5. Loneliness
The fear of being alone is that dreadful feeling of emptiness caused by the absence of interaction with another human being. This fear has also evolved from one of our early survival instincts: we fear loneliness because it is more likely that we would survive if we live in group.
The fear of loneliness is related to doing something and no one noticing. We often feel that in order for our actions to be meaningful, someone has to notice them. This relates to the philosophy quote “If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?”. If you make a groundbreaking discovery but no one else ever finds about it, does it still count?
4. Ridicule
The fear of ridicule is related to the fear of getting bad criticism, and is also caused by our social fear of not projecting a good enough image of ourselves to others. This fear is most often experienced in what is called “stage fright”. We all have felt it at least once in our lives, having to speak or perform in front of an audience. We fear that we might mess up and cause the audience to respond negatively, either by mocking us with laughter or, in the worst cases, booing. Even though some people practice hard enough to not feel stage fright, or have a well built self-confidence that helps deal with the effects of being laughed at or criticized, the fear of ridicule never really leaves us because we don’t like the feeling of being in the spotlight for a negative reason, and being at the mercy of the opinions of others.
3. Rejection
This social fear is one of the main reasons people act the way they do. We tend to (sometimes blindly) follow the actions of others, because it helps us avoid dealing with rejection from the society. We fear rejection because, like the fear of being alone, most of us can only justify our existence through the acknowledgement and acceptance of others. There are people who argue that acceptance from society is a mere illusion, and that there is no such thing as “normal” behavior from an individual within a society – if this is the case, then why do we fear not behaving “correctly” and in accordance with the cultural norms? This really puts into perspective our whole ethical infrastructure as a society; is something really good or bad just because society says so? [Image From auremar/Shutterstock]
2. Death
This fear is not no. 1, because, even though it is the main reason our instincts tell us to act the way we do, it is a well known truth that we all in the end will kick the bucket. But that doesn’t mean we have death as our worst everyday worry, because we avoid the thought of it as a near future occurrence in our lives.
The fear of death is tightly tied to the fear of the unknown; we don’t know for sure what will happen to us when we leave this world. In fact, we are so interested in death that we have even developed whole cultures and religious beliefs that have tried to give an explanation to death since the beginning of time. Almost all ancient civilizations have a godly form or a method of worshiping death in some way, and we’ve all learned to respect it and eventually accept it.
1. Failure
This fear deserves the top spot because it rules over all our actions and decisions. We all do, and don’t do, things in order to avoid failure. Failure can be a lot of things; realizing you don’t live your life the way you wanted to, not succeeding in your plans, finding yourself helpless, or in the worst cases even hitting rock-bottom.
Failure is a very ambiguous and subjective term because failure is not on the same level and perspective to everyone, what counts as failure to one might not be even halfway there to another. To some, failure is actually a way to learn lessons and try again, so it is not really an end, but a tool for future reference. The main fear of failing comes with the disappointment that follows, that feeling that despite your effort, nothing seemed to go as you wished it did, and it causes a feeling such that you might not even want to try again. That is why this is the worst fear of all, the fear or failure is very often used as an excuse to procrastinate, or not do anything to make situations better – “why bother?” and “I’m just not good enough”.
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