Fearfull Quotations

We should laugh before being happy, for fear of dying without having laughed. [Jean De La Bruyère (1645-1696), French writer, moralist. Characters, "Of the Heart," aph. 63 (1688).]

If you fear loneliness, then don't get married. [Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860-1904), Russian author, playwright. Complete Works and Letters in Thirty Volumes, Works, Notebook I, vol. 17, p. 85, "Nauka" (1980).]

I fear those big words which make us so unhappy. [James Joyce (1882-1941), Irish author. Stephen Dedalus, in Ulysses, ch. 2 of 1984 edition (1922).]


I fear you speak upon the rack,
Where men enforced do speak anything. [William Shakespeare (1564-1616), British dramatist, poet. Portia, in The Merchant of Venice, act 3, sc. 2, l. 32-3. She fears Bassanio may not be honest in his protestations of love.]

It's fear of being afraid that frightens me more than anything else. [Jerome Cady, U.S. screenwriter, and Lewis Milestone. Sergeant Clinton (Farley Granger), The Purple Heart, about to be tortured (1944).]

He who fears he will suffer, already suffers from his fear. [Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592), French essayist. "Of Experience," The Essays (Les Essais), bk. III, ch. 13, Abel Langelier, Paris (1595).]

A word does not frighten the man who, in acting, feels no fear. [Sophocles (497-406/5 B.C.), Greek tragedian. Oedipus Colonus, l. 296.]


So then learn to conquer your fear. This is the only art we have to master nowadays: to look at things without fear, and to fearlessly do right. [Friedrich Dürrenmatt (1921-1990), Swiss dramatist, novelist, essayist. Trans. by Gerhard P. Knapp (1995). Romulus the Great, act III (1956).]

Black Cats...

...are just black cats!

Boo!

Boo! Mmmm not so scary!

Overcoming Fear

What can you do when confronted by fear?

Hold your breath!
Yes, hold your breath.
Holding your breath and count to ten will help.  Holding your breath tells the mind that something is wrong. Holding your breath will stop you stressing about what you were just thinking of and cause the mind to start thinking about why you are holding your breath. Sounds strange, but try it. You only have to count to ten. Start... One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven, Eight, Nine, Ten. What did you think about... counting right. You stopped thing about whatever it was you were thinking about and concentrated on counting to ten while holding your breathe.

You can not do this forever when you are anxious, so what do you do.  Breathe! Yes breathe!  When you breathe, consciously count the exhale... One, Two, Three, then inhale count... Four, Five, Six. Again, exhale... One, Two, Three, and inhale... Four, Five, Six. Do this six times, then hold your breath for a count of ten. What were you thinking about... counting right.

It is simple distraction. It will take your mind off the immediate thought process and replace it with breathing and counting. Taking control of your breathing requires the mind to concentrate on something other than public speaking wows. Your body needs to breathe so disrupting your train of thought with a serious problem like controlled breathing and counting will relieve the anxious fear with simple breathing and counting.

You can hold your breath and control breathing while sitting, standing, anywhere and no one will notice what you are doing. This is not something you do after exercise. Try it when something is on your mind and you want to break the thought pattern.

Fear Anxiety

Our biggest fear is Public Speaking, or at least standing in front of a huge crowd of people waiting to here what you have to say without making a fool of yourself.


The biggest fear for a child is what is under the bed at night!

What are you afraid of?

What is FEAR?

Is fear real or is it just in the mind?

It can be called by many names, and all of them ugly names--anxiety, timidity, moral cowardice.

Dante, by his Hell and his Purgatory, expressed plainly that the chief motive of man to practise morality must be his fear of ultimate punishment.

Fear is the shadow of the imaginative, the resourceful, the inventive temperament, but it multiplies resource and invention a hundredfold.

We are afraid of arousing anger, not because we expect to be assailed by blows and wounds, but because our far-off ancestors expected anger to end in an actual assault. We may know that we shall emerge from an unpleasant interview unscathed in fortune and in limb, but we anticipate it with a quite irrational terror, because we are still haunted by fears which date from a time when injury was the natural outcome of wrath.

The instinctive mind bids one follow profit, need, advantage, the pleasure of the moment; the rational part of the mind bids one abstain, resist, balance contingencies, act in accordance with a moral standard. Many such abstentions become a mere matter of habit