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Personal Reflection: Overcoming Fear and Growing as a Person

• Categories: Overcoming Challenges Personal Growth and Development

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Published: Feb 7, 2024

Words: 534 | Page: 1 | 3 min read

Table of contents

My experience with overcoming fear, the importance of self-reflection, the role of relationships in personal development, the value of personal responsibility.

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Turning Fear into Confidence—A Personal Essay

October 14, 2020

Facing obstacles throughout your life is inevitable, and the obstacles you overcome can define who you are as a person. Not only will this build character and self-confidence, it will show others how strong you remained and inspire them to overcome their own challenges.

But overcoming obstacles is no simple task. Most obstacles are incredibly hard and testing. Yet, by overcoming them, you will come to understand why they are important. The significance of overcoming obstacles in life is to make you more grounded, courageous, and wise. For me, one of these life-altering obstacles emerged during my undergraduate years.

I had a serious fear of public speaking. There were times where I would struggle with presentations and in-class discussions. When these sessions would take place, my fear built up in a pressure cooker of discouragement and convulsive anguish. I felt humiliated before my teachers, partners, and most of all, my close friends. I soon realized, however, that the same people who seemed to be the source of my fear became my lifeline, their inspirational words filling my mind and heart with positive thoughts.

Seeing my struggles, my peers tried to build me up, to increase my confidence in myself and convince me that anything, including overcoming my fear of public speaking, could be accomplished with enough enthusiasm and belief in oneself.

The obstacles we face in life can distort how we see ourselves and cripple our ability to face our fears. By facing these conflicts head on, though, we can completely flip their effect on us, transforming them into experiences that strengthen our resilience and push the boundaries of what we think is possible to achieve.

Taking everything into account everything I’ve learned from this experience and many others like it that I’ve encountered in my life, it’s clear that obstacles are impossible to avoid, and when you do encounter them, you must view them as learning opportunities. You might just surprise yourself at how easily you overcome them.

This post was written by Duke TIP’s outgoing Marketing & Communications intern, Christina Gordon. Christina graduated from North Carolina Central University in the spring of 2020.

About Duke TIP

The Duke University Talent Identification Program (Duke TIP) is a nonprofit organization that has served over three million academically talented students in grades 4–12 since it was founded in 1980. Collaborating with educators and parents, TIP helps gifted students assess the extent of their academic abilities with above-grade-level testing, recognizes them for their achievements, and provides them with a variety of enrichment benefits as well as accelerated face-to-face and online educational programs.

How to Write a Reflective Essay: Easy Guide with Pro Tips

Defining What is a Reflective Essay: Purpose + Importance

Being present is a cornerstone of mindfulness and meditation. You must have often heard that staying in the moment helps you appreciate your surroundings, connects you with people and nature, and allows you to feel whatever emotions you must feel without anxiety. While this is helpful advice as you become more focused and avoid getting lost in thought, how can you truly appreciate the present without reflecting on your past experiences that have led you to the current moment?

We don't say that you should dwell on the past and get carried away with a constant thought process, but hey, hear us out - practice reflective thinking! Think back on your previous life events, paint a true picture of history, and make connections to your present self. This requires you to get a bit analytical and creative. So you might as well document your critical reflection on a piece of paper and give direction to your personal observations. That's when the need for reflective essays steps in!

In a reflective essay, you open up about your thoughts and emotions to uncover your mindset, personality, traits of character, and background. Your reflective essay should include a description of the experience/literature piece as well as explanations of your thoughts, feelings, and reactions. In this article, our essay writer service will share our ultimate guide on how to write a reflective essay with a clear format and reflective essay examples that will inspire you.

How to Write a Reflective Essay with a Proper Reflective Essay Outline

To give you a clear idea of structuring a reflective essay template, we broke down the essential steps below. Primarily, the organization of a reflective essay is very similar to other types of papers. However, our custom writers got more specific with the reflective essay outline to ease your writing process.

Reflective Essay Introduction

When wondering how to start a reflective essay, it is no surprise that you should begin writing your paper with an introductory paragraph. So, what's new and different with the reflection essay introduction? Let's dissect:

• Open your intro with an attention-seizing hook that engages your audience into reflective thinking with you. It can be something like: 'As I was sitting on my bed with my notebook placed on my shaky lap waiting for the letter of acceptance, I could not help but reflect, was enrolling in college the path I wanted to take in the future?'
• Provide context with a quick overview of the reflective essay topic. Don't reveal too much information at the start to prevent your audience from becoming discouraged to continue reading.
• Make a claim with a strong reflective essay thesis statement. It should be a simple explanation of the essay's main point, in this example, a specific event that had a big impact on you.

