Real fear is a good thing! You need it in order to preserve yourself in the presence of life-threatening danger.
Real fear is a built in reaction that fires our fight or flight mode and surges adrenaline through our body to achieve maximum physical output for survival.
On the other hand, a constant fear of circumstances that are not immediately life threatening is harmful to our mental and physical health. This unhealthy fear shows up as stress, nervousness, anxiety, panic and physical tension.
Regularly experiencing stress and its related emotions releases fear hormones into the blood stream which stunt our brain our function, limit our performance, weaken our immune system, and are associated with pre-mature ageing.
Then there’s FEAR – Fantasized Experiences Appearing Real. In today’s society this non-life-threatening FEAR is vastly more predominant than our natural life saving fear. The good news is that FEAR is illusionary and therefore changeable.
Here’s how to get over FEAR:
- Recognize when you are in a state of FEAR by paying attention to the feelings in your body.
- Allow your body to feel those feelings, as this enables them to release.
- Let your awareness drift out and imagine looking down upon yourself from a birds eye view. See how your situation fits into the bigger picture.
- As the detached observer, what is there for you to learn about yourself in that situation?
- Bring your awareness back into your body and preserve/integrate the learning.
- Spend another moment inside your body and notice what’s changing.
- Think about how you will approach the situation that you used to FEAR.
You may be surprised at how effective the above skill is, when you actually use it. So give it a try. What do you have to loose, besides FEAR?
Written by Jevon Dangeli – MSc Transpersonal Psychology, Coach & Trainer