Will Facing Your Fears Head On Help You ?
Conquer your fears
Introduction
There are plenty of studies that show the most common fear is the fear of public speaking.
In study after study, people say they are more fearful of speaking in public than they are of dying! Why is this fear so universally felt?
Why are some people overjoyed at the excitement they get skydiving, when others would never think about jumping out of an airplane that is operating correctly?
Why do you fear things that you know are irrational? What is fear anyway?
In this guide on how to conquer your fears by meeting them head on, we will start by defining fear, and revealing the process that explains exactly why you get scared of certain things.
You will find out the origin of your personal fears, and what it is exactly that keeps your fearful emotions going.
You will learn how to recognize but ignore your self-talk that is damaging, and the differences between fear, phobias and anxiety disorders.
Then we will arm you with specific and proven techniques to help you identify what is fueling your fears.
You learn when to recognize them as real threats or inconsequential emotions, and how to move past those thoughts and things which cause you to be scared about a perceived outcome. Let’s get started helping you push past your fears by looking at some of the core reasons that cause you to be fearful.
Where Do Your Personal Fears Come from, and Why Do You Get Scared?
Do you remember being scared of the bogeyman when you were a child?
Almost all children learn to be scared of witches and monsters at a very young age. This seems absolutely rational, and such creatures are just as real to a small child as is their own existence.
As we grow we understand that the witches and goblins of our childhood fairy tales don’t exist.
What made us so scared of these legends as a child, and absolutely unconcerned about them now? Put as a very simple question, what is it that makes us scared or fearful?
Where do our individual and personal fears come from? Why are some people scared of a particular thing, when others are not?
Science tells us that you get anxious, scared or fearful of an object, a person, an event or an outcome
1) partly because of instinct
2) partly due to your own personal experiences, and
3) partly because somebody else has taught you to be scared of that thing.
Maybe a new restaurant opened up near your home, and you are dying to try it.
However, you talk to a very good friend, someone whose opinion you appreciate, and they tell you that under no circumstance should you eat at that restaurant.
They ate there only yesterday, the service was horrible, it took over an hour to get seated, the prices were exorbitant, the food was average, and when they complained that somebody had taken a bite out of their steak before it arrived on their table, the owner laughed at them and told them to pay the bill.
This is an example of being taught to be anxious about something.
As with the childhood example of witches, goblins and monsters, the opinion of someone you respect and care about taught you to be fearful. On the other hand, you could become scared or fearful because of instinct and hardwired survival behaviors. You instinctively know that fire can burn you.
Finally, you can become frightful about a situation, object or event because your own experience teaches you to be fearful. That is sometimes where your personal fear or anxiety comes from.
This is how a near-drowning incident may lead you to never go into a large body of water.
Traumatic events, whether you experience them or see them on the 11 o’clock news, teach you to be rationally or irrationally afraid of something. Whether through instinct, your personal experiences, or the teachings of others, this is how you learn to be scared.
What Keeps Fear Alive?
Sometimes what keeps fear going is the chemical process that happens in your brain when you get scared.
Abigail Marsh is a professor of psychology at Georgetown University in Washington, DC. She explains that you can become scared of something, and continually keep that fear living, because one of your 5 senses makes you anticipate harm or danger.
You plan on going to a haunted house at Halloween.
Deep down inside, your instincts know that you are going there intentionally to experience some good-natured fear. The pilot light on your fear instinct is always burning, and now it gets a little bit stronger. Your past experiences have told you that you can see things like skeletons and other objects associated with fear when you go to haunted house.
As you approach the house, your fear fire begins to grow stronger.
Sure enough, as you are guided through the haunted house, a skeleton jumps out at you, you jump and shriek with fear, and this happens because of your amygdala, a small area of your brain located at its base. The skeleton causes your amygdala to send a chemical called glutamate to 2 separate areas of your brain.
The first glutamate response is one that causes you to physically freeze or jump into the air. The second signal causes your hypothalamus to switch on your autonomic nervous system. This is the fight or flight instinct that has kept human beings alive for centuries.
Your heart rate is instantly elevated, your blood pressure goes through the roof, adrenaline surges throughout your body, and this is the physical and emotional “rush” you get when you feel scared or you perceive danger. This is a natural and automatic response.
