Fear is a natural human response and has, thus, been experience by each one of us at some point of time in our lives. It could be a simple fear of saying something wrong in public, fear of lizards or fear of unknown.
Fear basically arises out of distrust of people or situation. And distrust here is not simply a lack of belief but it is actually a sense of uneasiness borne out of the feeling that something might go wrong at an unknown point of time. This sometime makes one reach preemptively, which means that one changes one’s behavior too drastically and too suddenly. When the reaction is of a disproportionate alarm, the person might be said to be suffering from some kind of phobia.
Another form of fear is called terror, which is nothing but a fear of extreme kind. When one is struck by this kind of extreme fear the chemical response in the brain prevents the person from making a rational decision, and therefore, reacts without thinking in panic. It is possible that a person’s response might be far greater than what the situation demands. In other words, the person might overreact in panic.
Fear does reside in all of us in varying degrees but it becomes a problem when this fear takes control of our lives and prevents us from doing something that we want to do or make us do something that we don’t want to do. It is then that the fear becomes a disability. For instance, one is just too afraid to speak in public, which is to say if he or she is suffering from glassophobia, one might want to convey one’s point to everyone but his fear, over which he has no control, would prevent him from doing so. In this case it is a crippling disability. (Glassophobia is a fear of public speaking)
Since phobia is a product of mind, the only to way to fight it, is to make one’s mind stronger and immune to fear-thoughts. Identifying one’s fear is the first step and then facing it gradually is how one could overcome fear permanently. So, if you afraid of public speaking, start talking to a group of two informally, then with a group of three people. And then increase it to ten and more. You wouldn’t even know when you got rid of your fear.
Fear actually is not all that bad because it is our natural biological response to the situations that may endanger life. If it were not there, we would be far more inclined to put others and ourselves in danger. But excess of everything is bad; so when fear is excessive, it becomes a disability.