Last fortnight we spoke about anger. We used the emotion wheel to help us explore how we feel anger, spoke about how anger shows up in our lives, and some of the ways that we cope when anger surfaces.

This fortnight, we are continuing the discussion of emotions by exploring our next emotion; fear. This is the orange section of the wheel: 

Fear has an important role to play in keeping us safe and well. It’s an emotion that brings a strong bodily reaction and helps us to navigate many different situations in our lives. When we think about fear, ways we might describe the feeling of fear include “I feel scared”, “I feel anxious”, “I am overwhelmed” “I feel stressed” “I feel threatened” .

It’s our body’s inbuilt emotional barometer of how safe we feel.

Feeling fear

This emotion might be felt in different ways to other emotions, such as anger, and can impact many different systems in our body. Fear also might be associated with different behaviours. For example: when we feel fear, our body undergoes stress and we might feel our heart rate increase, our breathing change, or other bodily changes:

When we can identify how fear shows up for us, and some of the signs we might be experiencing fear, we can take steps to manage the emotion and our responses.

This discussion will talk about themes such as fear and stress, and topics that could be upsetting or triggering for those reading along. There are questions we have planned ahead of time to keep this conversation safe and constructive, but if at any time you feel distressed, you are welcome to reach out to our peer support or counselling services for additional support.