Reflective Essay Body Paragraphs

The next step is to develop the body of your essay. This section of the paper may be the most challenging because it's simple to ramble and replicate yourself both in the outline and the actual writing. Planning the body properly requires a lot of time and work, and the following advice can assist you in doing this effectively:

• Consider using a sequential strategy. This entails reviewing everything you wish to discuss in the order it occurred. This method ensures that your work is structured and cohesive.
• Make sure the body paragraph is well-rounded and employs the right amount of analysis. The body should go into the effects of the event on your life and the insights you've gained as a consequence.
• Prioritize reflecting rather than summarizing your points. In addition to giving readers insight into your personal experience, a reflective stance will also show off your personality and demonstrate your ability to handle certain challenges.

Reflective Essay Conclusion

The goal of your reflective essay conclusion should be to tie everything together by summarizing the key ideas raised throughout, as well as the lessons you were able to take away from experience.

• Don't forget to include the reasons for and the methods used to improve your beliefs and actions. Think about how your personality and skills have changed as well.
• What conclusions can you draw about your behavior in particular circumstances? What could you do differently if the conditions were the same in the future?

Remember that your instructor will be searching for clear signs of reflection.

Understanding a Reflection Paper Format

The format of reflective essay greatly differs from an argumentative or research paper. A reflective essay is more of a well-structured story or a diary entry rife with insight and reflection. You might be required to arrange your essay using the APA style or the MLA format.

And the typical reflection paper length varies between 300 and 700 words, but ask your instructor about the word length if it was assigned to you. Even though this essay is about you, try to avoid too much informal language.

If your instructor asks you to use an APA or MLA style format for reflective essay, here are a few shortcuts:

Reflective Essay in MLA Format

• Times New Roman 12pt font double spaced;
• 1" margins;
• The top right includes the last name and page number on every page;
• Titles are centered;
• The header should include your name, your professor's name, course number, and the date (dd/mm/yy);
• The last page includes a Works Cited.

Reflective Essay in APA Style

• Include a page header on the top of every page;
• Insert page number on the right;
• Your reflective essay should be divided into four parts: Title Page, Abstract, Main Body, and References.

Reflective Essay Writing Tips

You may think we've armed you with enough tips and pointers for reflective writing, but it doesn't stop here. Below we gathered some expert-approved tips for constructing uncontested reflection papers.

• Be as detailed as possible while writing. To make your reflective essay writing come to life, you should employ several tactics such as symbolism, sentence patterns, etc.
• Keep your audience in mind. The reader will become frustrated if you continue writing in the first person without taking a moment to convey something more important, even though you will likely speak about something from your own perspective.
• Put forth the effort to allow the reader to feel the situation or emotion you are attempting to explain.
• Don't preach; demonstrate. Instead of just reporting what happened, use description appropriately to paint a clear picture of the event or sensation.
• Plan the wording and structure of your reflective essay around a central emotion or subject, such as joy, pleasure, fear, or grief.
• Avoid adding dull elements that can lessen the effect of your work. Why include it if it won't enhance the emotion or understanding you wish to convey?
• There must be a constant sense of progression. Consider whether the event has transformed you or others around you.
• Remember to double-check your grammar, syntax, and spelling.

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Reflective Essay Topic Ideas

As a reflective essay should be about your own views and experiences, you generally can't use someone else's ideas. But to help you get started, here are some suggestions for writing topics:

• An experience you will never forget.
• The moment you overcame a fear.
• The most difficult choice you had to make.
• A time your beliefs were challenged.
• A time something changed your life.
• The happiest or most frightening moment of your life so far.
• Ways you think you or people can make the world a better place.
• A time you felt lost.
• An introspective look at your choices or a time you made the wrong choice.
• A moment in your life you would like to relive.

You may find it convenient to create a chart or table to keep track of your ideas. Split your chart into three parts:

• In the first column, write key experiences or your main points. You can arrange them from most important to least important.
• In the second column, list your response to the points you stated in the first column.
• In the third column, write what, from your response, you would like to share in the essay.

Meanwhile, if you're about to enroll in your dream university and your mind is constantly occupied with - 'how to write my college admissions essay?', order an academic essay on our platform to free you of unnecessary anxiety.

Reflective Essay Sample

Referring to reflective essay examples can help you a lot. A reflective essay sample can provide you with useful insight into how your essay should look like. You can also buy an essay online if you need one customized to your specific requirements.

How to Conclude a Reflective Essay

As we come to an end, it's only logical to reflect on the main points discussed above in the article. By now, you should clearly understand what is a reflective essay and that the key to writing a reflective essay is demonstrating what lessons you have taken away from your experiences and why and how these lessons have shaped you. It should also have a clear reflective essay format, with an opening, development of ideas, and resolution.

Now that you have the tools to create a thorough and accurate reflective paper, you might want to hand over other tasks like writing definition essay examples to our experienced writers. In this case, feel free to buy an essay online on our platform and reflect on your past events without worrying about future assignments!

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Related Articles

• Yale Divinity School

Reflections

You are here, theologies of hope.

This article is a shortened adaptation of a two-part “For the Life of the World” podcast on the theme of hope that YDS Professor Miroslav Volf posted in summer 2020, produced by the Yale Center for Faith & Culture. You can listen here to podcast Part 1 and Part 2 .

