When I offered to write some blogs for the Wellness Universe, my offer was immediately accepted. “We’d love it if you would write something about Fear,” was the response, “something about how to deal with the different types of fear.”
By now, I’m a recognized expert on emotions—what they are, why we have them, what role they’re designed to play in life, and how to work with them. I’ve been working with emotions, studying them, teaching, writing, and lecturing about them for over 50 years. I now have an integrated system explaining emotions and answering these questions.
I’ve incorporated what I’ve been privileged to learn about emotions in my own life, transforming my life positively in lasting ways.
But this one had me stumped. “Different types of fear?” I queried myself. “I don’t think about ‘different types’ of fear! What are the different types of fear people talk about?” (I’ll write more about the idea of “different types of fear” as I offer you more blogs on this topic—watch for it!)
I Googled it!
There are phobias—intense, irrational and specific anxieties, usually about four different areas of life. Animal (like spiders), Environmental (like heights), Situational (such as fear of social judgment) and Bodily (such as fears about blood or injections).
There is also Fear Of:
- Death
- Failure/Success
- Rejection/Abandonment
- The Unknown
- Buttons
Buttons? I could understand other things on the list, such as fear of germs, of tight places, of being alone (something called Monophobia) and fear of fear itself.
But Buttons? This invited a lot of deep thinking.
Believing I understood the role of the Saber-toothed tiger in the development of the human fear response, I nonetheless turned to Google, once again. Indeed, the explanation corroborated my memory.
Our human fear system, including our “fight or flight” mechanism, is believed to have developed during caveman days, when sharing caves for shelter with sabertoothed tigers left early humans in great peril. In order for cave people to survive, their bodies/brains developed the “fear response,” helping them to recognize and respond to nearby danger, pumping the body with hormones, giving it an enchanced ability to successfully fight sabertoothed tigers, or to outrun them!
We humans, we’re told, have experienced fear ever since.
The Mechanism; The “Problem”
What’s supposed to happen is the brain/body releases specific hormones whenever danger is perceived, concentrating blood flow to the mid-body to minimize the effects of possible grievous bodily injury, and pumping into the body substances that fortify us to run faster and react more quickly.
These processes occur whenever we feel afraid. They occurred every time long-ago cave people encountered sabertoothed tigers. Once they had won their fight with the sabertoothed tigers, or had successfully outrun them, the hormones dropped back to normal levels, stress reduced, and the cave person resumed normal life.
That process is still happening, right here in 2026. When we feel anxious or fearful, hormones that support fighting or fleeing are pumped into our bodies and brain, supporting us to deal with the situation powerfully and successfully. These changes can create tension and anxiety—concern about whether we can deal with unexpected situations.
Not sabertoothed tigers!
Yet stimulating our “fight or flight” response just the same. Creating tension, anxiety and heightened states of awareness, and the ability to take immediate action, just the same.
But NOT stopping once the threat has passed. Why?
Because today’s fear seldom passes! Because what we feel afraid of seldom ends, the anxiety and fear can’t tell when to shut down. The hormones and body changes continue without ceasing.
The “problem” with modern-day anxiety and fear is a lack of sabertoothed tigers!
Modern translation is this: Today, the fears that too many people experience are not about real things. Most fear is created in imagination!
When sabertoothed tigers have been “neutralized,” the threat is over. The fear response reverses and a person can regain her calm state. Hormones retreat. Anxiety drops off.
When fear develops because of what we imagine—losing our job, being unable to complete a task, being abandoned or rejected, being trapped—it’s very difficult to tell when the threat is over! As a result, we don’t regain our calm state. Hormones continue to flow and anxiety persists.
Our minds and bodies remain in a state of stress, contributing to us becoming “a fearful person.” “A person full of fear!” Is it any wonder so many people today report feeling “full of anxiety”? They are!
Ilene Discovers “Gold” on Her Quest
Having had a very challenging childhood, starting in infancy, that involved injury, illness, loss of important people (without comfort), two toddler years of institutionalization, abuse of several types, and constant moving in my military family, I became a person who lived in an almost-constant state of fear!
This fear lasted until my 50th birthday, when I finally figured out something effective to take me away from my perpetual state of stress. In this series of blogs, I want to explore fear and tell you what I finally figured out, after living in a state of fear, without stopping, for the first 50 years of my life!
Once I figured it out, effectively, I’ve had no more fear.
A caveat: Because emotions are energy, we cannot “get rid of an emotion,” such as fear. This means I’m not actually “without fear.” I do notice it in my life, see fear attached to certain experiences, thoughts or situations. However—and this is a big one—I now have something I can do that will dissipate feelings or thoughts of fear within 3-5 minutes! To me, having lived 50 years of “fear,” this is tantamount to having “no fear.” To state the case truthfully, I now call this Fear-less Living.
In 2017, at the age of 74, I was diagnosed with a breast cancer. I experienced no fear. (I’ll tell you in this series how my change of perspective made this possible.) I did not have the cancer surgically removed until a year after diagnosis. During that year I was experimenting (for about half a year under the watchful eye of the head of Breast Oncology Surgery at Duke Medical Center in North Carolina) to see if I could use alternative means to heal the cancer.
The surgeon “tolerated,” but did not endorse my experimentation. I was unsuccessful in healing the cancer all together. However, during that year, the cancer did not grow—at all. Once surgically removed at Duke in 2018, there has been no further treatment, no radiation, no chemo, and no return of the disease.
