How Does Fear Motivate Us?

How does fear motivate behavior?

In the past few posts, you may have noticed a theme when we were discussing why pursuers pursue and why withdrawers withdraw and that common thread was fear. The fears were different but both were supremely present.

For pursuers, they fear rejection. They fear abandonment. They fear being left alone with their feelings.

For withdrawers, they fear criticism. They fear being seen. They fear being vulnerable and still having their needs left unmet.

What huge fears! What would you do if you worried that your existence, your very essence, was going to be seen and rejected leaving you alone? If it were me, I would fight like hell to ensure that that did not happen. This fear kicks in behaviors that we feel protect us. They are self-preserving.

Given that these fears are all happening either consciously or subconsciously, it’s no wonder that people remain staunchly stuck in their positions of either pursuing or withdrawing.

We all engage in behaviors- any behaviors- because they serve something in us. And fear, especially big fears like this, definitely fit that bill. To go back to a concept introduced a few months ago with the cognitive triangle, we know that feelings, thoughts, and behaviors are all interrelated. In this case, in an interaction a person perceives rejection, thinks “I’m being rejected”, feels fear, and behaves by either pursuing or withdrawing.

So how do we fight fear? We fight fear with vulnerability. We fight fear by allowing ourselves to be seen and not rejected. We fight fear by showing up for our partners and holding space for them. We fight fear by recognizing that it exists and that it is temporary. We fight fear by not allowing it to take up permanent space.

For more information on how we fight this fear and ultimately overcome our habitual ways of responding, stick with me for one more week! Next week we dig into how to overcome the pursuer distancer dance.