The omnipresent feeling
It was a Thursday, 8:45, the sun was shining, we wanted to go sailing.
Together with a friend I drove on the Salzburg motorway from Munich in the direction of Chiemsee. Carefree and carefree. But then everything was different.
A ghost driver shot us, shortly after Rosenheim. In a flash, I threaded myself from the left to the right lane. We two were lucky. If our frontman had not accelerated right now, the gap would have been missing for threading. We could not have avoided the young drug addict's car. But so it raced in a car of the Bavarian radio, not even a hundred meters behind us. The accident cost Petra Schürmann's daughter Alexandra the life.
Since that morning, I know what it means to be scared. It took me weeks to sleep again one night, months to stop thinking of the ghost driver every day. Since that June 21, 2001, I have never driven past this place again, without remembering how quickly life can be over. Not only for me, but also for the people I love.
Fear is one of our most basic feelings All researchers agree. It warns us of dangers and empowers our bodies to mobilize all reserves in the shortest possible time. The brain emits messengers such as the stress hormones adrenaline and cortisol, which give the body and mind extraordinary power. In ancient times, our ancestors had to decide with lightning speed whether they should flee or fight when a mammoth approached them. I saw, as the ghost driver approached me, everything much sharper than usual, focused only on the saving right lane. A Canadian study has shown that in such moments, people in all cultures of the world have the same facial expression - raised eyebrows and wide-open eyes. This widens the field of vision and provides a survival advantage in case of danger.
The fear has saved me. I have to be grateful to her. But since then she accompanies me, announces itself, as diffused feeling, even without concrete reason. Sometimes she attacks me at night when my husband is away on business. Then I lie awake and I'm afraid there might be a phone call from the police. A few months after the incident on the highway, somebody had actually dialed our number at three o'clock in the morning, a young man, he was wrong. His apology, I have still noticed, even to the flood of relief, which flowed through me, I can remember. Then I had a blackout: A few seconds later I found myself stretched out on the ground, with a big bump on my head. The children had to get a doctor. Had the traumatic experience with the ghost rider left a deeper mark? Or am I particularly scared?
Maybe fear is just contagious. Experiments of American researchers with fear sweat suggest this assumption. But regardless of whether or not it actually spreads via odiferous substances in the air, anxiety is now constantly present in our society. It is omnipresent, a permanent way of life, even though we live safer, healthier and more peaceful than any generation before us. Nobody needs to starve or freeze anymore.
Fear also has a dark side today. It has long ceased to be useful, it has changed its quality. It no longer just warns of immediate dangers, it exaggerates and polarises, and so often hinders our perception of the world. It creates mistrust, insecurity, new fears. It paralyzes us, faints us in the truest sense of the word, like me, in the middle of the night. And at worst, it becomes the all-controlling disease (see box), making people's lives hell.
Fear is a natural part of everyday life.
Strictly speaking, fear today seems to have cynically changed from the elemental to the luxurious feeling of life.
Fear, so the conclusion of the American essayist Barbara Ehrenreich, one must first be able to afford. "In societies that are primarily concerned with survival, fear is not a public issue but a natural part of everyday life," she says. "Cultivating fears is part of the luxury of societies that have overcome or marginalized the permanent struggle for survival."
So the wealth generated exaggerated, sometimes even silly fears: As soon as we go on vacation, driving us the fear of landing in the wrong hotel, because of Montezuma's revenge on the toilet instead of sitting on the beach, to be robbed and not enough to recover. Maybe it even rains.
The fear of missing something not getting the optimum out of us is always present.Even young people are worried about possible future blows. They lived in a dilemma between "supply paradise and fears for the future", stated the Rheingold Institute in his youth study. "Life in modern societies becomes more and more confusing and generates more and more mental dependencies," says the Munich psychologist and author Wolfgang Schmidbauer.
If you have a lot, you can lose a lot. This fuels the fear. Effortlessly we step into the thought-loops of fear. The insurance companies benefit from this. Occupational disability, accident, death - we insure against everything, even against a travel cancellation. With each additional policy, we try to scare the fate a bit more security. Insurances give us the pseudo-feeling of omnipotence. Unfortunately, we fall even deeper when we meet despite regular contributions a stroke of fate. One can not assure against ghost drivers. Not even against Alzheimer's and AIDS, even if we liked this idea. "German fear" - that's what Anglo-Saxon intellectuals called the lifestyle of the Germans at the end of the 1980s. At first this term appeared in connection with the hesitant foreign and security policy of Germany after reunification. In the meantime, however, he stands for much more: a thought-provoking anxiety, a collective blocking paralysis.
