhaps the damage from the accident or the anger within the relationship, fear will magnify the issue far beyond realistic proportions and can cause huge pain and suffering where the person going through the fear is unable to assert his or her reality onto the fearful thinking.
The exaggeration of small concerns or fears can be such that one party in the conversation or relationship can see the distortion that the person going through the fear can no longer perceive. When this happens it can be very challenging for the observer to stay within the context of the conversation or discussion before the whole situation grows out of proportion.
Seeing only from a perspective of logic is not always helpful to the person experiencing the fear either! Many times I have heard from clients where one person is in the grip of a fear that they cannot truly explain to their more logical partner. Sometimes the best solution is not for a solution to be found at all, but for the person going through the fear simply to be heard out with what is hurting them and causing them such anguish. They may just need to be heard, not provided with the answer.
As human beings there is an ancient survival need for us to experience elements of stress, worry and fear. How else would we have survived attacks from sabre-toothed tigers and woolly mammoths millions of years ago if it had not been for these emotions giving us the 'fight or flight' response to imminent danger? But the tigers and the mammoths have been replaced by utility bills and corporate takeovers that threaten potential redundancy; by the mountain of email where each sender expects we will respond to them immediately; by the pressure at work and socially to conform to the expectations that co-workers and neighbors have of us in those situations. No wonder we get to feel the stress, worry and fear as we go through our own daily lives.
But, and this is a big but, there is no need for us to let the three demons of stress, worry and fear intimidate us and force us to lower our heads in submission. Life is filled with staggering opportunities, and with tremendous scope for joy and satisfaction. Yet it seems that the more automated, structured and digital our lives become the easier it is to be overwhelmed by the amount of data traffic, conversations, work transactions, social media posts and information we need to manage and handle. As a result it is hardly surprising that we begin to get to the place where we feel scared, worried, concerned and anxious that we will be unable to cope.
Instead, acknowledge what you can and cannot tolerate as acceptable levels of stress and worry and begin to eliminate the causes of those, to reduce the impact of the various pressures and to work our corrective changes to what you are going through in order to reduce the stress you are presented with.
Life is not easy when you are facing such pressures, but it is important for you to consider what is and what is not acceptable in terms of the causes. Where possible, take action to correct what is not working and to see what is out of context with your own value system. So often the issues can be diminished by seeing how they are out of sync with what matters to you in the first place, and adjusting from there.