My inquiry question this semester was, “How fears and phobias evolve from childhood to adulthood?”
What challenges did you overcome throughout this inquiry project?
I struggled to find specific information or websites about the evolution of fears and phobias from childhood to adulthood. Most websites I found would talked about common fears/phobias for different age groups, but it was very difficult to find information on how these common fears/phobias related to each other. I overcame this by spending more time researching what caused humans to feel fear, and how those aspects of life changed over time, rather then directly searching how fears/phobias change over time.
How did this inquiry change the way you think?
This inquiry made me realize just how silly some of my fears are and have always been. I, like many people, have always been more afraid of made up scenarios and creatures then real ones. I am constantly scared of scenarios I make up in my head and as a child I was mortified even thinking about vampires. This project made me more aware of just how often I get scared over things that are not real or have never happened to me, and I should not waste so much time thinking about these things as there is a lot of real stuff happening around me.
How did this investigation impact your future decisions?
This project has helped me realize that I am in my head a lot and I am now trying to live in the moment as much as I can. I have let fear dictate a lot of my decisions in life and this project has made me aware of that. I think that living more in the moment will assist me in making decisions that help me feel good and make me happy as I will be overthinking far less than I normally do.
What impact will this investigation have on others locally and/or globally?
I hope this inquiry project gets people more interested in what fear is and how it starts. When people start to learn more about fear, they will learn how they can be in control of their own fear rather than having fear be in control of them. I believe that many people, especially young adults, fear for things that have not even happened yet and that can limit their options as they are afraid to try new things. Though fear can really help us and is completely natural, I think many people let fear take over too much and it makes them miss out on a bunch of cool experiences.