What is fear? If you’ve ever hesitated to talk to someone you like, or been anxious when your family member got sick, you’ve felt it for real. You, me, our friends and our parents — we all live in constant fear, sometimes without even realizing it. Fear is a powerful force that lives inside you and governs your every action, whether you like it or not. We feel it the strongest when we meet something that scares us. A stranger in a dark alley right behind you. A loud noise out of nowhere in complete silence. A frantic honk of a car when you’re crossing the street.

There are lots of types of fear. The instinctive, animal one is the most basic: the fear for your life and the fear of pain are given to us as a means of self-preservation. They don’t let us do stupid things that could lead to injuries or worse. Like fear of heights: you look down from the top of a high-rise building and your head is spinning because you don’t want to fall — you’re scared. Fear resides in our deepest and darkest self. It was born because it helped our earliest ancestors survive. Now, it’s become something we have to overcome every single day. So what causes fear? And can we overcome it?

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