10 Ways Chronic Fear Harms Your Health

When you have chronic fear, your body remains under stress and tension. It affects your mind and health in ways you may not expect.

Fear is a natural human emotion that can make your heart race, your eyes widen, and your body tense. Living in a state of chronic fear is unhealthy; in addition to its mental and physical effects, it can also cause you to lose your rationality.

Fear is triggered by a perceived threat. It signals your body to react with a fight-or-flight response , ensuring your safety when a real threat is present. However, chronic fear occurs in other situations, leading to health consequences.

Chronic fear can impair a person’s abilities and disrupt all aspects of your life. Understanding how it can interfere with your life can help you make changes to improve your health.

What is chronic fear?

Fear triggers processes in your body that make you remember things more vividly and think irrationally. These processes rarely stop during prolonged periods of fear. Your sensory system alerts your brain to the threat, leading to increased arousal, fear, and anxiety.

Experts have identified three stress responses that trigger fear, including:

• Alarm: When you panic, your body prepares for a threat and identifies it as stress. Stress hormones are released at this stage, triggering your nervous system.
• Resistance: At this stage, your stress hormones will stabilize, but you’ll have very little energy left. Your defenses will also be weaker, making you more susceptible to relapses of fear.
• Fatigue: When fear recurs faster than you can recover, it leads to fatigue. You struggle to resist stress and adapt to change because you lack energy. During this phase, you may experience overload or burnout.

Fear prepares you to react and can trigger your hormones to shut down bodily systems. It can also increase survival instincts, blood flow, and heart rate. Chronic fear can also cause an increase in hormones flowing to the brain.

How chronic fear harms your health

Chronic fear affects the body in more ways than you initially realize. It can lead to physical and mental problems that impact your overall health.

1 – Chronic fear can weaken your immune system.

Chronic fear can weaken the immune system by increasing adrenaline and cortisol levels. Long-term exposure to these hormones can weaken your immune system, reducing your ability to fight infections, viruses, and other diseases.

While fear won’t make you sick, it can lower your body’s defenses. When you’re frequently afraid, you’re also less able to fight off bacteria. It can increase your cortisol hormone, triggering your fight-or-flight response.

Once your fight-or-flight response is activated, the level of circulating lymphocytes in your body decreases. This makes you more susceptible to infections or diseases.

2 – It can cause cardiovascular damage.

When you are constantly afraid, it increases your adrenaline levels. Prolonged, excessive exposure to adrenaline can lead to heart damage , starting with tissue damage. It can also cause vasoconstriction, thus increasing blood pressure.

These problems can lead to arrhythmias when your heart beats irregularly and is unable to maintain blood circulation. It can also weaken your heart and reduce its pumping ability. Your heart may become dysfunctional due to overwork and stress from constant fear.

3 – Chronic stress leads to cognitive impairment

Fear can impair your memory, thus affecting your cognitive function. You also won’t be able to remember things when you’re in a fight-or-flight response. Besides fear, you won’t be able to focus on anything, and you’ll become distracted in your daily routines.

Furthermore, when you feel fear, your brain associates the negative emotion with what you are currently doing. It gives you a sense of impending doom, as if you must go to that place or do the same thing again at any moment.

4 – It can trigger depression

Chronic fear can trigger depression because you frequently feel sad, moody, and exhausted. This indicates that your fear has disrupted your life to the point that you feel powerless to do anything to change it.

5 – It can trigger anxiety and panic attacks.

Experiencing fear triggers anxiety because you don’t want to engage in situations that worsen your anxiety. When you’re frequently afraid, your negative emotions can make you unwilling to do anything.

Since you can’t avoid everything, it’s easy to trigger a panic attack when you have to do something. This happens because you know you lack confidence in it due to fear.

6 – Chronic fear can lead to avoiding things that are good for you.

Prolonged fear can cause you to skip experiences that could benefit you. It can lead to missing out on social interactions with beneficial people and opportunities for growth. Social interaction is crucial to your health and well-being, so it can be more harmful than you realize.