What keeps your fears alive is a lack of action on your part to reprogram your experience.
Through conscious thought and physical behavior, you can learn to experience very little to no fear the next time you see a spooky skeleton and a haunted house. The same is true with just about any other fear you have, whether you see it as rational or irrational.
This is not always the case with a phobia or anxiety disorder, which is vastly different than a simple fear.
The Difference Between Fear and Phobias or Anxiety Disorders
You may have a fear of being attacked by a bear.
That is a sensible fear. This is based on instinct which has been handed down by thousands and thousands of years of your predecessors. Back when humans confronted dangerous animals on a daily basis, this was a rational fear.
It still exists in your instinct, because your brain wants you to keep existing, and if you don’t have the common sense to run away from a hungry bear, you will cease to exist.
An anxiety disorder is different than a simple fear.
Regular anxiety is a normal reaction to stress.
It can help you prepare, learn new behaviors and pay attention.
An anxiety disorder differs from normal feelings of fear. It is extreme anxiety, sometimes panic attacks, and is characterized by relentless worry and fear that is strong enough and constant enough to interfere with your daily life.
Anxiety disorders can be diagnosed by a mental health professional or psychiatrist. Untreated, they can lead to a person totally withdrawing from society, and in severe cases, an inability to care for themselves, and even attempts at suicide.
In the United States, 40 million adults suffer from an anxiety disorder, and unfortunately, only about 1 in 3 receive treatment.
A phobia is classified as an anxiety disorder where the feelings of anxiousness and fear last more than 6 months, and the condition is characterized by anticipation of a future negative outcome or threat. Someone with a fear of heights has what is called acrophobia.
Approaching a tall bridge in a vehicle immediately cranks up the anxiety response for this type of individual.
Simple fears and concerns are natural, and in most cases don’t require treatment other than reprogramming your self-talk. The final section of this guide on facing your fear will give you two simple ways to turn your self-talk from negative to positive. In the case of a phobia or anxiety disorder, treatment by a trained mental health professional is always the best course of action.
Your Fear-Busting Toolbox
Moving forward you will learn specific methods to push past your comfort zone and fears for better goal achievement and success in life.
Right now we would like to share with you a few tools and techniques that can help you recognize your fears, identify them as irrational or rational, put them aside, and move forward with your life.
Visualize The Intended Outcome
If you are scared that you may fail at something, or some other possibly negative outcome in the future is causing your anxiety, stop focusing on the negative.
Visualize your success or goal achievement.
Instead of being scared of failure, get excited about success. Your subconscious will automatically and systematically pursue whatever you get it to focus on. This is how constant negative thoughts often lead to negative results, and you can push past your fear for success and achievement by instead focusing on a positive outcome.
Imagine The Worst-Case Scenario
When you are faced with fear or anxiety, ask yourself this simple question, “What is the worst that can really happen?”
Honestly, what is the worst possible result of the behavior which is scaring you, or of the situation which makes you anxious?
Be brutally honest with yourself. If you are petrified with fear that you will fail your driving test, the worst possible outcome is that you fail. No big deal. You go back another day and keep going back until you are successful. Imagining the worst-case scenario often bursts your fear bubble.
Meditate
Meditation has been used for thousands of years for stress-relief.
Remarkably, regular meditation also leads to less inflammation in the human body, which means physical and mental health are your rewards when you take some time every day to clear your thoughts and focus on the present moment.
Exercise
Regular physical activity works like meditation to clear your brain.
Exercise also triggers the release of hormones and chemicals that cause your brain to feel happy and upbeat, simultaneously reducing levels of stress-related hormones. This response begins almost immediately upon moderate to intense physical activity. It’s hard to feel fearful when you are happy and positive.
Write It Down
You can really take the steam out of your fears if you write them down.
Irrational fears just don’t look very powerful when you write them down on a piece of paper. Doing this regularly, and then writing down related positive thoughts and experiences, may help you realize that your fears are unfounded, and not very powerful after all.
Desensitizing Yourself to Push Yourself Out of Your Comfort Zone
The Psychology Today magazine wants to remind you that fear is healthy.
If you did not fear a possible negative outcome related to some dangerous behavior or action you are about to take, you wouldn’t live very long.
Your curiosity could definitely kill the cat.
