Fear deserves as many distinct concepts and words as the Greeks have for love. Your friend says, "I love you" for the first time, and you might have to take a peek at his face to see what he really means. "Does he mean love-love, " you might think, proving the point that the single English word "love" is sometimes so inadequate that we repeat it in close succession in a feeble attempt to cram more meaning into its lacking frame. Platonic love, familial love, universal love, amorous love, etc. are all very distinct loves that the Greek language accommodates. Fear deserves the same attention. (For a wonderful article that approaches the word "fear" from an academic view, read The Subjectivity of Fear as Reflected in Ancient Greek Wording by Gregory Nagy.)
I've obviously been thinking a lot about fears, and I'd like to propose a few different kinds. For starters, there is constructive fear regarding your well-being or safety that, for example, instructs you on some freezing night in college not to jump (for fun) from a bridge into the frigid waters of a partially frozen river, because, well - you could get hurt or even die. Bad decisions deserve to be feared, so thank you constructive fear, for saving me from several ill-advised drunken actions.
Likewise, there is love-fear: the fear of the loss of love or a loved one. It is a very strong emotion that can galvanize anyone to action, but that's not to say that that action is always positive. Fear seems always at the ready; how it translates into action really depends on what you choose to do with the emotions that come to you. For example irrational, misplaced love-fear can fuel enraged jealousy just as readily as it can give a mother the super-human strength to stop a moving car that travels on a trajectory towards her child. And irrational, misplaced constructive fear can make you afraid of the whole danger-filled world beyond your front door and cause you to become a complete recluse.
Doubtless there are many more fears I haven't mentioned (and please feel free to comment with more below), but the one I think that is perhaps the most elemental in my life is self-fear, ultimate self-doubt, that can result in self-hate. It is a fear that inherently serves to encourage you to self-destruct. This particular flavor of fear has many opposites, including love, confidence, compassion, kindness, and understanding towards yourself.
Yet, paradoxically, people wiser than myself have told me that you cannot vanquish any of your unhelpful fears through some kind of emotional exorcism, nor can you simply hope to ignore or bury them. It's like the Babadook (an evil spirit from a 2014 horror film). The Babadook gets stronger, and invades your life more adeptly, the more you deny it. The only way to "defeat" it is to acknowledge it and take care of it, the same way you take care of yourself. Feed it. Sing to it. Take it out to lunch and a movie. Whatever it takes to woo your self-fear (or any of your other fears), it is worth the wooing, cooing to, and harp-strumming to help it fall asleep. Ultimately, all of your fears are parts of you. And in trying to reject them, you effectively attempt to cut off an emotional limb from your identity.
On the other side of your fears are strength, hope, and possibility. I wish you much success in teaching your fears to play nicely with the rest of you. Rest assured, I will be taking a crack at it myself.