Fear and Anxiety

Heidegger defines fear as fearing something within the world that threatens us. Fear causes us to await this something’s arrival, which leads to giving up our possibilities and retreating into bewilderment. In contrast, anxiety is anxious about our possibilities and brings us back to ourselves.

We are both fearful and anxious of Parkinson’s. The disease is seen as something threatening our physical control and in bewilderment we await its arrival. But, Parkinson’s is part of our thrownness and as such is a possibility we are anxious of. Therefore, we threaten ourselves with Parkinson’s, causing us to try and retreat from ourselves in fear. But while waiting for the loss of control to arrive we confront the thrown possibility of Parkinson’s as our own in anxiety. We try and tear our problems away in fear but end up gluing them back to ourselves with anxiety. The oscillation between fear and anxiety can be very painful and disorientating.