Conquering Our Fears – Five Keys

I wonder what you’d say if I asked you what you most fear?

Are you like me and get really uncomfortable about heights? When I took my kids up the Sky Tower – they were thrilled and excited and I was clinging to the wall of the lift not looking out the window and begging them to hold my hand! Then we got to the top where they were jumping on the glass floor – bless them – while I inched myself forward to the edge of the glass and looked down, then I poked it a bit with my foot and then stood on the glass. I didn’t die and I was still in one piece – fabulous!

Now I know those of you who don’t have this problem and who have jumped on the glass yourselves are probably laughing inwardly but for me and others like me it’s a big deal! We know it’s illogical, we can rationalize all we like but it’s still tricky.

What are other people scared of? A whole raft of things: fear of flying, public speaking, heights, the dark, small spaces, open spaces, death, failure, rejection, intimacy, spiders and snakes. The list goes on and on.

Let’s talk about what’s happening in our brains when we’re scared. First there’s the scary stimulus, for instance, me looking out the window of the Sky Tower lift and seeing the ground whizzing away. We have an autonomic response, which is involuntary, occurring below the level of consciousness and therefore we have no business beating ourselves up about all this. It’s set off by adrenaline and cortisol being released around our bodies to prepare us to fight or flee. What we experience is an elevated heart rate and breathing, perspiration, non-essential services shut down like digestion and saliva production; chills as more blood gets pumped to muscles and away from skin. All of these responses are intended to help us assess and survive the threat. If we were never afraid we’d be doing all sorts of dangerous or fatal things and that could potentially be the end of the human race.

However there are also conditioned fears where we have learned to be fearful from those around us or the environment around us. For instance in NZ we’re not as scared of tornadoes as folk living in Kansas but we’ve learned to be more fearful of earthquakes.

In order to manage or extinguish our fears then we need to move our responses from the amygdala, the more primitive part of our brain where the flight or fight response is triggered, to the frontal cortex, which is the intelligent, higher functioning part. Unfortunately the only way through this is through it, which means gradually exposing ourselves to the stimulus, for example me going up that Sky Tower lift repeatedly until I can do it without having to ask my kids to hold my hand! The idea of graduated exposure means reducing our one big goal into smaller goals starting with the easiest step and then going on to more and more challenging steps. For instance if it’s fear of public speaking perhaps start with introducing or thanking a speaker or making a toast and then work your way up to longer and longer speeches.

Learning relaxation techniques is useful too. Deep breathing and muscle relaxation exercises are great to calm our bodies before attempting something stressful. This gradually disconnects the stress response from the stimulus – reprogramming our brains and helping us assess situations more accurately.

Talking about what scares us is useful in that it helps us get some distance from the problem so that we can assess it more calmly. Having a confident friend come along while we tackle our fear can be very useful. I did this in London when I got scared on the tube. I hadn’t been able to take the tube to work but one day we got stuck in a crowd after a parade. Someone pulled the emergency cord and we were stopped in a tunnel for ages so I asked my friend to keep talking to me – keep my mind occupied. Another scared lady joined in too for the same reason. I was delighted to find after that day I could handle the tube with no problems at all.

There you have it – fears are normal, can be useful and we’re not to blame for them, we can overcome them step by step and by learning to relax.

See my recommended reading list:

• Quiet the Mind, Matthew Johnstone