What is the opposite of Fear?

Old 03-20-2019, 10:49 AM
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What is the opposite of Fear?

This is something I've been contemplating for a few days since watching the Netflix movie, "Heal" where fear comes up over & over again as the greatest obstacle most of us face. That made me go searching internally for the counterbalance.

Since we often perceive fear differently (like so many things it can be specific to our wounds), I wondered what this meant to other people so I started polling everyone I know.

I'd love input from any & all of you - the more I ask, the more interesting the responses become.

I've told everyone that I don't care how long they contemplate it or if they fire off a gut-instinct response.

It just has to come down to ONE WORD/EMOTION & I only care that it is an honest response - there is no right or wrong answer.

Anyone who wants to respond can share here in thread but I would almost prefer you send me a pm so that no one else can be influenced by your opinion.

(that said, I'm a beggar not a chooser here, lol, so I'll take what I can get.... I polled all my friends via text or face-to-face/one-on-one & I feel like it kept their responses more genuine. No one could say "yeah... what she said", lol.)

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Old 03-20-2019, 01:30 PM
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Originally Posted by FireSprite View Post
(that said, I'm a beggar not a chooser here, lol, so I'll take what I can get.... I polled all my friends via text or face-to-face/one-on-one & I feel like it kept their responses more genuine. No one could say "yeah... what she said", lol.)

I had a graduate professor that said during a discussion of emotions one time the opposite of love is not hate. It is indifference. I pondered that for years, and I've come to believe he was right. Maybe it's the same for fear.

Personally, I'd prefer this to be an open discussion. Then all of us can mull over each other's thoughts, and gain something from the thread.
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Old 03-20-2019, 01:52 PM
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I've been doing focus wheels, and confidence is often inside the circle as my positive focus. It solves many things lately.

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Old 03-20-2019, 02:00 PM
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Welllllll..... I had an initial "answer"... but I think if I mull it over a while I might come up with a different one... I'll PM you.

Interesting topic. I'm genuinely interested in hearing what people's answers are, but I understand you not wanting to muddy up the waters by sharing publicly. Are you eventually going to share the results?
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Old 03-20-2019, 02:41 PM
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The way I see it, the opposite of fear is love.
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Old 03-20-2019, 03:11 PM
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Good question. I personally go through bouts of fear through my journey and it creates anxiety, irrational thinking ect and for me sometimes hard to get out of; so I have a few tools that I'm still learning to use that help.
Some would say opposite of fear is courage
For me, opposite of fear is faith - faith that not matter what is going on, it will all work out just as its suppose to. Just my thoughts..
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Old 03-20-2019, 03:26 PM
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i'm going out on a limb here and stating that in my experience, there IS NO opposite emotion.

back when i was learning to ski, it was a slow tortuous process. i'm not exactly a born athlete and i had this FEAR of.....getting ON the chair lift, getting OFF the chair lift, getting DOWN hill in one piece, crashing into trees, people, buildings. for three winter ski seasons i bunny hilled and snow plowed my way along. every time going up the mountain in the car, i wanted to throw up.

i learned that oatmeal first was a great salve for the tummy. i learned that even IF i did kind of forget to get OFF the lift at the top, the nice operator would STOP the lift and help me dismount. i learned to not worry AS MUCH what the other skiers thought, or that everyone else on the slope was an expert and i was the only idiot. (have you ever had a toddler rocket past you on skiis????).

i learned i was never really going fast enough to really hurt myself when i fell. i learned i fell often. i learned there was just no looking good while doing it.

i also eventually learned how to ski. one day it just.....happened. somewhere in year three, after chasing my husband and his buddy off with my ski pole, snarling just leave me alone!!! my weight shifted forward, i stopped hugging the hill, and there i was.....making lovely S turns and HUMMING! THEN the fear left. but i'd had to drag it along with me all that time. scared and doing it anyway.
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Old 03-20-2019, 03:47 PM
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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.
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Old 03-20-2019, 04:05 PM
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Oh, and just to add, the anger being opposite does make sense to me. Like if you take someone who was raised in an unsafe home environment, in a constant state of fear, and then as an adult, trying to do the opposite/ walking around hostile and angry all the time as a kind of defense..
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Old 03-20-2019, 10:43 PM
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"I have the right to be in a safe, non-violent home."

