This is the third post regarding dangerous emotions. Here, fear is discussed.
Fear has been labeled ANXIETY, which carried forward can become PANIC. Panic attacks are poorly understood. They are the ultimate result of anxiety. During a panic attack, we feel a fast heartbeat, sweating, nausea, and possibly lightheadedness.
Fear lives on a continuum. The most severe fear is panic. Moving back along the fear continuum we find anxiety. further down we find worry, and still further down, we find concerns. When any emotion becomes strong, it has control of us. We often have no idea what is causing the strong emotion, including anxiety or panic. We can have more power to deal successfully with any emotion if we deal with it when it is not so strong. So the best time to deal with fear is when it is a concern or a worry.
Though we typically don’t control emotions, “they just are”, we do have the ability to alter emotions. Emotions are built on what we believe. We can mitigate difficult emotions by applying new beliefs, in other words the truth, to those false beliefs when the emotions are not so strong.
So, when we have a concern or a worry, we can apply truth to those thoughts. Scripture is our best source of truth. Matthew 6:25 says, “Therefore I say to you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink; nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing?” Reading that whole section of scripture applies even more truth to the concept of fear.
We could print several of those scriptures on a card and place it where we can read it whenever we feel worry or concern and thereby resolve the issues of anxiety and panic.