Fear and anxiety are great contributors to stress in our life. Fear is a clear, real life-threatening danger, such as having a gun pointed at you. Anxiety, on the other hand, is much more subjective. Here's the Britannica's definition of anxiety:

"Anxiety - In psychology, a feeling of dread, fear, or apprehension, often with no clear justification.

Anxiety differs from true fear in that it is typically the product of subjective, internal emotional states rather than a response to a clear and actual danger. It is marked by physiological signs such as sweating, tension, and increased pulse, by doubt concerning the reality and nature of the perceived threat, and by self-doubt about one's capacity to cope with it. Some anxiety inevitably arises in the course of daily life and is normal..."

Even though there's a difference between fear and anxiety, today I'll just call both "fear".

First, let's remember that fear has an important role: it's here to warn us, wake us up to danger, and pump adrenalin into the blood stream, which allows us to choose and carry out our physical reaction, whether it's fight or flight.

But how often do we really get into physical danger? Mostly, when we experience fear or anxiety, it has to do with what's in our head, not with what's in front of us. A good, very common example of such fear is the fear of loss. I'd like to, once again, bring you a real-life example from my life, and show you how I dealt with it:

I want to move to the countryside, and so I am currently house-hunting. When my younger daughter (yes, she's a teenager as you'll see by her reaction) heard about it, she got really mad: "How dare you do this to me? Separating me from all my friends and taking me God-knows-where!"

According to her, I'm allowing her no choice in the matter. She was so angry she simply refused to join the trips I'm now taking all over the country, which are meant to let me decide where I want to live.

All attempts to explain that nothing's settled yet, and that in the meanwhile we can both enjoy these trips, failed. She's boycotted those trips. And me - I freaked out because the whole situation reminded me of another lost relationship, in very similar circumstances.

Will this new house cost me the relationship with my daughter? I feared that I would lose her too, or at least our good relationship.

So I started thinking what I should do. Should I give up my wishes? There will always be someone to object to the changes I want to make.

But would I really be losing our beautiful relationship? Perhaps that isn't necessary. Maybe it doesn't have to be like that.

I can keep on doing what I believe is right, and keep up the communication with my daughter. This is where things broke that other time - all communication simply stopped. This time I would make sure that we kept on communicating, knowing that communication is the key to dealing with most potentially difficult situations in life.

This new understanding allowed me to go from fearing that I would lose this relationship to a certainty that, with honest communication, we can go through this change successfully. Fear left, and with it, stress.

These sorts of fears come up, or may come up, lots of times in everyday life. They are triggered by something we see or do, which reminds us of another event that caused us stress. We fear that we will go back to feeling the same way we felt back then, or that we may get into that same stressful situation again.

But this is a new situation. We are wiser now, and we can handle it differently. All we need is the awareness to the fact that this is a new situation, and therefore it CAN be dealt with differently. The results CAN be different and more to our liking.

When we experience such fears or anxieties, we can ask ourselves:

What is it that scares or scared me?
What past event does this remind me of?
What's different between the two situations, and what's similar?
How can I handle this differently this time, to get what I want? or: What can I say to myself to make myself realize there's nothing to stress about? e.g. If I communicate this time, things will look completely different.

Being aware of having a choice, of the possibility of looking at things differently and handling them differently, is the key to dealing with fear and the stress that follows.

I would like to share a tale about fear with you:

Once there was a young girl, training to become a warrior. And her teacher told her that she must fight Fear. She didn't want to do it. The task seemed too hard, it was scary, and it seemed unfriendly. But her teacher said she must do it, and gave her directions for the duel.

The day came to fight Fear. The warrior girl stood on one side, and Fear stood on the other.

The warrior girl felt very small, and Fear looked big and furious. Both had weapons.

The young warrior pulled herself together and took a step towards Fear. She bowed three times and asked: "May I fight you?"

Fear said, "Thank you for being so respectful and asking my permission".

The young warrior said, "How can I defeat you?"

Fear replied: "My weapons are that I talk fast, and get very close to your face. That's how I disarm you, and get you to do all that I say. If you don't do what I say, I have no power. You can listen to me, and you can respect me. I might even convince you that I'm right. But if you don't do as I say, I have no power."

That's how the warrior student learned how to defeat fear.

2006 Dvora Ifat and Shunit Ben-Tzvi