Are you paralyzed at the thought of public speaking??Shaky in meetings with your boss, or find yourself tongue-tied in social situations?
Fear can occur in any number of situations.? It can be both effective ? for instance, when it compels us to run from a burning building ? and a blockade that can keep us from living our lives fully.
In a recent article in GQ Magazine, behavioral neuroscientist Mona Lisa Shultz, PhD, describes illogical fear ? that is fear of things that are not a threat to our lives or well-being ? as a ?corrupted file that you downloaded by accident that keeps coming up.?
3 Strategies to Ease Your Fears
Fear is elemental and, because of that, incredibly powerful.? When we are afraid of something real, our fear is communicating something important about our world.?According to the article, at these times the simplest strategy to reduce your fear is to make friends with it.
Befriending fear is incredibly effective because it short circuits our natural desire to run, when we?re faced with something scary.? Instead, ask yourself ?what?s my fear telling me.?? You might find that fear, worry and anxiety are not your enemies, but are signals of important events and circumstances in your life.
If you think of your anxiety about an upcoming meeting as a buzz of energy or as a sign of opportunity and excitement (an emotion that is closely linked to fear), you can harness that power and improve your performance.
Staying with fear, rather than running from it, allows you to respond to its cause and use it?s intensity to motivate you to act.
The intensity of fear can make you want to stick your head in the sand and ignore it.? But, that strategy only increases your fear over time.? A second fundamental strategy for reducing fear is to face it ? avoid avoiding it.
Often our fears are based in nebulous and not fully formed ideas and beliefs.? You may avoid going for a promotion, never start a conversation with someone you admire or not ask for help when you need it out a fear.
Avoiding these situations only intensifies this sort of fear that is often based in faulty beliefs.? For example, you may believe ?if I put myself out there and am rejected, I?m worthless? or ?I can?t handle failure? or ?needing help is weak.?
The only way to challenge these faulty beliefs is to throw yourself into the feared situation and learn that you?re not worthless if you?re rejected, failure is painful, but survivable and asking for help makes it more likely that you will achieve your goals.
You? might just find that much of the time you aren?t rejected, you succeed and asking for help strengthens your relationships.
Which brings us to the third strategy for reducing fear.? Think bold, daring and gutsy thoughts.? Shultz suggests that you train a voice inside your head to counter those fearful thoughts that tend to automatically pop up in your mind.
By doing this, you are teaching the brain a new memory and breaking the link between a circumstance and the experience of fear.? You may need to write down fearful thoughts, such as ?I?m going to lose my job? or ?I can?t handle it? with direct contradictions.? You may say to yourself, ?I contribute a lot to this organization,? or ?I?ve overcome difficult situations in the past.?
Fear is a physiological experience, which is not always logical.? We might experience it recurrently, every time we think of death, for example, or it can blind side us, throwing us off guard when we least expect it.?
Try these strategies and see if you?re fear no longer gets the best of you.
Christy Matta M.A. is a trainer, consultant and writer. She is the author of "The Stress Response: How Dialectical Behavior Therapy Can Free You from Needless Anxiety, Worry, Anger, and Other Symptoms of Stress." Christy has worked in mental health since 1994, is intensively trained in Dialectical Behavior Therapy(DBT) and has extensive training in Mindfulness. She is an experienced group leader and trainer in both Mindfulness and DBT Skills Groups. Christy blogs regularly for Psych Central at Dialectical Behavior Therapy Understood.
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????Last reviewed: By John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on 2 Nov 2012
????Published on PsychCentral.com. All rights reserved.
APA Reference
Matta, C. (2012). Do Your Fears Hold You Back? 3 Simple Strategies to Ease Fear. Psych Central. Retrieved on November 3, 2012, from http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2012/11/02/do-your-fears-hold-you-back-3-simple-strategies-to-ease-fear/
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