3 Ways to Keep Fear Under Control

Imagine the scene. You step off public transport and begin the regular walk home. Its dark and no one else is around. You can hear the echo of your shoes crashing against the floor, only these are not the only footsteps you can hear. A short distance behind you can hear another set of footsteps taking a similar path to you. A reflection of the bus shelter show the footsteps belong to a man around 6ft wearing a dark hoodie covering his head. Suddenly you notice a strong tightening of your stomach, your heart begins to beat faster and your mouth dries up. You take a sharp left turn down an alley only to find its a dead end. Quickly turning back you find in your path the hooded man. Your breathing quickens as you experience tunnel vision and your muscles tighten in anticipation for your survival instinct to kick in.

Now imagine this. You are sitting at home on your comfortable chair and your mind wanders to what you are going to be doing in a weeks time. You have to do a presentation in front of a 100 people. As you imagine what is going to take place you start to have visions of your mouth moving but nothing coming out, the crowd getting restless and starting to walk out. Suddenly your mind comes back into the room and notice a tightening of your stomach, your heart begins to beat faster and your mouth dries up as your mind goes back to that day in the near future. A shortness of breath brings you back to the moment.

These two examples highlight the effect fear can have on your body, but the interesting factor is how you can experience fear whether it is real (the former) or imagined (the latter).

Fear is as necessary to humans as their eyes and arms. Back when we were marching across the savanna and either hunting or being hunted, fear kept our attention on red alert. Any rustle in the trees sent a signal to the brain for it to instantly decide whether to prepare to fight, to flee or to freeze. And yet a lot of that danger has been eradicated through modern day living, but what has enhanced is our ability to create Oscar winning movies in our mind about what bad things can happen in the immediate future. Even though these mind movies are not real, they can create a physiological response that makes your body think it needs to be on high alert.

So what can you do to ensure you are not fighting illusionary sabre tooth tigers every day? Here are 3 suggestions to explore:

Move! - Your body is designed to move, but the change in body positioning that occurs when moving can change our state to one that reduces the fear. If you find yourself feeling bad because you are imagining a catastrophe occurring the following week, stand up and start walking, ensuring your head is up, back straight and your shoulders pulled back.. This can take your mind off what you are imagining and onto what is now in your immediate environment.

Accept – Trying to resist an emotion is like fuel that makes it stronger. Pretending it is not happening is like a child that wants sweets in the shop but is being ignored; the child gets louder. By accepting the experience of fear you are beginning the process of understanding that just because you are feeling fear doesn’t mean it needs to paralyze you to the spot. The late Susan Jeffers coined the term ‘Feel the fear and do it anyway’. By accepting you are feeling fear you can decide how to react to it.

Give your internal dialogue an upgrade – Aside from making images in your mind that can create fear, your internal dialogue can provide an avenue for prolonging the fear. However there are many things you can do with your internal dialogue that can reduce the emotional response that is associated with it. You can change the actual dialogue, you can make it quieter, you can slow it down, you can speed it up. All of this can have an impact when you have an awareness of the emotional change that occurs when you make those tweaks.

Too many people get held back by a fear that has been created in their mind. Yet it doesn’t have to be like that and by applying these 3 suggestions you can work towards handling your fear instead of it handling you.

——-

Aaron Morton is the creator of The Confidence Lounge. A platform where you can discover how to increase self-confidence from the inside out. Aaron works with individuals to unleash their creativity and not to play small when going for what they want. If you want to learn more about igniting that confidence inside you, go to www.theconfidencelounge.com

http://www.facebook.com/rotem.cohen.182 Rotem Cohen

I would add – complete the thought – think the feared experience through, ask yourself the question – what if this really does happen this way? What’s the worst that could happen? How would I deal with it?

By facing the fear “head on” and giving it some serious thought (instead of just letting your imagination go wild), you would instantly feel more relaxed and confident. Try it.
- http://www.facebook.com/people/Aaron-J-Morton/100000995584020 Aaron J Morton
  
  Exactly Rotem and by completing the thought in a different physiological state (by moving) you are ensuring that you are completing the thought in a different state to when you initiated the fear. Thanks for commenting Rotem.
http://www.acalltoaction.net/ Trevor Wilson

A simple change in our perception of fear can go far towards making it more manageable. When we learn to view fear as a guide leading us towards personal growth, it becomes something to look forward to. Not that the feeling becomes pleasant — it never does. But rather that when you’re feeling it, you know you’re headed in the right direction.

When the thought of something makes me nervous. When it gets my mind thinking of worst case scenarios and “what ifs,” then I know it’s something I should be pursuing.

Fear can be our best friend when viewed in this light.

