Fear Management

you don't fear consequences of your actions,
you think about them.

fearing and thinking about are different.
as such life without fear is NOT psychopathy.

reply to post by americandingbat


Hi - I am an ATS newbie so bear with me!

Just interested in your post about Williams Syndrome, a subject that I know a little about.

You are right to talk about Williams syndrome subjects as seeming to have no fears in a social context, it is also known as the 'Cocktail Party' syndrome because it seems that the Williams subject will chatter to anyone, seeming very friendly and articulate in their speech, often beyond their intelligence.

I believe (I am not a health care professional btw, I just know a person with Williams very well) that this is more to do with the fact that Williams is in the autistic spectrum and so they have problems in interpreting the moods and feelings of others around them. This results in them not necessarily engaging 'fear mode' in the first place because they do not sense the danger.

This is not necessarily a desirable thing, as many people have posted before, fear (however debilitating for some people) is an important part of our defense mechanism, without it we are very vulnerable and this is one of the problems for subjects with Williams - they are overly friendly and can seem more intelligent than they actually are, leading to potentially difficult situations.

Also, Williams Syndrome subjects can be extremely fearful, they just do not tend to comprehend fear in this specific social context.

Hope this helps

reply to post by Dark Therapy


Hi and welcome to ATS

Thanks for chiming in on this – it's always great to hear about something from someone who has personal experience instead of just reading about it.

I can definitely see how Williams syndrome could lead to a lot of problems – miscommunication and even danger. I guess we're not really aware of how much we rely on our ability to "read" other people on a day to day basis.