Neuroscientists have identified patterns of communication that connect your prefrontal cortex and limbic system which show that the human brain is literally hardwired for fear.
While great accomplishments happen when you step just out of your comfort zone, a fear response is still triggered. This doesn’t mean that you will probably ever be able to eliminate feeling fearful or concerned about particular situations. It simply means that you should identify fear as a normal response, appraise the situation, find out if your fears are grounded or irresponsible, and then take whatever action is necessary.
Scientists that study the brain show that a lack of fear is sometimes a sign of serious brain damage.
So don’t be scared of fear. Embrace it, and understand that this is the way your brain keeps you alive, by constantly using your 5 senses to scan your environment for possible dangers.
This can keep you from making silly and sometimes life-threatening mistakes, and science has shown that when you identify your personal boundaries of comfort and step just pass them, incredible achievements are often your reward.
“Nobody ever died of discomfort, yet living in the name of comfort has killed more ideas, more opportunities, more actions, and more growth than everything else combined. Comfort kills!”
That quote comes to us from T Harv Ecker, philosopher, successful businessman and best-selling author of the book “Secrets of the Millionaire Mind”. It spells out how comfort leads to low-risk, low-reward behavior. You are happy with what you have right now, so why rock the boat? Why attempt to do something that you have always dreamed of or desired, if there are possible risks associated with those behaviors?
Here is why you should learn to take small steps outside of your comfort zone from time to time.
A couple of psychologists in 1908 identified a relationship between achievement and personal discomfort. John D. Dodson and Robert M. Yerkes specialized in behavioral research.
They wanted to find out if those people that push themselves outside of their familiar and comfortable environments were more or less likely to achieve great things. They identified a “state of optimal anxiety”, which leads to significant performance, achievement and goal attainment.
This area is located just outside of the environment or experiences where you feel comfortable.
The two researchers found that you have to be careful, because if you take huge leaps and bounds away from your comfortable, recognizable environment, this is when performance and productivity fall off of a cliff.
For example, let’s imagine that you are scared of snakes.
Just reading the word “snake” triggers a stress response that has you sweating bullets. In this case, a good first step would be watching a trained herpetologist handle a small snake.
View the video online or on your television, rather than in person. You are smart enough to know that the snake poses no danger, and you can stop watching whenever you like.
Once you take that small step outside of your comfort zone, larger steps are possible, because your area of comfort is expanding gradually. Eventually, in a few months or possibly a year, you will build the courage to handle a snake yourself, and you will have totally defeated this personal fear.
The Pareto Principle
Around about the time that Yerkes and Dodson were discovering the link between discomfort and achievement, an Italian economist noticed basically the same thing, in an entirely different field of research.
Studying landowners in Italy, economist Vilfredo Pareto uncovered an 80/20 rule that applies to most things. After noticing that roughly 80% of all Italian land was owned by just 20% of the population, he wondered if this ratio was applicable in other areas.
His study revealed the fact that 80% of a crop will come from 20% of the plants, and that 80% of your rewards or achievements come from approximately 20% of your efforts.
Combining this with the Yerkes/Dodson discovery means that if you put yourself in a situation where you are 80% comfortable and 20% anxious or uncomfortable, you will realize the most achievements, and slowly conquer your fears.
As you tiptoe slowly but consistently away from your area of knowledge and experience, your skill set grows as your fears diminish. In a short time, you can look back over your shoulder and realize that your past fears may have been unfounded, since you easily pushed past them, albeit gradually. This self-confidence allows you to meet future fears head on, stepping outside of your comfort zone to conquer them as well.
To recap …
1 – Remember that fear is natural, it is a normal human response.
2 – Identify your fear. Spell it out, recognize, point at it, understand that it exists, and that for you, it is a real feeling.
3 – If you desire to get past your fear or anxiety, take baby steps to confront it. You can eat an entire elephant if you do it just one bite at a time.
4 – After taking small steps out of your comfort zone, stop. Look around you and realize that your fears were all for nothing. Give yourself a pat on the back, and reward yourself for doing something that was uncomfortable to you.
5 – After pushing your area of knowledge, experience and comfort just a little bit, take another baby step. These gradual steps will eventually and significantly expand your area of comfort, and reduce your fear and anxiety.
Reprogramming Your Self-Talk and Eradicating Limiting Beliefs
Sometimes facing your fear is simply a matter of reprogramming your brain.
