It is not easy to describe fear. For some it is a sensation, for others a feeling, but in reality, it is externalized in the form of emotion. It is generally accepted that fear is a universal emotional experience that is felt from birth to death and that provides us with information about the present situation, alerts us to possible dangers and potential threats.
This adaptive emotion is mainly oriented towards survival, i.e., it tends to avoid danger and, although well-founded fear is necessary for self-preservation, excessive fear is disabling.
While other emotional states such as fright can be relegated, fear cannot. We respond to fear immediately so it will always take precedence over other emotions. Fright is a negative feeling in which thought and feeling come together. It is simply faith in evil and is born out of a belief or conviction that what frighten us exists.
The causes, in general, are based on exaggerations, which shows that what is frighten is only an appearance and varies with each one. It could be said then that, from an objective point of view, fright or fear have no real basis since they are products of our imagination, therefore, the conflict is generated because we believe in our own inventions.
It is normal to experience a certain level of fear when skiing. While it is seen as negative because it may affect our mental abilities and impair efficiency, it is positive as a sign that we are stepping out of our comfort zone and facing new challenges.
There is a division in the interpretation of the emotion of fear. Some say that it is produced by bodily reactions experienced by us, and others say that these are the product of emotion. Now, if we descend an unfamiliar slope and suddenly encounter an abrupt change of slope to which we react by braking, the question here could be: do we brake because we are afraid or are we afraid because we brake? The traditional interpretation determined that our bodily reaction (in the cited situation it would be reacting by braking) was a consequence of the emotion (the fear of the slope). The opposite hypothesis postulates that our bodily reaction (braking, in this case) would produce the emotion (fear).
Among the different types of fear there is neurotic fear, which is of lesser intensity and refers to not being able to relate to the environment or to the novelty in an adequate manner, and it dissipates when withdrawing from the provoking situation.
Psychological fear represents what could happen, not what is happening in the present. While we can always operate in that sense, nothing can be done about the future since fear is a projection of our mind. Now, when we generate anxiety in front of non-disturbing situations, when we begin to detect dangers where there are none, when we evaluate risks in excess, or when we take too many precautions ‘just in case’ and fear paralyzes us, then we speak of pathological fear.
There are also chronic fears, which are more complex and are related to the impossibility of adaptation and permanence within the known.
Research on fear has determined the following conclusions:
- Fear is something rooted in our brain that can be repressed but not erased.
- The sense of subjectivity (our thoughts and actions) uses our body as a frame of reference.
- Emotions are a component of reasoning and decision making.
- Both overly intense emotion and lack of emotion are equally detrimental.
- Gut feelings, as well as intuition, are necessary for rational decision making.
Situations that generate fear when skiing
Our main intention on the slopes is to control our skiing and our most basic fear is to lose that control.
The most recurrent fears when skiing are:
- Fear of falling because it causes anxiety generated by the possible effects of falling.
- Fear of speed because it increases the risk of losing control, falling, and getting hurt.
- To steep terrain because it generates an increase in speed which produces anxiety and effort to control it.
- To ice because it increases the fear of losing balance.
- To moguls because the technical demands tend to reduce confidence and increase muscular tension and effort.
- To deep snow because of the technical difficulty and the impediment to get up in case of a fall.
- To heights because the cost of a potential fall emerges.
- To sliding because the degree of subjective difficulty in skiing is directly proportional to the fear of sliding.
- To being ridicule because it can impede any progress.
- To the unknown, although it is considered that it does not exist since fear is of things that happened before and we project them into our present.
Other fears may include:
- To getting hurt or hurting someone.
- To not being able to stop.
- To lifts.
- To change or not being able to change.
- To not learning.
- To run over someone or be run over.
- To skiing off-piste.
- To avalanches.
- To steep slopes.
- To traffic.
- To poor visibility.
- To getting lost.
- To uncertainty.
- To making mistakes or failing.