Peace.
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Old 03-20-2019, 11:07 PM
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Enjoying this thread, thanks everyone.

The opposite of fear? Well my immediate thought was that love is the opposite of fear.

Self love. The trust in myself that I will remove myself from danger.

I have found over time and working my program that a lot of things I was afraid of, I no longer have to be. So as a helpless small child growing up in an unsafe alcoholic home, I rightfully was afraid of many things, now I am grown up, I do not need to be.

So by reassessing old attitudes, updating them, those former fears are now neutral.

So maybe the opposite of fear is neutrality.

Have a peaceful day, all.
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Old 03-21-2019, 05:01 AM
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What is the opposite of Fear?

Faith.
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Old 03-21-2019, 06:23 AM
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For me...it's peace.
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Old 03-21-2019, 06:54 AM
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For me it's trust.
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Old 03-21-2019, 06:59 AM
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No fear

How zen of me
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Old 03-21-2019, 07:05 AM
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Lovin everyone's thoughts.
Thanks, all.
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Old 03-21-2019, 07:26 AM
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FireSprite, how are you today?

Yesterday I took a new action with humor, playfulness, honesty and support of two people close to me I trust deeply.

I was trusting in the process, God/Universe signs all around me and later in the day arrived by gut instinct at a magical wilderness landmark as a blessing was taking place.

After meditation this morning, I'm celebrating the good things that have happened in my life this past year. Magic of life, indeed.
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Old 03-21-2019, 09:21 AM
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I am totally on board with an open conversation, I just didn't want to influence others with my opinions - I have a LOT to say.

Anyone who pm'd me can absolutely share here as well - whatever anyone is comfortable with.

The movie isn't ABOUT Fear, but after watching it for the 2nd time I couldn't help but notice how every person interviewed regardless of their background, pointed to Fear as the #1 thing that holds us back & helps create an environment to allow dysfunction & disease to thrive internally. If/when we can conquer Fear we will flourish as a result.

So, I say, if I know my subconscious is running the Old Program Called Fear, I have to write new programming to replace it in order to change. But what IS the antidote to Fear? I can write a new script, but what should it SAY to really annihilate MY Fear?

Treating it like a virus, I'd need to understand it in order to combat it.... so first I examined what fear means to me & how it shows up in my world.

Then I started online for the psychology/science-y stuff behind it, as well as the spiritual links. I found that color wheel of emotions pdm22 talked about:

Originally Posted by pdm22
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)
And it made me go hmmmmmmm........ because I had the opposite reaction she did - it made NO sense to me because my Fear almost always presents AS Anger. For me, they are components of the same emotion - not oppositional. (but your example actually helped me understand better how other life experiences would create this link - thank you!)

Obviously, like anything else, our life experience drives our perception of this word so I started reaching out IRL to ask my friends & I have been finding the results fascinating.

Some people had to really think because, like me, they had to understand their Fear better first. Others had immediate responses, but then sent me a 2nd or 3rd & 4th thought as it marinated in their thought process a bit. When I pushed them to settle on 1 single answer, every one of them settled on what had been their first thought/gut reaction. (that was part of why I was trying not to influence responses) One friend REFUSED to settle on one word, insisting that the opposite of Fear for her is "any woman who's been through really, really, really bad sh*t & came out the other side stronger" - she has a long history of abusive relationships she's just started to recover from over the last few years.

With all of the philosophical debate around "Fear vs. Love" (the idea that all things trace back to being driven by one or the other, always) I expected a lot of people to pick Love in this exercise. In reality it has been one of the least reported answers that people gave.