Despondency and despondency had spread in Germany before Hartz IV and the consequences of globalization. The Cologne journalist Sabine Bode, author of the book "The German disease - German fear", suspects deep scars in our people's soul, which stem from traumatic war experiences. Out of shame about the Hitler dictatorship and the Holocaust, most families avoided talking about it.
Suffering and guilt have not been processed enough, according to their thesis. It was a mixture of "diffuse feelings of being threatened, a fear of relapse into barbarism and impoverishment" emerged. This collective burden of the past became a burden for the future of future generations, that is, for me and my children.
In the meantime, the Germans are again attested to more nonchalance, even in dealing with the current economic crisis. But such changes take time to establish themselves sustainably in the collective consciousness.
The fear, it seems, mingles through. Dresden scientists have recently found a family connection in anxiety disorders. Children of affected parents therefore have a two- to threefold increased risk of also developing such a disorder. How strong the genes are involved in it can not be said. "Above all, we are examining the question of what parental behavior in dealing with children brings about this extraordinary increase in risk," says Professor Hans-Ulrich Wittchen, who heads the study.
Life is sometimes risk.
Fear is first and foremost an individual feeling - and one that arises in earliest childhood. At this point in time, experiences are burrowing into the brain, organizing and structuring it through feelings such as joy or fear. But: "Today, children no longer have any unobserved time," complains the renowned Danish family therapist Jesper Juul. How does it feel to climb a tree? What happens when you provoke the strongest in the class? Can you eat earthworms? If you can try things like that, you might risk a blue eye or a rotten stomach, but it also explores its limits. And learns early on that life is risk and that prudence can reduce risks. We would probably make our children stronger if we did not care less about them. And we too would live better without constant worrying about ourselves.
Because fear kills creativity and prevents discovery - not only at a young age. And worse, it blocks the careful eye on the here and now. What we are afraid of is always in the future. Those who constantly rack their brains over what might happen to themselves or their loved ones tomorrow will forget how to live and enjoy the present. Life can change from one second to the next, either way.
Two years ago, a very good friend of mine got cancer. After surgery and four months of chemotherapy he was a different person. Since then, he has not been upset about much, many things have become secondary to him. Sometimes fear can be a teacher too. It can remind us to reflect on the present and to be present today. And to focus on what is now and not to think too far into the future. I also understood that on June 21, 2001.
Anxiety disorders: normal - or pathologically panic?
Fear is a natural reaction of the body. Anyone who has a belly-punch before a job interview or stays awake at night and cares for pubescent returnees is not ill.Fear of treatment becomes fearful only when it becomes independent, ie it is triggered without a real threat. About nine percent of all Germans are currently suffering from one anxiety disorder, In terms of the entire life span, even 15 percent of all Germans will eventually go through a phase of anxiety that needs to be addressed. Women are affected almost twice as often as men.
Doctors and psychologists distinguish different ones Types of anxiety disorders.
1. Panic disorder: Sudden attacks of anxiety without concrete cause with palpitations, shortness of breath, pain in the chest; some sufferers fear that they will die.
2. Phobias (Greek "phobos" = fear): Violent, inappropriate, and irrational anxiety reactions to certain stimuli that are considered to be extremely frightening, even though they are harmless. These include, for example:
- the agoraphobia, the "claustrophobia" in front of public streets, squares or means of transport;
- the claustrophobia, the fear of closed spaces such as elevators, department stores or cinemas;
- specific phobias, fears of certain objects such as spraying, of animals (eg spiders) or of situations (eg fear of flying);
- the social phobia, the fear of dealing with other people; Those affected feel panic when they have to speak in front of or with others, are extremely shy and retire more and more.
Anxiety disorders can usually be dealt with behavior therapy heal. Patients are gradually confronted with situations that they are afraid of. Sometimes modern antidepressants help.
More info to do so at www.christoph-dornierstiftung.de
To read more:
Understanding and overcoming fears Doris Wolf (2005, 226 p., 12.80 euros, Pal Verlag);
"The fear book" by Borwin Bandelow (2006, 384 p., 9.95 euros, Rowohlt Tb);
"Everything about fear" by Christophe André (2009, 300 p., 19.95 euros, cross)
