Has anyone ever seen the color wheel for hair color? Like if you color your hair and it comes out too red, you can go to the opposite color on the color wheel to tone it? So if too red, you’d pick indigo shampoo or conditioner. If your hair is blonde but it’s getting all brassy, you can tone it by using a violet, the opposite color on the wheel..
Well there’s a similar wheel for emotions. We have 8 primary ones:
Joy= Sadness (opposite)
Acceptance = Disgust (opposite)
Fear= Anger (opposite)
Surprise= Anticipation
Each one can be further broken down=
Annoyance- anger- rage = apprehension- fear- terror (opposite)
I didn’t see the documentary, but to me, fear is like any other emotion, I think, to monitor your internal world. Things can get all convoluted and messed up if your were raised in such an environment, where your feelings weren’t safe to have or express, and invalidated by, emotionally stunted caregivers who did know how to honor and experience their own feelings- caregivers who were adult children really, who raised you this way. Or if there was a judgment around certain feelings (girls can’t get angry, boys can’t be sad/cry). Things get further convoluted in the culture you are raised in, and you get all of these messages about which feelings are better to have over others.
So unless it’s an issue, like uncontrolled panic or something, or it paralyzes you constantly (but even then in some cases it’s a good thing, like in the fight/ flight/ freeze instincts- freezing might save your life in a situation where if you had shot your mouth off you could have gotten beaten up or killed) fear in and of itself is just an emotion like any other. It’s there to keep you out of unsafe situations. And if you are in an unsafe situation, you are still using/ feeling it (thinking of some people talking about experiences in war, having to act when they were terrified & things like that).
Anyways, I think not having it would be like not having a sense of touch, you’d be walking around touching hot stoves and burning yourself all the time. I think like with any other feeling, if it’s in a “natural flow of feelings”, it’s there to tell you something. That my take on it.