Fear, more than hope, is characteristic of our time. In the late 1960s, we were optimistic about the century’s hopes for the triumph of justice and something like universal peace, but that has given way to increasing pessimism. “No future” scenarios have become plausible to us. As I write in summer 2020, the coronavirus pandemic gives the dominant shape to our anxieties. But even before the pandemic, we feared more than we hoped. We feared and continue to fear falling behind as the gap widens between the ultra-rich and the rest who are condemned to run frantically just to stay in the same place yet often cannot prevent falling behind. We fear the collapse of the ecosystem straining under the burden of our ambitions, the revenge of nature for violence we perpetrate against it. We fear loss of cultural identities as the globe shrinks, and people, driven by war, ecological devastation, and deprivation, migrate to where they can survive and thrive.

Politically, the consequence is the rise of identity politics and nationalism, both driven largely by fear. Culturally, the consequences are dystopian movies and literature, and the popularity of pessimistic philosophies. In religious thought and imagination, too, apocalyptic moods are again in vogue. Hope seems impossible; fear feels overwhelming.

A Thing With Feathers

The Apostle Paul has penned some of the most famous lines about hope ever written: “For in hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what is seen? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience” (Romans 8:24-25). Hope is a strange thing – as Emily Dickinson declares in her famous poem , it’s a “thing with feathers” perched in our soul, ready to take us on its wings to some future good. In fact, hope is a thing that has already taken us to that good with the tune that it sings. In hope – or perhaps by hope – “we were saved,” writes Apostle Paul. In hope, a future good which isn’t yet, somehow already is. A future good we cannot see, which waits in darkness, still qualifies our entire existence. We might be suffering or experiencing “hardship … distress … persecution … famine … nakedness … peril … sword … we are being killed all day long” (Romans 8:18, 35-36), and yet we have been saved and we are saved.

Interpreting the phrase “in hope we are saved,” Martin Luther suggested in his Lectures on Romans that just as love transforms the lover into the beloved, so “hope changes the one who hopes into what is hoped for.” [1]   Thus, a key feature of hope is that it stretches a person into the unknown, the hidden, the darkness of unknown possibility. For Paul this can happen because God is with us – God who gives life to the dead and calls into existence things that do not exist.

Hope vs. Optimism vs. Expectation

When I hope, I expect something in the future. I cannot hope for my 18-year-old son to know how to ride a bike, because he knows that already. But I can hope for him to do well in college, for that’s where he is headed in the fall. Without expectation for the future, there can be no hope. But we don’t hope for everything we can expect in the future. We generally don’t hope for natural occurrences, such as a new day that dawns after a dark and restful night; I know , more or less, that the next day will come. But I may hope for cool breezes to freshen up a hot summer day. We reserve the term “hope” for the expectation of things that we cannot fully control or predict with a high degree of certainty. The way we generally use the word, “hope” can be roughly defined as the expectation of good things that don’t come to us as a matter of course . That’s the distinction between hope and expectation.

The God who creates out of nothing, the God who makes the dead alive, justifies hope that is otherwise unjustifiable.

In his justly famous book Theology of Hope (1964), Jürgen Moltmann, one of the greatest theologians of the second part of the 20th century, made another important distinction, that between hope and optimism. [2] The source of the distinction relates to the specific way some ancient biblical writers understand hope. Optimism, if it is justified, is based on extrapolations we make about the future based upon what we can reasonably discern to be tendencies in the present. Meteorologists observe weather patterns around the globe and release their forecasts for the next day: the day will be unseasonably warm, but in the early afternoon winds will pick up and bring some relief; now you have reason to be optimistic that the afternoon will be pleasant, perhaps you even look forward to sailing your little 12-foot sloop on three-foot swells. Or, to take another scenario, you and your spouse are healthy adults of childbearing age, you have had no trouble conceiving, and the obstetrician tells you that your pregnancy is going well; you have reason to be optimistic that you will give birth to a healthy child. The present contains the seeds of the future, and if it is well with these seeds, the future that will grow will be good as well. That’s reasonable optimism.

Hope, argued Moltmann, is different. Hope is not based on accurate extrapolation about the future from the character of the present; the hoped-for future is not born out of the present. The future good that is the object of hope is a new thing, novum , that comes in part from outside the situation. Correspondingly, hope is, in Emily Dickinson’s felicitous phrase, like a bird that flies in from outside and “perches in the soul.” Optimism in dire situations reveals an inability to understand what is going on or an unwillingness to accept it and is therefore an indication of foolishness or weakness. In contrast, hope during dire situations, hope notwithstanding the circumstances, is a sign of courage and strength.