The human brain is very malleable, meaning it is very flexible and limber. You know how to do things today that you were not able to do years ago.
How does this happen? It happened because you taught your brain what to do in specific situations, giving it the knowledge it needed to tell your body how to do that particular thing.
Your first attempt at riding a bicycle was probably accompanied by some scratches and bruises. In a very short time, maybe in just a few minutes or less than an hour, you were riding your bicycle like a pro. Now you don’t need to give a second thought to hopping on a bike and going out for a ride.
In the same way as you trained your mind and body to work together to master bicycle riding, you can reprogram the way you experience and respond to your usually negative and nonstop inner voice.
We human beings talk to ourselves.
Sometimes we do it out loud, and our unconscious inner chatter seems to go 100 miles an hour, never stopping to take a breath.
Our propensity to talk to ourselves as human beings has a lot to do with fear and our survival instinct. If we didn’t question our behavior and actions before we attempted to do something new or difficult, we may engage in dangerous or deadly behavior.
This is why our inner voice is generally skeptical and negative, rather than positive and encouraging. Directing that self-talk into the direction which leads to success and achievement, and away from fear and anxiety, is not that hard to do. If you fail at attempting to do something, you may unconsciously engage in silent self talk that cause yourself a failure, an idiot, and a loser.
When this happens, take the power out of your unconscious belief.
Consciously tell yourself, “Each time I fail, I am closer to success. I did better this time than previously, and I know that the achievement or goal I am seeking is just around the corner.” Put a positive spin on your negative self-talk.
You can do that by following this 3 step system proven to turn a negative inner voice into positive encouragement and future success.
1 – Acknowledge Your Self Talk
This means at first, you don’t try to change your inner voice. If it is negative or positive, you simply acknowledge what it is saying. Observe it as if you are watching someone else have a conversation with himself.
2 – Start Changing Your Thoughts
After acknowledging your inner voice, think about what it is saying. If you are positively encouraging yourself with your inner voice, your job is done. There is nothing to change and no need to change it. When that inner chatter is negative, you need to start slowly modifying what it is saying.
If your inner voice tells you that you are bad in social situations, tell yourself the opposite. Consciously say to yourself, “I used to be socially anxious, but I’m getting more and more comfortable being around other people. People like to spend time with me in social situations, and I’m really starting to shine in this area of my life.”
3 – Practice Gratitude When Negative Self-Talk Appears
If negative self-talk is starting to bring you down, take a deep breath and clear your mind.
Close your eyes, breathe in and out deeply a few times.
Then identify an area in your life where you are truly blessed and appreciative. No matter what your negative inner chatter focuses on, reminding yourself that you have amazing friends, a wonderful family, or that you are going on vacation next week puts your mental focus on something positive, rather than something negative.
Another great way to reprogram your belief system is to start recording your self-talk in a diary or journal.
Keep this with you at all times, logging all verbal and nonverbal self-talk, positive, negative and neutral, and check it every 7 days. Highlight negative and positive talk with different colored markers, and every 7 days, notice the topics where your inner voice was negative.
You will soon see patterns of behavior, where your negative thoughts occurred because of a particular outside stimulus or at a certain time of day.
After the first 7 days, when you catch yourself engaging in negative self-talk, say “cancel” or “stop”.
Immediately replace negative talk with positive encouragement. You can do this out loud or silently in your mind. Use the present tense and talk about a future situation.
This may be difficult do at first, since you are basically programming yourself with something that isn’t true.
For instance, if you are a really lousy basketball player but it is something you would like to get good at, do the following.
After an especially poor outing of basketball, your self-talk will immediately tell you that you are lousy at sports and you need to give up trying to become a basketball player. Say the following. “I am great as a basketball player, and am only going to be even better in the future.”
This may be hard for your conscious mind to believe, since it does indeed understand the difference between a truth and a lie.
However, your subconscious does not understand what a lie or what the truth is. It believes what you tell it, true or not.
Do this enough, speaking in the present tense about a future outcome or state, and you can change your beliefs with this simple, daily habit. Continue to update your self-talk journal, and you will begin to see more instances of positive talk, and fewer times when your inner chatter says negative things.
A positive outlook is a surefire way to keep fear under control. Practise this often.
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