Sometimes fear can cause you to miss a medical check-up or follow-up appointment. It can lead to worsening medical problems or missing tests that might indicate a problem.

7 – It will prevent you from relaxing

Staying on the edge can interfere with relaxation. Once your mind and body feel fear, it takes time to calm down.

You might find that what you’re afraid of isn’t the problem itself, but it can still keep you on the edge longer. Instead, you’ll prepare for the next terrifying moment, your body ready to fight or fly. The more afraid you are, the worse the problem becomes, especially if each instance lasts for a while.

8 – It will deplete your confidence level.

When you spend a lot of time feeling afraid, it interferes with your confidence level. You might start feeling bad about yourself or think it’s best to stay silent and to yourself. It erodes self-confidence and can trigger further fear or anxiety.

9 – Chronic fear and stress disrupt hormone levels

When you are afraid, your adrenal glands increase hormone production. It produces excess catecholamines , involving excessive amounts of adrenaline and noradrenaline . Your body also produces excess cortisol, estrogen, and testosterone to increase your strength and mobility for fight or flight.

Prolonged fear can also trigger neurotransmitters such as dopamine and serotonin , which can enhance mental agility . While occasional occurrences won’t harm you, persistent fear and increased hormones can interfere with your health.

10 – It can cause you to develop phobias.

If your fears frequently revolve around the same object or situation, chronic fear can develop into a phobia. Once it becomes a phobia, you may be afraid of anything associated with the original trigger .

What causes chronic fear?

This happens when a memory or emotion triggers stimulation in the central nervous system . Fear, anxiety, and memories are all stored in your cerebellum, basal ganglia, and amygdala . Because all these sensations are stored in the same place, they can trigger each other.

Your fear occurs when you think about the triggering memory. Sometimes this happens when you experience emotions during a fearful period in your life. In this case, the fear is triggered by a stimulus that does not normally indicate current danger.

When fear occurs, it causes you to experience it at regular times of the day. It interferes with your ability to get things done or enjoy life. Chronic fear can also deplete your body’s resources and impair your ability to repair and preserve itself.

How to overcome chronic fear and the stress it causes

You don’t have to live in chronic fear forever. Many people experience and actively overcome it , promoting better health and well-being. Methods to overcome chronic fear include:

Understand how fear or stress affects you

Understanding how chronic fear can interfere with your health is the first step forward. Many people are unable to overcome their fears because they don’t realize how severe they can be.

Knowing what’s going on can help you focus on pushing away negative emotions and living your best life. If you don’t understand how they affect your health, you may lack the motivation to overcome them.

Creating new memories

Creating new memories can help replace old ones that trigger your fears. Your memories are deeply rooted in your mind, but you can overwrite them with positive experiences. You may need to create new memories multiple times before you stop experiencing negative emotions, so don’t give up.

Practice mindfulness and visualization

Creating new memories and mitigating the impact of old ones becomes easier through mindfulness and visualization . You can use mindfulness to share your memories and tell yourself that it’s possible.

Similarly, visualization allows you to imagine yourself doing something that usually triggers your fears. When you visualize it, make sure you focus on whether your emotions are positive during that time. When you imagine the situation has already occurred, it’s easy to move forward without fear.

Go out

Going outside for fresh air can help alleviate feelings of fear. Consider taking a walk or sitting in a quiet place until you feel calm. Being outdoors can lower stress levels and reduce anxiety or fear.

Focus on breathing

Rapid breathing can trigger anxiety, so focusing on your breathing can help alleviate this effect. When you feel fear creeping in, take a moment to focus on deep breathing. You can take a deep breath in and slowly exhale. Continue doing this until you feel calm and your mind is clear.

Chronic fear can weaken you and interfere with your health. It can impair your body’s self-healing abilities, trigger illness, and cause you to miss important appointments. You can overcome chronic fear and begin living a healthier life and improving your well-being. Making changes to alleviate fear can be life-changing.