Fear and Worry in English

Talking About Fear and Worry

If you hate your job and every evening you say “please, please, please nooo” then you dread going to work. Dread is an awful feeling. Some of us dread doing things that others aren’t bothered about. Think about getting in a lift. A piece of cake, right? But if you have a fear of closed spaces this could be a nightmare for you.

I think most of us have some kind of fear. I personally am terrified of heights. The idea of walking along a glass-bottom bridge sends shivers down my spine. I wasn’t surprised to hear heights was in the top 5 fears that most people have.

While we often think of spiders, snakes, and lack of space as something to fear, some people fear certain social situations. They feel anxious whenever they have to talk to people, especially the opposite sex. They might start to panic, be short of breath and start breathing heavily which can cause dizziness, sweat, and their heart starts racing. A very uncomfortable feeling.

In the UK there are many cases of social anxiety among children due to the amount of time they spend on their phone, online, in isolation and not in face-to-face situations. Not just children either, adults are being signed-off work because of their problem. The older generation might just say… man up! and blame this type of behaviour on a “snowflake generation”.

Facing Your Fears

But how can we overcome / get over this? Can we simply face our fears and that will help? I suppose we have to want to first. I have no desire to conquer my fear of heights. Why? It doesn’t affect my daily life, but those who suffer from the above or something similar would need to.

Is enough contact with the opposite sex going to make you feel a little less worse than last time until one day—boooom—you’re over it?

If you’re young there is always the chance you will grow out of a fear or worry. I personally can’t think of something I grew out of, although I’ve always been jumpy and that still remains, but I can think of a concern—because it’s not a fear—I developed in later life, which is dogs.

I feel very apprehensive when I walk past dogs nowadays. This all stemmed from when I got bit by a dog, and then I got bit by a dog again about a year later. That experience has made me wary of all dogs.

OK, time to go, but I’m going to end on an extremely informal phrase that is used to say you are very scared. I’m telling you this because if you ever hear it, I don’t want you to misunderstand and take it literally:

to shit yourself / to shit your pants / to be shitting it / to be bricking it.

All of these mean: “to be very, very scared”.