What is the use of hope not based on evidence or reason, you may wonder? Think of the alternative. What happens when we identify hope with reasonable expectation? Facing the shocking collapse of what we had expected with good reasons, we will slump into hopelessness at the time when we need hope the most! Hope helps us identify signs of hope as signs of hope rather than just anomalies in an otherwise irreparable situation, as indicators of a new dawn rather than the last flickers of a dying light. Hope also helps us to press on with determination and courage. When every course of action by which we could reach the desired future seems destined to failure, when we cannot reasonably draw a line that would connect the terror of the present with future joy, hope remains indomitable and indestructible. When we hope, we always hope against reasonable expectations. That’s why Emily Dickinson’s bird of hope “never stops” singing – in the sore storm, in the chilliest land, on the strangest sea.

Hope Needs Endurance, Endurance Needs Hope

We are most in need of hope under an affliction and menace we cannot control, yet it is in those situations that it is most difficult for us to hold onto hope and not give ourselves over to darkness as our final state. That is where patience and endurance come in. In the same letter to the Romans, in the same passage that celebrates hope and its transformative darkness, Paul writes: “If we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience” (Romans 8:25). “Patience” is here the translation of hypomone , which is better rendered as endurance, or perhaps “patient endurance.” 

Neither patience nor endurance are popular emotions or skills. Our lives are caught in a whirlwind of accelerated changes; we have little endurance for endurance, no patience with patience. Technological advances promise to give us lives of ease; having to endure anything strikes us as a defeat. And yet, when a crisis hits, we need endurance as much as we need hope. Or, more precisely, we need genuine hope, which, to the extent that it is genuine, is marked by endurance.

When the great Apostle says in Romans 8:25 that if we hope, we wait with endurance, he implies that hope generates endurance: because we hope we can endure present suffering. That was his point in the opening statement of the section on suffering in Romans 8:18: “I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us.” The hope of future glory makes present suffering bearable. But, in Romans 5:3-5, he inverts the relation between hope and endurance. There he writes, “suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope.” Now endurance helps generate hope. Putting the two texts together, Romans 8 and Romans 5, we can say: hope needs endurance and endurance needs hope; genuine endurance is marked by hope; and genuine hope is marked by endurance.

The God of Promises

More than half a century after his Theology of Hope , Jürgen Moltmann has written an essay, On Patience (2018), about two aspects of patience we find in the biblical traditions: forbearance and endurance. Writing as a 92-year-old, he begins the second paragraph of this essay on patience autobiographically:

In my youth, I learned to know “the God of hope” and loved the beginnings of a new life with new ideas. But in my old age I am learning to know “the God of patience” and stay in my place in life . [3]

Youth and old age, Moltmann goes on to say, are not about chronology, but about experiences in life and stances toward life. Hope and patience belong both to youth and to old age; they complement each other. He continues:

Without endurance, hope turns superficial and evaporates when it meets first resistances. In hope we start something new, but only endurance helps us persevere. Only tenacious endurance makes hope sustainable. We learn endurance only with the help of hope. On the other hand, when hope gets lost, endurance turns into passivity. Hope turns endurance into active passivity. In hope we affirm the pain that comes with endurance, and learn to tolerate it. [4]

Hope and endurance – neither can be truly itself without the other. And for the Apostle Paul, both our hope and our ability to endure – our enduring hope – are rooted in the character of God. Toward the end of Romans, he highlights both “the God of endurance” (or steadfastness) and “the God of hope” (Romans 15:5, 13). Those who believe in that God – the God who is the hope of Israel, the God who is the hope of Gentiles and the hope of the whole earth – are able to be steadfast and endure fear-inducing situations they cannot change and in which no good future seems to be in sight. But more than just endure. Paul, the persecuted apostle who experienced himself as “always carrying in the body the death of Jesus,” was hoping for more than just endurance from the God of hope. Toward the very end of his letter to the Christians in Rome – in the second of what looks like four endings of the letter – he writes: “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit” (Romans 15:13). In the midst of affliction, the God of hope opens us up for the possibility of joy and comprehensive well-being.

Our salvation lies in hope, but not in hope that insists on the future good it has imagined, but in hope ready to rejoice in the kind of good that actually comes our way. The God who creates out of nothing, the God who makes dead alive – the God of the original beginning of all things and the God of new beginnings – justifies hope that is otherwise unjustifiable. When that God makes a promise, we can hope.

Miroslav Volf is Henry B. Wright Professor of Theology at YDS and founding director of the Yale Center for Faith & Culture. He is the author of A Public Faith: How Followers of Christ Should Serve the Common Good (Brazos, 2011) and other books.

[1] Martin Luther, Lectures on Romans , edited by Hilton C. Oswald, volume 25 of Luther’s Works , edited by Jaroslav Pelikan and Helmut Lehmann (Concordia Publishing House, 1972), p. 364.

[2] Jürgen Moltmann, Theology of Hope: On the Ground and the Implications of a Christian Eschatology , translated by Margaret Kohl (HarperSanFrancisco, 1991).

[3] Jürgen Moltmann, Über Geduld, Barmherzigkeit und Solidarität (Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 2018), p. 13, my translation.

[4] Moltmann, pp. 13-14.

