How To Stop Fear In It’s Tracks
One of my earliest memories was of doing something I was told not to do! When I was about four years old I remember my mom was working on some sort of craft project with a hot glue gun. She had to go do something and left the glue gun on the counter heating up. I was sitting at the table and I remember her saying “Nicole the glue gun is very hot, don’t touch it”. So of course as soon as she left the room I went over and touched the glue gun and burnt my hand. I didn’t try because I was so embarrassed that I had done something my mom said not to! As you can imagine I have never tried to grab a hot glue gun, or anything else hot for that matter, since!
A while ago I shared why I think it’s important for us to embrace negative emotions because we can’t appreciate the good without the bad. Our brains can’t understand happiness without sadness. Check out my past blog here for a refresher.
Another reason negative emotions are important is they keep us safe. Fear is a great example. It hurt when I touched the glue gun. I don’t need to touch other hot things to know they will hurt. My brain learned pretty quickly that hot can mean pain so stay away! Makes sense. Fear can help keep us alive!
The problem with fear is that we aren’t really in situations that threaten our health or our lives very often. For example, I feel way more scared presenting in front of a group of people than I do standing next to my stove. I am physically safe in that room of people, but my brain experiences fear and anxiety.
Our brains evolved to feel fear to protect us. To help us run away as fast as we can from the giant bear. But even though we don’t spend a lot of time running away from big animals, our brains still react with fear to daily events like presenting in front of a group, or going into a new situation, or having a tough conversation with a friend. Our brain feels fear the same way as if I was truly in danger, and my body responds the same way. This stress/fear/anxiety whatever you want to call it can hold us back.
We often fear the unknown. As a result we can stay in a bad situation just because the unknown of change is scarier than what we’re dealing with. We’ve all been there before. Maybe we stayed in a bad job because we were scared we wouldn’t get another. Or we stayed in a bad relationship because we feared the next one would be worse. Fear of the unknown stops us from reaching for better things.
The good news is that because this fear response is actually one of the easier habits to change! We do this by showing our brains that things aren’t as scaring as we think they are. The idea is we gradually expose ourselves to the thing we are scared of, then our brains learn not to be so scared. So if I’m scared of spiders I start by looking at pictures of spiders, then look at spiders in a tank, then eventually I hold a spider. My fear will decrease with each step, and my confidence will grow.
The same thing goes for any fear. The fastest way to get our brains over fears is to face them. Yes we can do this all at once. I could go reality TV style and lay in a bathtub of spiders. It will work, but it’s pretty stressful and that sounds gross to me. The gradual, baby step method is much more realistic for most of us.
I challenge you this week to pick one fear that’s holding you back and make a list of baby steps that would help you overcome this fear. Start small, then slowly face those fear steps one by one. With each step your confidence will go up, your fear will go down, and that end goal that seemed so terrifying won’t seem nearly so scary.