Fear is an extremely useful characteristic in every animal and human being. To be afraid; to have feelings of insecurity, worry or distrust, contributes to our preparedness, and in the end to our survival. Without fear, we would not spot oncoming danger until too late. The amount of fear experienced differs considerably from person to person.
Fear is not the only incentive or motive for behavior, but it plays a very important role during our development. Much of human behavior is triggered by fear. The patterns we display in dealing with fear during our early years set the course for our future tendencies to react fearfully in insecure situations.
Many people are easily gripped by fear and will be that way their entire lives. Others barely know the feeling at all and perhaps feel at worst uncomfortably in certain situations. In this case we can replace the word fear with 'uneasiness' or 'concerned'. At first glance, not knowing the meaning of fear seems a positive trait, but it also has a downside in that a lack of fear can make people insensitive and rude. For these people, there is no need to conjure up courage to overcome a difficult situation. In case of emergency, they are likely to have a less affected response than people who do experience fear.
One cannot live in a constant state of fear and therefor we have to learn to deal with it. The ways of reacting to fear are the same for everyone and we can also see these same reactions when we look at animals when they are threatened.
I call the list of possible responses to fear, the Œmenu¹. All of us have such a menu. How do people react when, for example, they stand in a room full of people and feel uncomfortable and insecure, when they feel pressured or tested? How do they deal with these feelings of insecurity? In these situations, people make choices from their menu.