Reviewed by Psychology Today Staff

If people didn’t feel fear, they wouldn’t be able to protect themselves from legitimate threats. Fear is a vital response to physical and emotional danger that has been pivotal throughout human evolution, but especially in ancient times when men and women regularly faced life-or-death situations.

Today, the stakes are lower, but while public speaking , elevators, and spiders don’t present the same type of immediately dire consequences that faced early man, some individuals still develop extreme fight-flight-or-freeze responses to specific objects or scenarios.

Many people experience occasional bouts of fear or “nerves” before a flight, first date, or big game. But when someone’s fear is persistent and specific to certain threat, and impairs his or her everyday life, that person might have what’s known as a specific phobia.

• Why People Feel Fear
• Specific Phobias
• Social Anxiety
• Overcoming Fear

At least 60 percent of adults admit to having at least one unreasonable fear, although research to date is not clear on why these fears manifest. One theory is that humans have a genetic predisposition to fear things that were a threat to our ancestors, such as snakes, spiders, heights, or water, but this is difficult to verify, although people who have a first-degree relative with a specific phobia appear more likely to have the same one. Others point to evidence that individuals fear certain things because of a previous traumatic experience with them, but that fails to explain the many fears without such origins.

Personality traits such as neuroticism appear to increase one's likelihood of developing a phobia, and a tendency toward frequent worries and negative thoughts may also increase the risk, as may being raised by overprotective parents, losing a parent, or sexual or physical abuse. Most likely is that people follow multiple pathways to fears , not least among them the emotional response of disgust.

Throughout human history, certain animals, such as snakes and spiders, have caused high numbers of deaths. Thus, some researchers believe, men and women may have evolved to carry an innate instinct to avoid such creatures, as it would deliver a survival advantage. Some studies have shown that it’s easier to condition people without apparent fears of any animals to fear snakes and spiders than to fear dogs or other “friendly” creatures. Studies of other primates show that they share humans’ fear of snakes , leading some to speculate that such fears themselves may have spurred the growth of primate intelligence overall, as humans and others evolved to avoid the dangers posed by such threats.

Research shows that babies do not appear to show signs of fear until around 8 to 12 months of age, usually in response to new people or events, but they are less likely to show a fear of strangers when sitting on a parent’s lap. And while some fears may be innate in humans, many fears are learned , perhaps most commonly by seeing a parent react fearfully to an animal or situation, or to frequently warn a child about its dangers.

There are times when people actively pursue experiences that could scare them, like a roller coaster or a haunted house attraction . Some research suggests that even though these experiences can be truly frightening in the moment, they may also boost people’s moods: The scare response is sincere, but the quick reassurance of safety delivers an equally strong jolt of relief and enjoyment that may linger well after the experience.

Some feelings commonly described as “fears” are not strictly phobias, but mental obstacles that limit people’s actions and decisions, often preventing them from making progress, such as the fear of failure , the fear of success, the fear of rejection , the fear of missing out, or the fear of commitment. These feelings of insecurity, unworthiness, or indecision can often be addressed in therapy .

A phobia is a distinct fear or anxiety about a certain object or situation, exposure to which consistently provokes fear or causes distress in the sufferer. The fear experienced is almost always disproportionate to the true danger the object or event poses, and people with specific phobias generally know there is no real reason to be afraid and that their behavior is not logical. However, they cannot avoid their reaction.

Phobias fall into five broad categories:

• Fears of animals, such as fear of dogs (cynophobia), spiders (arachnophobia), or bugs ( insectophobia or entomophobia) . These fears, known as zoophobias, also include the fear of bats ( chiroptophobia) and of snakes or lizards (herpetophobia).
• Fears of the natural environment, such as a fear of heights (acrophobia) or of storms. These phobias also include fear of fire ( pyrophobia) and fear of the dark (nyctophobia).
• Fears related to blood ( hemophobia) , injury, and injection, such as a fear of needles ( trypanophobia) or medical procedures including dentistry ( dentophobia).
• Situational fears, such as a fear of flying ( aerophobia), a fear of public speaking (glossophobia) , or a fear of riding in elevators, which is itself a type of fear of closed spaces ( claustrophobia).
• Others, such as a fear of vomiting or choking.

Phobias can manifest at any time, but tend to emerge in childhood or adolescence , and the symptoms are often lifelong. In some cases, exposure to the feared object or situation (the phobic stimulus) can cause full or limited panic attacks. As many as 9 percent of Americans annually experience a specific phobia, according to the DSM-5 , and women are twice as likely as men to have a phobia. It’s not uncommon to have multiple phobias: three-quarters of individuals diagnosed with a specific phobia have more than one and the average sufferer has three. The onset of a phobia can sometimes be traced to a specific event, like surviving a plane crash or being attacked by a dog. But for many more people, the origin of the phobia remains unknown. Some people with a specific phobia change their lifestyles to avoid their triggers, moving to a region where certain animals are rare, for example, or where there is no subway.

