How do you try to overcome fear?
There are some people who seem to overcome fear easily. You can learn to overcome fear, to feel less fearful, and learn how to cope with fear so that it doesn’t stop you from living the life you want.
The universal trigger for fear is the threat of harm, be it real or imagined. This threat can be for our physical, emotional or psychological well-being. While there are certain things that trigger fear in most of us, we can learn to become afraid of nearly anything.
A long time ago, not being accepted meant life or death, cast out alone. That construct doesn’t exist in most forms of modern-day society any more. This article is not about the societies that would cast out a person for infidelity, for being LGBTQ+, for wanting to marry into a different faith, for not being white. Those are real, and life-threatening fears. This article is about the fears that our mind has created for us and that we choose to believe.
In the animal kingdom where it’s still all about survival, and how it was once for us, after a fight or flight moment an animal will shake for a while to work off the flight, fight or freeze hormones.
We would do the same in an extreme circumstance, but in the modern Western culture we no longer do this, we live in a hyper-alert environment, always switched on, always with a mobile device, and those hormones surge around us for much longer than is healthy, causing long-term health issues.
What do you fear?
Failure? Success? Not being accepted? Being overlooked? Being talked about? Are you ok in your personal life, but feel fear or anxiety at work? Maybe the opposite? Fear felt in your career can have a detrimental effect on your personal life, and vice versa. Fear is an emotion and a very powerful one considering its ability to over-ride the rational part of a brain, which is the side that tells us we are capable and we are worthy.
Nowadays, many times the fear response is caused by what we perceive to be a threat, and that could be anything our brain makes up for us based on a past experience, or what we might have learned from others, such as a fear of spiders. In many cases it’s irrational.
Irrational
As an example. When I was in my early 20’s I was bitten by a spider on my hand, one of those huge bastards with a body the size of a 10p and thick black hairy legs, so big that it’s feet are still visible even when obscured by the vacuum hose, and the only way it got in the house was by opening the front door itself and strolling in. I was at home in Hertfordshire, not where you’d expect to find poisonous spiders so I thought nothing of it.
Soon enough, my hand was starting to swell. I saw the doctor, who spotted the tell-tale poison line tracking up my arm and medication started. You would think, therefore, now knowing I am allergic to spider venom, that I would develop a fear of spiders. But, because fear is irrational, yes I have a fear of that type of spider, though the littler ones can live in my house, I even pick them up to move them elsewhere if they get too close. See – irrational.
Learned response
Dogs. Obviously when it comes to dogs there’s Pavlov, who taught them to expect food when a bell rings (and other experiments that are illegal now thank goodness). However this is about humans….
One of my friends is terrified of them. She was bitten on the hand as a child whilst playing with a friend’s dog, more nipped really as skin wasn’t broken. She recalls that she didn’t start crying and was still stroking the dog, UNTIL she saw her mother’s response, which was such panic that she then started to cry and has been afraid of them ever since.
Whereas, I love dogs. Toby the Collie lived in the house next to my gran. He’d spend as much time in her house as he did in his own. I’d play with that dog for hours, and we’d nap together on the sofa. One random day when I was around 4yrs old, I came bounding in to Gran’s kitchen, saw Toby’s butt sticking out from a gap between a couple of cupboards, where she fed him, and as I went to hug him he turned and bit me on the face.
I don’t remember much of it, other than a lot of blood, Gran sitting me in the sink, and using vinegar to clean the wounds (it’s a great antiseptic, but bloody painful). My mother and grandmother were so calm in front of me, that I never had any reason to fear Toby, or any other dog. Toby and I continued to be as we always had been. The scars are still visible beneath my nose and on my lip, so I have a daily reminder it happened, yet it didn’t affect me at all.
Out of the two of us, logic would tell us that I should be afraid of dogs. Our fears are not logical, but you can be reason with them.
Always being on alert
In a fear response, the following are some of the things that happen to your body:
- heart rate and blood pressure increase
- breathing becomes shallow and quicker
- pupils dilate to take in as much light as possible for clearer and a wider field of vision
- veins constrict to send more blood to major muscle groups (with less blood at skin surface to keep us warm we feel a “chill”)
- blood-glucose level increases to support the glycogen needed in the muscles
- the fast-twitch muscles (think the ones sprinters and boxers would use – legs and shoulders/upper back – the power muscles) tense up, energized by adrenaline and glycogen (hello goose bumps!) ready to power limbs to fight, or run away really fast!
- non-essential systems (like digestion and immune system) shut down to allow more energy for emergency functions
- difficulty focusing on small tasks (the brain is re-directed to focus only on the big picture in order to determine where threat is coming from)
Our world, with the always-on environment, causes many of our problems. We have stressful lives from always being contactable, working long hours, eating poorly, not living within our values, that the above symptoms are now the daily norm for many.
Take a quiet moment and take a look round your body. How fast is your heart beating? How is your breathing? Where are your muscles tense? Do you often feel cold when others don’t?
Face the fear
There is one group of people who seem to be able to master their emotions – the elite forces. Marines, Navy SEALs, whoever you consider the elite, need to manage their emotions for survival. If we ignore some psychological references to many of these elite-types being natural-born psychopaths, there are some things that we can learn from them.
- Acknowledge that fear exists; it’s natural.
- Breathe deeply to (try to) remain calm and figure out exactly what you are feeling, and why.
- What emotion could you swap with? Anxiety is often fear in disguise. Excitement and anxiety are the same physiological symptoms as far as the brain is concerned. Can you trick yourself into believing you’re really excited?
- Move! Go for a run, do star-jumps, anything that requires the body to use the fast-twitch muscles that are in response-mode. Yoga is great for AFTER you have shaken away the hormones.
- Get feedback from those you trust, but actually hear it. We don’t have all the answers and sometimes we cannot see the wood for the trees. Confiding in someone you trust to get a different angle, or have them play Devil’s Advocate, can be a great help.
- Come up with a plan. Plan A is what we stumble into that sets of this chain of events. How about Plan B, C, or D? Even if only to distract your mind for a little while.
- My absolute fave – I like to play “what if?”. For instance, “I am feeling fearful because I have been asked to step in to deal with something and what if I don’t succeed”. Right? There’s no question mark, because I’ve convinced myself that it’s fact! But, “what if” I do succeed? What if the person who asked me to step in has done so because they have heard I have been successful in doing something similar in the past? Obviously such a success will be completely absent from my mind at such an important time and only remembered later… or, “what if” I pause for a moment and think of something else to distract my mind of all these errant thoughts! My free worksheet below is great for helping to look at something a bit differently.
If we are fearful, it’s often a reflection from failing in the past. So take a moment to pause, see if what you’re feeling is justified, play “what if?”; nine times out ten it really isn’t.
Honestly, have faith in yourself and keep doing the great work that you are more than capable of doing.
