Fear

Source: PowerPoint

Some years ago, when my youngest was just a baby, our family went to Yosemite for a week of camping with my hubby's brother and his family. The park provides large metal bins with locks for food storage. Why? Because Yosemite has bears.

Lots of bears.

We hadn't had any problems until the last night. Of course, that was the night we'd gotten lazy and not locked the food up. So, when a bear started going through our ice chests while we hid in our tents, it was a little tense.

What was particularly scary was when we found out that the people in the camp right next to ours had stored their ice chest IN their tent. Fortunately for them, we'd left plenty of food out, so the bear didn't go looking elsewhere.

I recently attended some live-shooter training at work. The swat team member who was doing the training discussed some of the effects of fear which I found especially pertinent to writing:

• Sensory exclusion / distortion
• Time distortion
• Heightened sensory response
• Panic
• Fainting
• Loss of bladder / bowel control
• Loss of fine motor skills
• Loss of near vision
• Tunnel vision
• Scared stiff (I'm guess he meant this literally)
• Scared speechless

Fortunately, most of my writerly fears don't manifest in this way. Mostly. lol

Can you think of any more to add to the list?