To learn more about causes and treatments, see our Diagnosis Dictionary .

Agoraphobia is the fear of situations that would be difficult to escape from or from which it would be difficult to get help, such as being in a movie theater or subway car. People with agoraphobia may fear public transportation, open spaces such as bridges, enclosed spaces like elevators, crowded places like concerts, and being away from home in general. Sufferers may become highly distressed when they find themselves in such situations and will go out of their way to avoid them.

Fear of heights is a common phobia, and one that is often experienced intensely. In fact, the symptoms often mirror those of a panic attack, including trembling, sweaty palms, nausea, and dizziness. Some have this phobia because of a traumatic experience but research suggests that, for many others, this fear, and similar ones such as claustrophobia, is a consequence of being more acutely aware of their bodily sensations than others, and more likely to interpret those sensations as threatening, leading to negative thoughts about jumping, losing their balance, or having a heart attack.

It’s often stated that the fear of public speaking is the most common phobia. It isn’t; only about one in four people report experiencing it. But when those with glossophobia are asked to speak before a group, the fear can be paralyzing. People who generally experience high levels of anxiety may worry not only that their speech will be ineffective but that their anxiety will somehow undermine their performance. For others, there are plenty of other sources of discomfort, such as feeling unqualified to speak with expertise, worrying about being evaluated by higher-status colleagues, and, quite commonly, overestimating the stakes of their performance.

Preparation, practice, support from others, and learning to put oneself in a calmer, more relaxed state can all help ease the fear of public speaking , but one of the most important steps people can take is to challenge their beliefs. Cognitive reframing of one’s worries—challenging beliefs about being boring , anxious, or uninformed and replacing them with more favorable, supportive, and, significantly, realistic statements can help someone gain confidence and more accurately perceive the level of threat.

Clown-like characters have been a part of popular culture for centuries. Yet some people have always found them creepy, and about 2 percent of the population experiences coulrophobia, or a fear of clowns . The reaction may be due not just to news reports of crimes by people in clown masks or makeup, but to the ambiguity that even harmless clowns present. With painted-on, unchanging expressions, clowns’ emotions can be hard to read and their intentions may seem unpredictable. The phenomenon known as deindividuation, leads to further unease: Since the identities of the men or women behind the makeup are hidden, others may become fearful of what they might do under cover of anonymity.

Tokophobia, or the fear of pregnancy and/or childbirth, is a longtime phobia but one that has only recently been seriously researched. It affects both women who have experienced pregnancy and those who have not. Sufferers can experience terror, panic, or intense disgust at the very idea of becoming pregnant, leading to difficulty in forming romantic relationships and depriving women of the family they sincerely desire to have. (Women who simply do not desire children do not have tokophobia.)

Nomophobia is a recently coined fear, with “nomo” standing in for “no mobile.” Researchers who have observed individuals experience intense anxiety, fear, or withdrawal when separated from their mobile phones (or even from mobile phone reception) believe the response is based on the devices’ primary function as a means of connection with close attachments like friends, partners, and relatives, and their role as “human attachment substitutes” because they carry photos, messages, and other cherished personal information.

Fear often takes forms other than specific phobias. For example, social anxiety disorder , which is also known as social phobia, entails a deep fear of other people’s judgment, evaluation, and rejection that limits sufferers’ enjoyment of life. Individuals with social anxiety may avoid situations in which they will be exposed to the scrutiny of others, such as giving a speech, eating in front of others, meeting new people, or engaging in group conversations.

To learn more, see Types of Anxiety.

No, but social anxiety can lead to depression , and vice versa. People who experience social anxiety may endure extreme unhappiness, self-doubt, and even hopelessness, symptoms which overlap with those of depression. But research on the two conditions reveals a core feeling of worthlessness, or feeling that one is undeserving, whether of happiness or of other people’s friendship . Addressing that symptom in therapy could help to address social anxiety before it triggers depression.

The techniques of cognitive behavioral therapy may help sufferers begin to overcome social anxiety . Practicing approaches to social situations through limited exposure, and beginning to question the internal stories that lead them to avoid others, can foster confidence in sufferers they are in fact the type of people who can handle social situations. Testing predictions that things will go wrong, to prove that they are incorrect, can further help people challenge anxious thoughts, as can learning to credit or reward themselves for steps toward socializing, as opposed to criticizing themselves unrealistically in post-mortems.

To learn more, see Social Anxiety Disorder.

When fear disrupts or overtakes an individual's life, therapy can help. A core treatment for fears is exposure therapy, in which a therapist guides the client to gradually and repeatedly engage with the source of their phobia in a safe environment to help strip away the threat associated with it. For example, someone with a fear of flying may be prompted to think about planes, view pictures of planes, visit the airport, step onto a plane, and eventually complete a flight. Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is often applied in combination with exposure therapy, to help sufferers challenge and reframe their harmful beliefs.