Is The “Gold” Real?
In 2016, following my husband’s death from prostate cancer, I decided to sell our home and purchase an RV. Within a year, I was on the road, traveling throughout North America, traveling alone. Without fear—Fear-Less Living. (I’ll tell you later what I provided to myself that assisted me in having no bad experiences during my 8 full-time years on the road.)
People tell me this took a lot of courage. I remind them that one of the definitions of courage is “to feel the fear and do it anyway.” I was not exhibiting courage, because I was not feeling fear. I was just stepping out and doing what I was drawn to do, what I was excited about doing. (I’ll tell you in this blog series what happens when we focus on fear as our “problem.”)
One night in the summer of 2019, about 10 pm, I was sitting around a small campfire in a Forest Service campground with my RV friends, Kris and Doug, whom I had met in another campground a year previously. I had walked around the campground and knew it was almost completely full that night.
An old van driving by stopped in front of where we were sitting. The man driving, looking harried and tired, lowered the window and asked if we knew any place where he could camp. I got up to speak to him, noting two middle-school sized children fast asleep in the vehicle. The man told me he’d been driving for 5 hours and really needed to stop and rest. I believed him.
When I attempted to tell him how to find the one campsite I had noticed still available, his brain could not compute my message. After giving him instructions 3 times, and having lived as a single parent for 20 years, I believed I understood his difficulty comprehending my words. His brain was just fried!
I asked him to have the girl on the front seat sit up and move over, turned to Kris and Doug and told them I’d be pointing out the campsite and would return in about 5 minutes. Then, phone in pocket, 77 years old, I stepped up into the van and we drove off. I showed the exhausted father the way, watched him gratefully park his van, and used my phone’s flashlight to light my way on the 7 minute walk back to our campsite.
Kris and Doug were clearly relieved to see me return! I resettled myself into my camp chair and warmed myself in front of the fire. That’s when Doug spoke, laughing.
“Ilene, you told us you don’t ‘do’ fear anymore. Kris and I have wanted to believe that was true; but we weren’t sure. Just now we both watched you decide to help that man, going off in the dark with him, fearlessly. And your decision was right—he needed your help. He was not dangerous! Kris and I have seen that you truly do not fear. We also saw you follow your intuition and rely on it. We weren’t sure we could believe you before. Now, we’re true believers!”
What enabled me to do that? I had Faith and Trust in myself and in my intuition. (We’ll talk more about this in our future blog messages, too. Suffice it to say now that I had figured out that Fear occurs in the absence of Trust or Faith.)
A Look Inward: Begin Your Progress Toward “Fear-less Living”
What’s your personal relationship with fear?
Do you know that the human mind—whether because of biology or learning—tends to go first to fear, instead of its opposite, Faith/Trust?
If you could, would you shift out of fear and into Faith/Trust as fast as possible when you notice yourself registering fear?
If so, do you know a simple way to do that?
Would you like to live “fear-less-ly” in your own trajectory through life?
Are you willing to be taught, coached, make changes to accomplish “Fear-less Living?”
After “only” 50 years of living in fear—constantly—I finally got free, 33 years ago. You can, perhaps, accomplish this sooner in your life than I did.
Join me for my next blog post, “Exploring Fear,” to look at more about those “different types of fear” and how they intersect with developing a Fear-Less Life.
In upcoming blog posts, we’ll explore:
- Your personal relationship with fear. Whether the fear you feel you bind to yourself as “my fear.” Explore how that relationship developed in you, and what you can do about improving it, should you choose
- What I provided to myself that assisted me in having no bad experiences during my 8 full-time years on the road
- What happens when we focus on fear as our “problem,” and what we can focus on, instead, should we choose.
- How to put yourself in charge of “fear,” “faith,” and “trust” to improve your life from now and into your future.
- How to release the fear you may feel within a few minutes. What living a “Fear-Less Life” is like, how to choose and implement it.
Until our next meeting. And so it is.
Connect with Ilene Dillon on The Wellness Universe, and follow her on LinkedIn and Instagram.
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Ilene Dillon, MSW, developer of Emotional Realignment, is a Transformation Specialist who helps people understand and use emotions as they are designed to work for us, resolving personal challenges at their root and consciously designing life as they want it to be. With more than 50 years as a psychotherapist, marriage and family counselor, coach, and master teacher, Ilene brings decades of experience guiding individuals toward emotional clarity, healing, and transformation. She is a global speaker, podcast host and guest, and a multiple Amazon International and National #1 bestselling author, including Emotions in Motion: Mastering Life’s Built-in Navigation System, End Manipulation: Stop Being Jerked Around by Toxic, Energy-Draining People, and contributor to The Wellness Universe Guide to Complete Self-Care (Volumes 1, 2, 3, 5 and 6). Traveling full-time in her RV, Ilene writes, teaches, and speaks across North America, sharing practical tools that empower people to reclaim their power, navigate change, and create the life they truly want.
Ilene, this is such a great article. I love how you weave science, lived experience, and deep compassion together to reframe fear not as a flaw, but as a mechanism that simply hasn’t been given a clear “off switch” in modern life. Your stories of Fear-less Living, especially the moments guided by trust and intuition, show what becomes possible when faith replaces imagined threat. I can’t wait til your next blog.