Copyright (c) 2010 Dave Smart

Just as the strength of our instinct of self-preservation is grounded in the genes we have inherited from the survivors of the mass extinctions of prehistoric Earth , so the fear of winter is grounded in the genes of the survivors of the Ice Ages.

Not so much the fear of the winter or of the cold; but the fear that it will never end. For in the Ice Ages it was for many parts of the world a winter that lasted for thousands of years. And despite all the evidence of global warming, it could happen again. A year of too much solar radiation reflected into space from snowfields of Canada, Alaska and Siberia; possibly aided by large volcanic eruptions throwing particulates into the upper air; would significantly cool the earth; and in the following winter new snow would fall over the old.

It is not surprising that the mythologies of the cultures of temperate and sub-Arctic peoples have strong stories that explain the seasons, stories generally absent from tropical and subtropical cultures. For instance in Greco-Roman myth the story of Demeter (Ceres) and Persephone and the god of the underworld Hades, "explains" the seasons as the beautiful Persephone spends six months with her mother Demeter: the summer; and six months with her husband Hades: the winter. Stories like these comforted uneasy people during the long cold winter months, who feared that the winter might never end. There is a roughly similar myth of yearly cycle among such native Americans as the Hopi, where the kachina spirits spend six months on earth, then six months in the spirit world.

We think of fear as weakening us, and indeed it does if we allow it to. But the fears we acquire result from concentration of psychic energies, and so of a particular form of strength. For instance, after spending most of a lifetime driving on the right side of the road (in America), we would have a great fear of driving around a blind curve on the left side, or of riding with someone who so drove.

Some of our fears are acquired from the accumulated strength of years of avoidances and boundary building. Others are instinctual, in our genes, such as our fear of perpetual winters. But the common denominator is psychic strength. Roosevelt's famous saying could be revised to: "The only thing to fear is our MISCONCEPTION of the nature of fear."

But how can I overcome fears that do not serve me?

Fears come from a series of commitments to avoidance or to set boundaries. For instance a fear of spiders develops from such continued commitments, until it greatly exceeds whatever motivations may have originally led to the commitments. You begin the process of overcoming the fear by facing some aspect of spiders that you can tolerate without flinching or putting up defenses: such as a small black-and-white photo of a spider, for instance. And from there you graduate to ever more graphic and realistic depictions of spiders.

In Toastmasters people come in terrified to speak before others, but eventually become effective, if not great, speakers and leaders. It happens by overcoming a fear of public speaking. They do it just a little at a time, facing that little that they can tolerate, then gradually increasing that toleration threshold. Some go from Toastmasters into theater and other performing arts.