Medication such as beta-blockers, which block adrenaline and lower heart rate and blood pressure, may be prescribed in the short-term, often when a feared situation is necessary or unavoidable, such as before a public speaking commitment.

Minding one’s thoughts, acknowledging their fears, and being present can go a long way toward managing everyday fears . The first step is to question the story behind a fear. When one’s mental predictions insist that something will go wrong or that an individual faces imminent danger, the ability to step back, recognize those thoughts as stories, and calmly evaluate whether they are true or rational can be a powerful step toward overcoming them.

Using the technology of virtual reality to simulate exposure to fears has emerged as a useful therapeutic tool. Evidence suggests that Virtual Reality Graded Exposure Therapy (VRGET) can be especially helpful in addressing concerns like specific phobias , agoraphobia, and anxiety disorders . Patient outcomes appear to be no different in virtual and real settings, but VR may enable therapists to reach more people with accessible and affordable care.

No one lives without fear, but those individuals perceived as courageous may respond to and manage their fears in ways that may offer models to others. First, they are not afraid to be afraid , knowing it’s a feeling that is sometimes unavoidable, and that it’s a feeling that can be useful when it’s recognized as an alert and not a barrier. With this knowledge, they can prepare without panicking, take action instead of shying away from it, and ask for help when their fears clue them in that it may be needed.

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Personal Perspective: Downsize your stuff, and upsize your friendships.

Personal Perspective: Fear of migraine return affects a majority of sufferers. However, even with awareness of this common response, it can and does sometimes catch us off guard.

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Teaching Connections

Advancing discussions about teaching, who’s afraid of academic writing a reflective essay on dispelling anxiety and fear in an academic writing course.

WONG Jock Onn Centre for English Language Communication (CELC)

Jock Onn considers how educators can apply an ethics of care in their teaching, as he takes us through survey findings on students’ perspectives towards academic writing, particularly the emotions they associate with this activity and the challenges they face.

Photo by Brooke Cagle on Unsplash

I had previously spent many semesters in my teaching practice developing methods that I thought would help students excel in academic writing. It did not matter to me at the time that student feedback told me that my coursework was demanding; I took it to mean that I was on the right track (Wong, 2023a). It was only in recent years that I realised the need to show more care in my teaching (Wong, 2023b). Last year, amazingly, for the first time, the word ‘care’ appeared in my student feedback. A student wrote, “Dr Wong displays care for his students…” Realising the importance of care, I decided to find out why students need care and conducted a simple Google survey (entitled “Attitudes Towards Academic Writing”) last semester with my three classes. I asked them to make known the emotions they associate with academic writing, write qualitative comments on their answers, and tell me what challenges they face. I received 41 responses, and the survey yielded some tentative but interesting findings.

The survey asked, “Which of the following emotions do you associate with academic writing?” As shown in Table 1, over 50% of the students associated academic writing with fear and anxiety. Slightly over a quarter associated it with a rather positive feeling (26.8%) and only a very small percentage (4.9%) associated it with something very positive. The fact that over half of the respondents associated academic writing with fear (53.7%) and anxiety (63.4%) was a surprise to me. Fortunately, less than 10% hated academic writing.

Students also gave qualitative comments on why they experienced fear and anxiety in academic writing. Some indicated that they had insufficient linguistic knowledge, including the vocabulary and skills to write academically. A few even claimed that they did not know what academic writing entails. Other respondents indicated a lack of confidence. For example, a student wrote that knowing that their work is being graded caused anxiety. Several students attributed their anxiety to uncertainty and a lack of confidence in academic writing. In some cases, fear or anxiety was a result of bad experiences in junior college (JC). A student recounted their JC experience, when they had to produce an essay in three hours, causing their brain and hand to hurt.

The survey further asked respondents to tick the problems they face in academic writing from a list. Table 2 shows that the top three problems students face in academic writing have to do with not knowing what constitutes academic writing, not having enough ideas, and sentence cohesion . More than half of the students said that they did not know how to write academically (58.5%) and did not have enough ideas for writing (51.2%). Also, over 30% of respondents had problems with the introduction (‘don’t know how to start’) (36.6%), and grammar (34.1%).

Table 2 Problems that students face (in decreasing order of importance)

Anxiety is said to be “one of the critical individual affective factors in the process of learning a second language or a foreign language” (He et al., 2021, p. 1). Presumably, the same could be said of the process of learning academic writing. Anxiety, as studies suggest, is linked to “avoidance of the feared situation and loss of motivation to perform”, which could adversely affect retention (England et al., 2017, p. 2/17). Student anxiety and fear can ultimately affect language performance (Soriano & Co, 2022, p. 450). Thus, dispelling anxiety and fear among students is a pedagogic imperative.   

To dispel anxiety and fear, one would benefit from understanding what they mean. I believe most of us do. However, two co-authors offer an interesting perspective. According to Kastrup and Mallow (2016), fear “deals with things of which there is good reason to be afraid”, whereas anxiety means “being scared of something that is not intrinsically fearful” (pp. 3-1). Although Kastrup and Mallow (2016) speak in the context of science, their definitions seem to make general sense. As educators, we recognise that while some student concerns are practical in nature (e.g., they do not know the rules), others seem to be psychological. The solution to practical concerns could be addressed in a more straightforward fashion by using sound teaching methods; however, psychological barriers may require a different approach.

My proposed way of addressing the psychological challenge is to replace the bad experiences with pleasant ones. As Cook (2021) puts it, teachers “must provide instructor presence by providing a positive education experience for students” and give them “a sense of belonging” (p. 136). The teacher can achieve this by creating a positive learning experience through an ethic of care (Noddings, 2012). The teacher can display “empathic concern” (Patel, 2023) by acknowledging student perspectives in class, using inclusive languages, encouraging open communication, and accommodating student needs (p. 64). The teacher can create “a safe learning environment” by establishing “rules of engagement” and encouraging students to “explain their answers” in class without labelling the answers as “wrong” or “incorrect” (Teo, 2023, p. 79). After all, “harsh criticisms” can impede learning (Soriano & Co, 2022, p. 452), whereas positive feedback can alleviate anxiety (He et al., 2021). A student recently gave feedback that I often asked them whether they understood what I had taught, and this suggests that checking for understanding regularly is reassuring. To this end, the teacher could use ungraded quizzes, which do not cause student anxiety (England et al., 2017). There are many other things a teacher could do in this vein to help address such psychological learning barriers (Harvard Medical School, 2017; Abigail, 2019).

To maximise student learning, the teacher plays a big role, a role much bigger than I had previously thought—the teacher has a responsibility to dispel fear and anxiety among students. I agree with Kastrup and Mallow (2016) that it is the teachers “who most affect the anxiety (or lack thereof) of the students” (pp. 3-12). I would now say that what makes an excellent teacher is not just the use of time-tested teaching methods but also a capacity to care (Wong, 2023b). Thus, for me, the obvious way forward is to ‘integrate care in higher education’ by ‘teaching with heart’ (Holles, 2023, p. 18).

Abigail, H. (2019, March 5). Tips to beat back writing anxiety . Retrieved from IUPUI University Writing Center Blog: https://liberalarts.iupui.edu/programs/uwc/tips-to-beat-back-writing-anxiety/

Cook, M. (2021). Students’ perceptions of interactions from instructor presence, cognitive presence, and social presence in online lessons. International Journal of TESOL Studies (Special Issue “ELT in the Time of the Coronavirus 2020”, Part 3), 3 (1), 134-161. https://doi.org/10.46451/ijts.2021.03.03

England, B. J., Brigati, J. R., & Schussler, E. E. (2017, August 3). Student anxiety in introductory biology classrooms: Perceptions about active learning and persistence in the major. PLoS One, 12 (8), e0182506. http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0182506

Harvard Medical School. (2017, October 13). Write your anxieties away . Retrieved from Harvard Health Blog: https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/write-your-anxieties-away-2017101312551

He, X., Zhou, D., & Zhang, X. (2021, July-September). An empirical study on Chinese University students’ English Language classroom anxiety with the idiodynamic approach. Sage Open, 11 (3), 1-14. https://doi.org/10.1177/21582440211037676

Holles, C. (2023). Faculty-student interaction and well-being: The call for care. International Journal of TESOL Studies, 5 (3), 7-20. https://doi.org/10.58304/ijts.20230302

Kastrup, H., & Mallow, J. V. (2016). Student Attitudes, Student Anxieties, and How to Address Them: A Handbook for Science Teachers. Morgan & Claypool Publishers. https://dx.doi.org/10.1088/978-1-6817-4265-6

Noddings, N. (2012). The caring relation in teaching. Oxford Review of Education, 38 (6), 771-81. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03054985.2012.745047

Patel, S. N. (2023). Empathetic and dialogic interactions: Modelling intellectual Empathy and communicating care. International Journal of TESOL Studies, 3 , 51-70. https://doi.org/10.58304/ijts.20230305

Soriano, R. M., & Co, A. G. (2022, March). Voices from within: Students’ lived experiences on English language anxiety. International Journal of Evaluation and Research in Education, 11 (1), 449-58. http://dx.doi.org/10.11591/ijere.v11i1.21898

Teo, C. (2023). Beyond academic grades: Reflections on my care for university students’ holistic development in Singapore. International Journal of TESOL Studies, 5 (3), 71-83. https://doi.org/10.58304/ijts.20230306

Wong, J. (2023a, March 29). When angels fall: The plight of an ambitious educator. Teaching Connections: Advancing Discussions about Teaching . Retrieved from https://blog.nus.edu.sg/teachingconnections/2023/03/29/when-angels-fall-the-plight-of-an-ambitious-educator/

Wong, J. (2023b). What completes an excellent teacher? Care in higher education English language teaching. International Journal of TESOL Studies2, 5 (3), 1-6. https://doi.org/10.58304/ijts.20230301