Cheers!
- http://www.facebook.com/people/Aaron-J-Morton/100000995584020 Aaron J Morton
  
  Thats right Trevor, fear is always telling you something. If there was immediate real danger our brain has what is known as pre-conscious response that will attempt to deal with that immediate danger before you are consciously aware a reaction needs to take place. If it is not immediate, the brain goes through a mode of ‘whats this similar to? what does it mean?’ Fear as a guide towards personal growth has to become a habitual response, but when it does it can bring about some great insight that would not have been possible before.
  Thanks for commenting Trevor!
  Aaron
http://www.danerickson.net/ Dan Erickson

Once, I walked about two miles through New Orleans 2:00 in the morning. When it dawned on me that I might be putting myself in jeopardy I immediately went into fear mode. I began to lowly whistle “Amazing Grace” as I walked and the fear dissipated and I made it back to my hotel with no problem.

Fear is an internal response to external conditions. The key is to externally remain calm through internal Faith.
- http://www.facebook.com/people/Aaron-J-Morton/100000995584020 Aaron J Morton
  
  Great Dan, Any time of anchor you associate with calm will work well and ‘Amazing grace’ theme served you well!
  Thanks for commenting
  Aaron
http://optimizethyself.com/ John Paton

Another thought might be to try and re-frame fear as just your body telling you that you are ready for a challenge. Although the word fear has negative connotations, the reality is that the sensations underlying fear are completely neutral. There is nothing wrong with an occasional burst of adrenaline, or the odd secretion of glucocorticoids. Your body is designed to go through a stress response, and some studies even show that this kind of physiological change is good for you.

I think that it’s a slippery slope to focus on phrasing the questions as keeping fear under control. It assumes too much, when really the entire situation can be seen as an opportunity instead of something negative.
- http://www.facebook.com/people/Aaron-J-Morton/100000995584020 Aaron J Morton
  
  Hi John,
  Absolutely, there is nothing wrong with an occasional burst of adrenaline and your body is designed to cater for the occasional dump of cortisol from the stress response. In fact some people work better in that environment. One of the biggest misconceptions within personal development is people are more motivated towards pleasure, when a large body of research and observations would suggest moving away from pain can be more beneficial. So a fear of loss can actually drive some towards acting efficiently. However these are instances where someone has taught themselves to work under that environment.
  
  If an individual is overwhelmed by fear, being in that state is not the best time to reframe it as the statement is likely to be rejected and that is why if i’m in a coaching environment and my client goes into a fear based state, my first objective is to change their state rather than their interpretation of the feeling.
  
  Kind regards
  Aaron
  - http://optimizethyself.com/ John Paton
    
    I hadn’t really considered a coaching setting, but I must admit that it would make absolute sense to guide a client out of a distressful situation should it arise. Fair point.
http://www.nile7.com/ ahmedwahba

your article is very important , i will try to use it
- AaronMorton
  
  Hi Ahmed, Think of something that would get you out of your comfort zone, commit to it and then use the strategies in this article to help you out.
  Kind regards
  Aaron
http://goalsetting-workshop.com/blog/ Jorge Blanco

Excellent article, Aaron! I completely agree with your first two points.

Move – Right. We must always try to keep doing something each and every day of our lives. Do something active and try not to live a solitary life so that we can always keep moving forward and avoid becoming sluggish.
Accept – This is a really good point. Accepting allows for understanding. Accepting our fears is the first step to conquering them.
- AaronMorton
  
  Thank You Jorge!
http://goalsetting-workshop.com/blog/ Jorge Blanco

Excellent article, Aaron! I completely agree with your first two points.

Move – Right. We must always try to keep doing something each and every day of our lives. Do something active and try not to live a solitary life so that we can always keep moving forward and avoid becoming sluggish.
Accept – This is a really good point. Accepting allows for understanding. Accepting our fears is the first step to conquering them.
Fearless

I like what you mention about accepting. Fear is part of how our bodies are made (to survive etc) but does not have to control us and by recognising the fear we can deal with it appropriately instead of surpressing is.

http://andlovewillfindyou.blogspot.com/2012/10/even-when-i-am-faithless.html
- AaronMorton
  
  Real fear will always control us because we will respond before we are even aware we need to (pre-conscious response). This is a good thing (a) because it free’s up our frontal lobes for more executive thinking (b) because our ‘conscious’ thinking are just too damn slow for us to respond.
http://www.screwthesystemnow.com/ ScrewtheSystemJoe

‘Fear, the worst of all enemies, can be effectively cured by forced repetition of acts of courage’
- Napoleon Hill THINK AND GROW RICH
HoN

Fear = Falce evidence appearing real

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