Fear: Causes. Symptoms. Full List

This post is all about fear — it's causes, symptoms, and a list of further reading below. Let’s first clarify what I mean by fear, because it's probably one of the most misunderstood concepts on the planet.

Fear isn’t just a feeling. Fear is a belief system, formed in early childhood, when your subconscious mind stored all the ‘scary things’ that happened around you, to it knew what to avoid in the future — otherwise known as the fear of abandonment, change, criticism, failure, rejection, and so on.

As a child, that made perfect sense. Those things made you feel bad, and you didn't know how to cope with them — so you learned to avoid them. The problem is, that program never updated. It still thinks you’re that same child, and it’s still trying to keep you ‘safe’ from feeling bad, as if you’re still that same child — even though you are now an adult.

It’s basically a set of subconscious agreements you made with yourself — something like, “This scary or upsetting thing happened. It made me feel bad. I never want it to happen again. So I will avoid it at all costs”

Not your fear of snakes, fear of heights, or fear of suspicious characters (especially if they’re carrying a snake!). Those fears are trying to keep you safe, and need to be respected. These are the irrational personal fears trying to keep you 'safe' — in case you’re ever 0 to 7 years old again!

NOTE: There is a link to a full list of irrational fears in "Further Reading" below, along with other articles about fear.

You brought those irrational fears with you into adulthood, you still have them — except now they're deep layers of subtle negativity limiting everything you do in life, and suppressing every aspect of who you are as a person.

Here are just a few of the more common symptoms of subconscious fear: