Is it normal to fear the future

Soc Cogn Affect. Brown VJ. Risk perception: It's personal. Environ Health Perspect. Using brief cognitive restructuring and cognitive defusion techniques to cope with negative thoughts. Behav Modif. Khng KH. A better state-of-mind: Deep breathing reduces state anxiety and enhances test performance through regulating test cognitions in children. Cogn Emot. Your Privacy Rights.

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Avoid Fortune Telling. Analyze Risks. Schedule Time to Worry. Replace Worrisome Thoughts. Use Relaxation Techniques. Getting Help. Recap Some amount of stress and worry are normal, but chronic anxiety about the future can have a detrimental effect on your health and well-being.

The Best Online Therapy Programs We've tried, tested and written unbiased reviews of the best online therapy programs including Talkspace, Betterhelp, and Regain. Was this page helpful? In retirement, fear of having to go into care, lose loved ones or becoming a burden are some of the biggest fears! Fear of the Future can create a feeling of danger or impending doom. This can drive us to act in ways that is out of the normal behaviour pattern.

It can stimulate aggression, panic, rapid or erratic movements, exaggerated movements that are never normally attempted. Fear creates several body conditions, which include:- sickness, stiffness or numbness in the body and a drugging, paralytic kind of feeling. Quite often, opportunities are missed and situations are blown out of perspective, essentially because of the inner fear. It drives us to destruction fear consumes our thoughts and drives us to commit mistakes. Fear can create physical reactions in the human body as instinctively the body prepares to respond to an emergency.

As blood sugars and blood flow to the muscles increase the mind becomes focused on the object of fear and a number of physical symptoms appear that can. Over lengthy periods of time fears may increase causing irritability, sleeplessness, headaches, disrupted concentration, anxiety planning for the future , sexual problems, loss of libido, and loss of self confidence.

Long-term fear can dominate people s lives and stop people from traveling, working or even leaving the home, changing jobs, changing homes, giving talks or socialising. Long-term fear can lead to phobias, anxiety disorders, panic attack and obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Fear of the Future is actually an illusion created by the mind. It is not real and we do have the potential to change. Changing perceptions can break the chains of fear and bring in joy. There are many prescribed drugs that can be used to suppress on-going fear however treatments that involve long term dependency on harmful drugs can have long term side effects and cause further complications to the health and wellbeing of those individuals.

First face up to your fear. Determine exactly what it is that makes you fearful. The future is yet to be created, focus on the present and establish what you would love to do if fear was not a problem.

You hold the key to your dreams; believe in them! Knowing you fear or self-discovery is the second step. Anxiety is a word we use for some types of fear that are usually to do with the thought of a threat or something going wrong in the future, rather than right now.

Fear and anxiety can last for a short time and then pass, but they can also last much longer and you can get stuck with them. In some cases they can take over your life, affecting your ability to eat, sleep, concentrate, travel, enjoy life, or even leave the house or go to work or school. This can hold you back from doing things you want or need to do, and it also affects your health. Some people become overwhelmed by fear and want to avoid situations that might make them frightened or anxious.

It can be hard to break this cycle, but there are lots of ways to do it. Lots of things make us feel afraid. Being afraid of some things — like fires — can keep you safe.

Just knowing what makes you afraid and why can be the first step to sorting out problems with fear. How can we manage and reduce stress? Our free downloadable pocket guide offers you tips: www.

It is used when the fear is about something in the future rather than what is happening right now. When you feel frightened or seriously anxious, your mind and body work very quickly. These are some of the things that might happen: [5]. These things occur because your body, sensing fear, is preparing you for an emergency, so it makes your blood flow to the muscles, increases blood sugar, and gives you the mental ability to focus on the thing that your body perceives as a threat.

With anxiety, in the longer term, you may have some of the above symptoms as well as a more nagging sense of fear, and you may get irritable, have trouble sleeping, develop headaches, or have trouble getting on with work and planning for the future; you might have problems having sex, and might lose self-confidence.

Early humans needed the fast, powerful responses that fear causes, as they were often in situations of physical danger; however, we no longer face the same threats in modern-day living. Despite this, our minds and bodies still work in the same way as our early ancestors, and we have the same reactions to our modern worries about bills, travel and social situations.

Instead of alerting you to a danger and preparing you to respond to it, your fear or anxiety can kick in for any perceived threat, which could be imaginary or minor. Some people feel a constant sense of anxiety all the time, without any particular trigger. Even if you can see how out of proportion a fear is, the emotional part of your brain keeps sending danger signals to your body. A phobia is an extreme fear of a particular animal, thing, place or situation.

People with phobias have an overwhelming need to avoid any contact with the specific cause of the anxiety or fear. The thought of coming into contact with the cause of the phobia makes you anxious or panicky. Fear and anxiety can affect all of us every now and then. It is only when it is severe and long-lasting that doctors class it as a mental health problem. The same is true if a phobia is causing problems in your daily life, or if you are experiencing panic attacks.

If you always avoid situations that scare you, you might stop doing things you want or need to do. Anxiety problems tend to increase if you get into this pattern.