Majid Ali, M.D.

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Fear Is Threatened Loss of Territory

Angry animals bare their teeth when they can. We humans often tight “inner teeth” that only hurt us within. I am told that anger is a strong physical response to real or imagined provocation. That seems to make sense also. I am also told that anger can be passive or  aggressive. I do not see any merit in this distinction.

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Fear of Being Afraid

When my patients complain of fear, I ask them what they are afraid of. They look puzzled as if they have never figured out what they are afraid of. Then I ask, “Could it be fear of being afraid?”  They often smile with embarrassment.

Fear often fans its own fires.

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Scales of Fear – Appropriate or Inappropriate, Rational or Irrational

Some fear experts write about “multidimensional fear of death scale” which included six, eight, or ten subclasses of fear. Once I started reading about this scale and felt fear creeping up. I stopped reading and felt delivered of the fear created by such scales.

Similarly, I am irked by descriptions of appropriate and inappropriate, and rational and irrational. I learned early that patients detest talk of rational and irrational fears.

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Elements Without Territory  

Animals are afraid when their lives or territories are threatened. Human are not much different.  This view of fear, as in the case of anger, appeals to me for a practical reason: if fear is caused by threatened or invaded boundaries, might not it work to eliminate boundaries to eliminate fear? If so, then African grandmothers offer an answer. They can free by freeing us from territories.

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Slow Limbic Breathing for Fear

From decades of experience I know that anger does not persist when breathing slowly. This is very helpful until it becomes easy to reach GrandmotherLand.

For details, please consider my FREE Course on Breathing at this web site.