Fear, what causes it and what are you afraid of?

Me and one of my friends where watching DVDs today and as I picked up my DVD case she freaked about the little spider that peacefully crawled up my finger. I mean it's not like the thing is even close to her it's on my hand and its just sitting there, then it hit me, what causes this fear of things? because generally we all have the same fears it just differs from person to person how scared you are of a certain thing.

And what?????????s up with my step sister she seems like she has a great fear of heights when you hear her on GoldReef City's Giant Ferris wheel but she actually rode the Tower of Terror a few times with me without being exceptionally scared.

What triggers fear and what scares you most?

I have a bad case of Closter phobia but it doesn't involve being it tight spaces it's just if I can't get out.

Freak waves whilst surfing.
What triggers the fear. Maybe the fxck off HUGE wave i dont know[;)].
OBVIOUSLY.[stupid].

Yeah....Im clastriphobic, afraid of being in a crowd of talking, and i have a phobia to throwing up...

from wikipedia:

Fear is a powerful, unpleasant feeling of risk or danger, either real or imagined.

Psychologists such as John B. Watson and Paul Ekman have argued that fear, along with a few other basic emotions such as joy and anger, is innate in all human beings. Fear is a defensive, survival advantage, and may have evolved in a variety of organisms. It is usually a response to a particular stimulus. For example, a person may see a spider and experience fear. Fear serves as motivation to escape to safety.

An example of this may be something dangerous and spontaneous, during this situation the blood goes to big muscles (like legs) allowing the person to run faster. Also the body freezes up just an instant allowing the brain to decide if another reaction would be better (like hiding). In the brain, hormones are released centering the attention on the threat always looking for the most accurate reaction.

Continue it Here

Personally what i think triggers fear is what your mind is set to. For example some of us are set to just be like a normal person, some bad and tough, and some small and frail(i mean this in mental state not physicall charaectics). To me it seems what your body is set to. If your big and bad it could be nothing scares you and you get the idea for the others. It could be what happens when your a kid. If you live on a farm and grow up around farm animals you won't be scared of them, yet when they come to an amusment park big rides scare them and vise versa. Or as i have herd from verious medical shows and self done studies if you see someone freaking out about something like on a movie or real life you instently recevive that fear. You hear descriptions of the pain or see the effect of the wound and get scared. Personally what scares me are bees, getting whipped, getting shot, being burried alive, waking up to one of thoes saw things where you have that strange device on your head, and breaking bones.

^^Yes true.....i was in the movies seeing saw 3 andi started to panic and stuff....breathing hard....sweating!!!

Well what scares me is when you go to bed or when your by your self. In saw one she got the people when they were alone and it was dark or when they were sleeping. I saw the second saw also and was afrid of the same situation. But saw three somehow did not give me the chills.

[Oscar]

I am scared of the teletubbies!

There weird but nothing to be afrid of.

I fear Car Crashes & Fires...Even if a house had burned down and was rebuilt, just knowing that it had burnt down previously, I would not go into the house.

I always thought barney was going to eat me through the tv...

ghosts

fat men in thongs, you know who you are.

Ghosts crep me out to.

[hyyyper]

fear is just like pain, an in-built selfdefence mechanism,

if there wasn't fear, people would do more crazy stuff that would probably get them killed, just like pain, if that wasn't there, everyone would die because they didn't know that knife in their chest is wrong.

and i can't say i fear something

Airplanes freak me out. I just cant stand them. I think I would do alot better if i were flying the plane or at least in the cockpit, but im not too into just sitting back and flying at someone elses control...

Fear is caused by a simple thing- The unknown. That's what all types of fear revolve around in my opinion:

-Will it hurt?
-What is it?
-Am I safe?

Thats how fear works. Thats why the greatest of scary movies are the ones that show you everything BUT what really happens. They will give you a little flash of the monster and then the rest is just you hearing the sounds, and seeing darkness... That is a lot more fearful than them showing you the whole scene. Also when they leave a horror story unsolved at the end... scary.

i'm generally afraid of anything that can cause me an early death.. like zombies, heart attacks, cancer, buses comming at me, aliens, etc..

Im scared of going on Airoplanes. I dont know why but i think its just I feel real vulnerable and after all these movies Ive watched and so on lol. Its just after this one time when I was in an Airoplane and there were just little jerks of turbulance. I could see nobody noticed them but I did and Ive been scared ever since.

ive got 1 big big fear, ghost trains.

walk around ghost houses im fine, real ghosts im fine, but you sit me on one of those carneval ghost trains or somthing like the haunted mantion and i start seating, hyperventelating and loosing control of myself.
just looking at one or being near one sets me off.

I hate ladders like there's no tomorrow. Also, heights scare the shiz out of me (i.e. Planes, Parasailing, Face Diving...I couldn't do those) but there's a catch, I would trust a roller coaster with my life [;)]

Originally posted by hyyyper

fear is just like pain, an in-built selfdefence mechanism,

if there wasn't fear, people would do more crazy stuff that would probably get them killed, just like pain, if that wasn't there, everyone would die because they didn't know that knife in their chest is wrong.

That?????????s what I thought it might be. I mean if someone wasn't afraid of anything then the risks he would take will be unnaturally high. I know some skydivers that says there instructor told them that if you are not afraid of jumping out of an airplane you should stop and these guys have like 1000 and more jumps behind them.

Fear me? nah

well yeah.... I hate Ladders they scare me, cause i'm always afriad i'll miss a step and fall over, of the ladder will tip over. I'm afraid of Tight spaces (Yes i'm claustrophobic) I hate being enclosed which is probably why I feel safer on Nitro 200ft up, rather than a packed elevator 200ft up. The last thing i'm afraid of (that i'm comfortable mentioning) is escalators that don't move O_o, what if it starts moving when your halfway down in the opposite direction! O_o

When I went to Hershey Par a few years back, I started freaking out on the lift of Lightning Racers. But the rest of the ride was fun even though I had my eyes closed 25% of the ride.

[rcmaniac25]

I'm scared of traffic. It's odd but I had a bad experience when I was younger and have been scared since. Also it's not the kind of traffic at a stop light or something, its the traffic that is backd up for multiple miles and it's not moving.

spiders