Tony Xiao
EN301-3
Argumentative Essay
Mr. Johnson
December 29, 2021
Is Fear always a harmful emotion?
"Fear is the path to the Dark Side. Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads
to suffering.” Master Yoda within the Star War Universe claims his opinion concerning
fear. As a witness of the speedy developing society, fear has became an important role in
people’s daily life. It's one in all the foremost common emotions and it determines our
behavior in several cases. In most situations, two totally different fear-driven actions will
cause two terribly different outcomes: getting things better or worse. However, everything
has two sides so it ends up in the discussion of if fear is beneficial or harmful to people.
From my perspective, I would like to say fear is harmful because it always leads to tell
lies and in the right circumstances can get people killed.
During reading The Crucible, When Marry Warren was being accused of witchcraft
she was telling the truth when she was saying she didn't do it because she didn't want to
be hanged."oh, Mary this is a black art to change your shape.No. I cannot, I cannot stop
my mouth; it's God's work I do.”
Fear can be categorized into different types in daily life and a common type of fear
that people often talk about is known as the word phobia, which is understood as
irrational fear. Phobias are considered exaggerated and some of them are very specific
IS FEAR ALWAYS A HARMFUL EMOTION? 1
and limited. The most common one among young people is Social Phobia. Social phobia,
this word seems appear more frequently during these years. It has became a very popular
topic between people and psychologists. Social phobia is a mental health condition. It is
an intense, persistent fear of being watched and judged by others. This fear can affect
work, school, and your other day-to-day activities. It can even make it hard to make and
keep friends. But social anxiety disorder doesn’t have to stop you from reaching your
potential. Obviously, it is harmful to people.
Speaking from personal experience, my life is often affected by social phobia. For
example, when I was talking to someone. I’m afraid to do eye contact with people who
I’m taking with because I will feel extremely uncomfortable and don’t know where to
look at. They would considered that I am not respectful to them. It will affected the
efficiency of the conversation and the impression I have in other people's minds. On the
other hand, when I am doing a presentation in front of a huge group of people and their
eyes are all on me. The feeling of extreme nervousness swept over me and begin to
control my brain. I would feel flustered and my palms began to sweat. That is super
awkward when is situation occurs. Moreover, my original thoughts will be interrupted so
I cannot express myself fluently and clearly. This greatly reduces people's understanding
of the information I'm trying to convey and directly affects the quality of the presentation.
Indeed, fear also can be beneficial because everything has an opposite side. My
friend explained to me how she recently used her fear to confront an abusive teacher. Her
situation had gotten to the point of anguish so, despite her fear (or because of it), she
knew something had to change. So she gathered up her fear and took it with her into the
conversation with that teacher. Her body shook, her knees grew weak, but her resolve
remained unshaken. Fear tells us we are in danger. But oftentimes it is imagined, not real.
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My friend managed to stake her ground and defend herself in a bad study environment.
Her fear informed her that something wasn't right. And after deep communication, the
fear went away completely and she realized it was a lot easier than she thought. However,
we still be caution of unhealthy feelings of fear. Too much fear can damage us physically
as well as psychologically.
From what has been discussed above, we can safely draw a conclusion that too
much fear do have bad influence on our life. It leads to countless questions. As an old
saying goes, things would tum for the worse if they go extreme. Having feelings of fear is
a good thing, but if we do not juggle it with our life, it would become an obstacle.
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