Fear of Annihilation
This term in the Holispsych.com Theory cannot be understood without also understanding the concept Annihilation.
When a person feels ‘fear of annihilation’ they are fearing the experience of being overlooked, not being seen and heard as a ‘present’ person, not having their own nature and needs being taken into account, not having a voice or a face as a ‘me’, not having any real ability to affect their environment, not being acknowledged as an independent potentially autonomous human being, not being important enough to be noticed, and feeling like ‘a ghost’ with a body – bodily alive but in the living hell of being ‘invisible’ to everyone.
This fear is so intolerably terrifying and painful that it rarely reaches conscious awareness; most people who have it experience some milder version, and don’t realize ‘annihilation’ that is what they are really afraid of! Fear of Annihilation in a person’s psyche is as powerful as a ‘force of Nature’ in generating complusions and addictions in desperate attempts to avoid experiencing it. This entire Theory describes, basically, nothing but the nature and structure of those attempts, over a lifetime.
Imagine how it would be if your only experience of truly existing were while you felt an emotional high! The fear is unconscious as the whole dependency on a Substitute-Sense-of-Self is.
Thus the fear of Annihilation is the fountainhead of a lot of other fears, for example, fear of not being able to access the ‘the emotional high‘ experienced as a sense of ‘being someone‘. That is really based on the fear of being deprived of the Substitute-Sense-of-Self, a fear comparable to – but for most people worse than – the fear of death.
Another fear in the cascade is triggered by anticipating not being able to find (for whatever reason) a new ‘vehicle’ for the action or behavior that would result in that ‘high.’
In a person with certain early childhood deprivations the fear of Annihilation never stops. That fear keeps the person in suspense (and in a ‘trance‘) for as long as his or her whole life. It is a constant threat and a constant reality. The attempt to prevent annihilation becomes – with the power of a Force of Nature – a dominant yet completely subconsciously-operating motive in life and it generates an entire system of unhealthy, detrimental psycho-emotional habits, beliefs, needs, desires, compulsions, addictions, and motives.
We are enslaved by that System until and unless we become aware of it. The purpose of this Theory’s work is to unravel the mysteries of these inner chains and help the chained people (maybe you!) obtain freedom.
If you have not read about what Annihilation is, please read that here now.
If you have read that, your next stop in your journey through this website would, ideally, be………
