Fear, Terror, Anxiety, and Awe

The Path to Working with Fear in Initiatory Processes

"Fear," "terror," "anxiety," and "awe" are not synonyms. These four words describe quite different emotional experiences, even though all of them exist on the same general spectrum of what I call "Withdrawal Responses."

When we want to know how to work with the energy of fear in initiatory processes, we must distinguish between these nuances so that we know how to pass through the portal of fear rather than flee from it in panic. Fear is a friend and ally when we know how to work with it correctly.

Fear — A Call to Presence

Like all primary and natural emotions, fear is a very important emotion, designed to help us survive. How? By calling us to presence, attention, and the sharpness of discernment.

For this reason, the Hebrew word "PAKHAD" (פחד - fear) contains within it the word "KHAD" (חד - sharp). Fear is a call to sharp presence. Fear tells us that "Here (PO - פה) there is something sharp (KHAD - חד)" and in order not to be hurt, we must sharpen our senses and refine our actions.

Every emotion that arises in our soul is fundamentally a biochemical response designed to bridge and synchronize between our internal model of the world and the external world. The Grief, for example, allows us to update our internal model and recognize that a beloved person who was a significant part of our world is no longer here, and we have nothing to search for them in the place where we were accustomed to finding them before.

The Hebrew words "REGESH" (רגש - emotion) and "GESHER" (גשר - bridge) share the same letters in the Hebrew language, which, in my view, is a shamanic language that holds deep ancient wisdom. The emotion of fear is a neural, hormonal, and chemical bridge that calls our nervous system to quickly shift into a Sharp State, because something is happening in the world around us that could pose a danger.

Terror — Flooding of Threat from Every Possible Direction

However, there are situations where the level of fear is so high that our nervous system cannot withstand it. What is created in such situations is called Terror, or in Hebrew EIMAH.

The Hebrew word "EIMAH" (אימה) is composed of two question words: "EI" (אי) — meaning "where?" and "MAH" (מה) — meaning "what?". The combination of “where-what?” symbolizes a state in which we are so panicked that we don't know what might jump on us and from which direction. Everything seems dangerous at extreme levels.

Terror is an overwhelming state that we cannot sustain for any length of time. The intensities are so high that the nervous system, in its great wisdom, often finds a way to protect us and shut itself down.

A nervous system that has experienced terror and entered into emotional freeze or shut-down will usually develop anxiety later on.

Anxiety — Not Seeing Reality

While terror is a state that cannot continue for long, anxiety is an ongoing existential state. Anxiety is a state in which we are dominated by irrational fears of phantom threats.

As in terror, where we don't know what will come upon us and from which direction, so too in anxiety, we don't know from where bad things might emerge, and therefore we live in continuous stress. Terrorist organizations of all kinds seek to terrorize the public, which will result in an existential state of ongoing anxiety.

One could say that anxiety is terror in prolonged simmering on low fire, while terror is anxiety on high flames.

When we are in terror or in anxiety, we do not see reality, but rather the phantom imaginations that our mind creates, and therefore, everything seems threatening and frightening to us. Terror darkens our ability to see reality, as it is said: "And behold, EIMAH, great darkness falling upon him" (Genesis 15:12).

Awe — Opening to Broad Vision

On the spectrum of withdrawal, there exists another emotional state, called in Hebrew "YIRAH" (יראה). Unlike terror and anxiety, which darken our vision, the word "YIRAH" is connected in its letters to the word "RE'IYAH" (ראיה - seeing/vision), as the Hasidic sages already noted, saying "YIRAH, from the language of RE'IYAH (seeing)" (see, for example, "Sefat Emet," Shlach, 23).

While terror and anxiety blind our eyes, YIRAH opens our consciousness to see. It opens us to recognize the greatness of the moment in its sublimity.

When a person climbing a mountain reaches the peak and suddenly an ancient, stunning landscape opens before them from all directions, they experience YIRAH.
One who stands at night in the desert, raises their eyes to star-strewn skies, and recognizes their infinitesimal smallness against the infinite vastness of the universe, experiences YIRAH.

YIRAH is the feeling that arises when we are called to take on a role with great responsibility, much greater than we knew before.

YIRAH is the feeling of our nothingness before immense magnitude, but unlike terror or anxiety, it moves us towards the opening of body and soul, instead of contraction and blindness.

About this YIRAH, great thinkers have already written in the past. Jewish thinkers of the Middle Ages called it "YIRAT HA-ROMEMUT" (awe of majesty/sublimity). In Kabbalistic literature, it is called "YIRAH ILA’AH”, meaning supreme awe, as distinguished from lower fear, which is being scared of pain and harm.

Rudolf Otto described it as trembling and shaking born in the soul from recognition of the sublime (the "numinous"), a trembling that contains a paradox of attraction and withdrawal coming together.

Martin Buber claimed that such YIRAH exists every time we truly see the other as full presence, and not as an object.

And Rabbi Nachman of Breslov taught that this YIRAH is connected to the opening of the Sefirah of DA'AT, meaning the expansion of consciousness.

I want to add that YIRAH also births courage. The courage to live according to our highest life purpose, whatever challenges stand in our way, is a direct product of awe of the numinous. While terror and anxiety lead us to apprehension, contraction, and avoidance of action, supreme YIRAH leads a person to a state where they have, as it were, no choice but to live according to their deepest calling.

How Do We Move from Anxiety to Awe?

This is indeed the great question.

The first step in conscious work with fear is to allow the nervous system to experience the intensities of fear that were repressed in the past, and to express them through the body. Anxiety is a state born from resistance to the intensity of terror that we could not withstand. Therefore, to exit anxiety, we must agree to feel what we were scared to feel all the way to the end. The body must shake, contract, kick, hold its breath, and even scream terrible screams, all in a controlled setting that allows us to do this without harming ourselves or others, and within a psychological container that has holding and love.

When we return from anxiety to terror, we allow the nervous system to discharge the natural responses that were stored and frozen within it. As the world experts on working with trauma have already taught — Peter Levine and Stephen Porges — each in their own way, to exit a state of freeze or collapse, our nervous system needs to pass first through healthy fight-or-flight responses and release them from the body.