Controlling Fear

During these unprecedented times we humans all share the same concerns about being “frozen with fear.” Rather than wait to react to a physiological response such as freezing or not knowing what to do, how much more of an advantage would it be to affect fear before you find your eyes and mouth wide open, staring at a real-world threat?

What can you do right now to proactively control fear or even prevent it? You can change your perspective and manage your expectations by using inoculation, visualization, and desensitization. 

Change Your Perspective 

You can either control your fear or allow your fear to control you. Fear can be effectively managed by simply changing the way you look at it. Looking at it from the psychological, physiological, neurological, and philosophical perspectives provides an informative overview of what it is and how it works, but how exactly can you control it.

It is not possible to control everything that you may encounter, but you can control of how you react to it. The Greek philosopher Epictetus (55-135AD) said, “People are disturbed not by things, but the view they take of them.” From a philosophical perspective when you change your perspective you change your reality.

You have more control over your own fears than you may think. You can’t control what happens in the outside world, but you can control your interpretation of it. Developing an understanding and confidence in how you react to certain stimuli is the key to success in controlling fear.

Philosophically speaking, fear is an emotion, the same as being happy or sad. Separating yourself from your emotions is something that many professionals have learned throughout their respective careers. Although everyone experiences fear during their lifetime, some people find it easier to emotionally detach from an event than others. Realizing that you allow yourself to experience fear will allow you to detach from your emotions, and separating yourself from the fear emotion.

If you want to be proactive in managing your fear, accept that fear is an emotion – something you own. It is a personal possession to do with as you wish. You always have a choice – allow or don’t allow yourself to experience the emotion. You can detach yourself from your emotions as is often trained and practiced by those who must face deadly threats as a daily demand of their profession.

Manage Your Expectations

Know what to expect. A pro boxer or UFC fighter expects a hit in the face from his or her opponent. A firefighter expects to put out a raging blaze. An ER nurse expects to help stop a person from dying. Each of these professionals is conditioned, inoculated, and accustomed to their respective and anticipated job responsibilities.

Inoculation

Psychologically speaking, you can become inoculated to fear using familiarization. Like the body becoming inoculated by introducing a small amount of the vaccine and inducing a natural chemical reaction, the mind will react to familiarizing itself in such a manner as to cause a psychological inoculation.

When someone tells you a good joke for the very first time, you laugh out loud and slap your knee because it was so funny. Then you hear it again, and it’s not as funny so maybe you half-heartedly snicker. The next time you hear the very same joke you’re pretty much over it. These same mechanics apply to fear. The more you experience the same thing repeatedly, the more desensitized you become to that thing.

Visualization

One of the best ways to practice experiencing fear is to visualize a dreaded situation that literally makes your palms sweat.

Back in my youth, when I was a rock climber, I had a healthy fear of heights and although having gained more experience with multiple ascents, I was never fearless. However, I could reduce my fear of heights by visualizing being in a difficult situation on the side of the mountain anticipating a fall and taking the appropriate steps to solve the problem. Positive imagery or cognitive rehearsal allows you to anticipate your actions and as such can be used to desensitize your fear.

Becoming familiarized with fear causes your mind to start inoculating you from its physiological effects. Just because you may experience fear does not mean that you must live in fear.

Understanding the mechanics of fear, changing your perspective, managing your expectations, and using cognitive rehearsal (visualization), are exactly how you can control fear.