ForKaren Delgado
What would happen if suddenly one day you realize that what scares you the most is in front of you? What would your reaction be?
When asking about fear, I would like you to think about your family for a moment, what paralyzes them? What makes them feel threatened? In what situations do they feel they are in danger? What do they have a phobia of? This in order to reflect on how fears are natural, that we all have them, that they are real and that we have experienced this sensation at least once in our lives. Doing this introspection exercise allows us to understand them; it is an act of humanity with others and without a doubt with oneself.
Life is on the other side of fear
The previous exercise allows us to introduce ourselves to the central theme of this brief writing. Initially, it can be established that fear has an evolutionary origin: there is a face of fear that has allowed us to survive thanks to the fact that it works as a mechanism that guarantees survival, alerting us to danger and giving us tools to generate a response. The impulses to flee or attack prevent our body from being affected, and in the most severe cases they save us from those attacks directed towards our own lives. The body allows you to identify threats before they compromise your integrity. Fear as an evolutionary trait has a protective function that avoids putting our lives at risk.
The physiology of fear and its functioning is really very complex to explain. In a few words, it can be said that a context is required in which the sensation of danger, panic or vulnerability are present and unleashed from a particular situation. This causes a neural activation response. The sensory information generates a stimulus to a part of our brain called the thalamus to begin the stimulation of the amygdala and with it the secretion of glutamate, a hormone that generates small states of hypertension. Hence the lack of air and the sensation of increased heart palpitations during episodes where fear is felt.
After this the hypothalamus, another part of our brain, generates a fight or flight response, adrenaline levels in the blood begin to increase and our liver releases huge amounts of glucose. The sugar rush will give our muscles enough energy to face the threat either by running, devising a silent plan to flee, screaming, or fighting the threat. The responses that our body offers to fear are as varied as they are effective in finding a way out. And while all this is happening, cortisol, a new hormone characterized by being present in the processes that generate stress, maintains levels of balance in this process that has multiple discharges. When the feeling of fear in one's own flesh is affirmed, we are not referring to something figurative but literal.
Fear, as we saw previously, not only involves an exorbitant expenditure of energy for its response, but also exposure to the imbalance of other systems of the human body, by the priority that is given to the neurological reaction that is needed to respond to a situation of fear. But what happens when fear becomes a constant, where the sensation is no longer occasional, but we are familiar with it and, even worse, when we have internalized the sensation and it has become part of our daily lives? A peasant from Urabá or Caguan who has experienced violence in his own flesh could demonstrate this story more harshly.
A while ago I thought about this election season, what are people afraid of and how fear is one of the most powerful instruments of domination . The discourses that are based on the fear of the people have legitimized the most deplorable governments in Latin America. Fear is a common denominator of our societies. It can be one of the most common daily sensations that we all go through, particularly in Colombia. Instilling fear in others has been one of the historical strategies of those who make up the institutional framework and thestatus quo.
Fear as an experience usually stimulates our capacity for prevention and memory, which apparently many lack in this time of elections, since it allows us to identify situations that we already we have lived or that are remotely related and generated a negative stimulus for us. The conjunctural confrontation that the Colombian population lives today is decisive for the following years of government. The speeches that spread fear are still present and are still an important stimulus to exercise the vote or discard candidacies.
Without a doubt, fear can be seen from its multiple facets and can shape our actions and therefore ourselves. This is why there must be tools to combat it, transform it and overcome it. It is enough to look over time at the effect of fear on our own construction, how it has affected us, in order to start once and for all to live, not to survive. Courage must be a mix between having the character to face eventualities and an assertive way of dealing with risks. Let's stop to think what's after fear. Is it peace, love, life? Maybe yes.
June 9, 2022