Your Fear of Fear is Holding You Back: How to make friends with fear for a healthier, more fulfilling life

What do you do when you’re afraid? Do you know? If you’re like most people you suppress fear through unhealthy coping habits like substance use, catastrophizing, rumination, food, and over-exercising. You may even try to suppress the emotion through toxic positivity.

I probably don’t need to tell you what can happen as a result. But I will, just in case. Think mental and physical health challenges, unhealthy relationships, loss of relationships, and career stagnation. If you run from fear, which is what unhealthy coping is, you will rarely commit to opportunities that take you and your career to the next level. You will turn down opportunities or not fully commit.

Fear of failure, fear of looking stupid, fear of imperfection, fear of not pleasing everyone, fear of…If you don’t make friends with fear by learning how to use it to your advantage, you won’t put yourself out there. And to live a healthy and fulfilling life, humans need to continuously strive to realize their full potential. We are programmed to use our full talents and potential.

WHY FOCUS ON FEAR?

I recently told a friend that I have a theory that most of our problems would be solved if people stopped being afraid of fear, stopped trying to escape it, if we taught people how to manage fear––and other emotions–– starting at a young age and through adulthood.

Why do we need classes in this?

Fear is a powerful emotion that can feel uncomfortable, so it makes sense we shy away from experiencing it. It triggers our fight or flight response, hence the discomfort, because it arises from real and imagined threats. This makes fear incredibly useful if we use it to our advantage.

When we experience what we perceive as a threat, our bodies and mind are readied through a chemical chain reaction (“fight or flight”) that quickens our heart rate, increases our adrenaline, increases our breathing rate, dilates our pupils, and even pales or flush our skin. We might even tremble. We’re alert, observant, and ready for action to flee the threat. Although sometimes, we might freeze up.

When the threat is a burglar, or the now proverbial saber-tooth tiger, that makes sense. We need to defend ourselves. And we would do so by experiencing the full stress cycle and physically, mentally, and emotionally releasing all that emotion through fighting or fleeing. We get it out of our system. We are safe (hopefully).

When it’s fear we’ve revved up due to hypotheticals we’ve drummed up through the “what if” game, then that chain reaction is less helpful because most people don’t find a way to healthfully move through that full stress cycle to move back into “rest and digest” mode. Instead, people do one of the earlier mentioned coping strategies and sit in fear. This adds to the chronic stress they are likely already experiencing.

Our natural instinct, when faced with a situation that sparks fear, is to avoid it. However, often that intensifies the feeling. It makes it hard to focus on anything else, unless we numb it or distract it through substance, television, etc.

There is another way, though. You can experience fear and appreciate its role in alerting you to pay attention to something without dwelling on the stress response. Doing so will not only improve your health but will help you move through the emotion and say yes to career opportunities you might otherwise have avoided.

HOW TO BEFRIEND FEAR

To know how to use fear to our advantage we need to understand the helpful role it plays if we let it.

I already mentioned the vital role it plays in helping us protect ourselves from physical and emotional threats. But what about before a date or a performance or a public speaking event or people’s judgments or an elevator? I use to have this unfounded fear of those parking gate bars. I’d hold my breath every time I went through one. Why? No reason. I never saw anything bad happen because of one. I’ve never even heard of anything bad happening because of one. I was simply afraid of the “what if…”.

In these cases, fear is still a helpful signal. Our brain is using our body-mind to send us a message: “Hey! Pay attention to this.” Instead of running from the “this,” pay attention. You pay attention through awareness, questioning, and taking action all without judgment.

1. Awareness: The first step is always becoming aware. Observe that you are afraid. Mindfulness exercises help train you to observe emotions without judgment. Simply become aware that you are afraid and get curious.
2. Questioning: As you become curious, ask yourself, why might I be afraid? What am I afraid of? For example, you could be afraid because you care so much. You are setting the stakes so high because of your level of care that it’s stressing you out. Maybe you’re scared of losing control or power, which can indicate you don’t trust yourself to survive and thrive.
3. Action: As you peel back the reasons that might be behind your fear, ask yourself questions like, “what’s the worst-case scenario?,” and “how realistic is this”? As you play out the answers you will likely realize that even if the worst happened, you would be able to handle it. And now you feel better because you have an action plan for how you would do so. You will also realize that the worst-case scenario isn’t that likely to happen. Or that most people won’t be judging you because they’re wrapped up in their own internal stories most of the time. They’re too busy judging themselves to judge you.

Train Your Emotion Management Muscles

I already mentioned that mindfulness activities help train you to respond in a healthy way to emotions like fear. Eating well, moving daily, getting quality and quantity sleep, and having strong social connections also help you build resilience and improve your ability to practice mindfulness and emotion management.

Living a healthy, thriving lifestyle is all about a synergistic or holistic approach. You can build a holistically healthy lifestyle one habit at a time. Which will you start with? What support do you need? If I can be of service, book a complimentary chat here .