In my experience, fear is both a feeling and a state of being. It is a feeling of being separated that often results in alienation and separation. It is a sense of being alone that imprisons us in loneliness. The feeling of being alone and lonely forever fosters helplessness and eventually hopelessness. To me, fear is anything that initially threatens us physically, emotionally, mentally, or etherically with separation or with aloneness and loneliness, and that threatens to leave us alienated, imprisoned, and helpless.
Fear is more than a threat.
Fear also jeopardizes our overall well-being. Perhaps we try to eliminate fear by denying or discounting it. Maybe we try to obscure fear by defending against it or by distracting ourselves from it. There are times when we tell ourselves that if we are careful and if we plan well, we can just avoid fear altogether. At times we try to refuse fear with thick clouds of anxiety or with suffocating blankets called phobias.