Originally Posted by DriGuy
I had a graduate professor that said during a discussion of emotions one time the opposite of love is not hate. It is indifference. I pondered that for years, and I've come to believe he was right. Maybe it's the same for fear.
It is sort of the same thing. I recently did an experiment in quantum energy - I guess, idk what to call it officially.

I filled 3 identical jars with identical, measured amounts of rice & water & sealed them. The only difference was the word associated with the jar - I called them love & hate & let the 3rd jar go unnamed as a control without expectation or emotion attached to it. I wondered if love & hate would actually differ because *I* believe they are irrevocably tied together, they both come from heart energy & I feel like hate can't exist without love - I hate as a result of broken love.

The results were astonishing. So I added 10 new jars (9 new words) & started again. Even more astonishing. (remember, these are MY jars being affected by MY energy & MY feelings associated with these chosen words)

The Fear Jar stood out to me because it didn't rot or darken or degenerate the way some others did (hate, heartbreak, lust) but in this jar specifically, the rice absorbed almost all of the water without much other change at all. It just masqueraded as though it was the same.....nothing to see here.... consumed everything around it in a subtle way that at first look might make you think nothing had really changed...Mimicry.... in reality the entire jar was just as affected as others but without obvious signs that made me see it as negative. (like darkening - every jar ended up a different shade of clear/yellow/brown/black - except Heartbreak, it disintegrated into multilayers of blue, black & grey).

As an example of contrast here - the Trust Jar is still the most clear, unchanged of ALL 13 jars. The original contents seem to have almost completely retained their integrity - even my Love Jar is cloudier & more altered than Trust.

But Fear got bloated & big & filled all of the space around it, hiding in plain sight.

The last thing I researched that really hit for me was the Buddha's lessons on Fear as it is told in the story of his battle against Mara on the eve of his enlightenment. How fear presents in so many ways & keeps morphing until it gets a foothold that allows it to wedge itself more & more into our worlds. How instead of running from or trying to ignore our fears, we should "invite them in for tea" & serve them as an honored guest there to teach us lessons. How looking it in the eye & giving it space to exist removes the mystique it uses to fuel it's chameleon-like ways.

Glennon Doyle talked about the exact same thing in Love Warrior when she has her breakdown/breakthrough staying on her yoga mat & facing all her fears for the first time instead of running. In the end she wonders at all the running she's done from her fears:

Oh my God - what if the transporting is keeping me from transformation? What if my anger, my fear, my loneliness were never mistakes, but invitations? What if in skipping the pain, I was missing my lessons? Perhaps pain was not a hot potato after all, but a travelling professor. Maybe instead of slamming the door on pain, I need to throw open the door wide and say, Come in. Sit down with me. And don't leave until you've taught me what I need to know.
Thank you guys SO MUCH for participating in this with me!
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Old 03-21-2019, 09:36 AM
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I'll share.

When I first considered the question, I thought back to when I was living in fear all the damn time... I am no longer living like that, and so when I compared that to how I am living now, I felt free. So, for me, the word opposite of fear is:

Freedom

Of course I can think of other words/feelings that work (for me) , but I keep circling back to my initial reaction. I'm quite content to own this feeling of freedom I have now as opposed to that daunting fear I was stifled with just a few short years ago. I feel free to choose to feel whatever I want to feel these days, and that is a blessing I don't think I can put into words.

What an awesome exercise! Thanks Fire!
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Old 03-21-2019, 09:44 AM
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I'll just copy and paste my PM and maybe write more later. I've been procrastinating mowing my back yard for too long and need to get to it...

Peace

Fear, anxiety, and negative thinking have been my go-to responses to things for pretty much my entire life. I've worked SO hard in therapy to address this, and I'm starting to be able to shift those things to a feeling of peace more quickly.

I'm in divorce limbo, and there's been so much fear there at times. It sucks. Lots of triggers. But when I can find that peace, it's SO nice.
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