How To Overcome Your Sense Of Fear

Before anything shifts, you have to notice that fear is running the show. People get so wrapped up in their own feelings and thoughts that those feelings start to look like the whole of reality. They aren't. Awareness is the gap between you and the thing you're scared of, and that gap is where the work begins.

Next, name it. Vague dread is harder to touch than a specific fear, so picture the actual situation in your head. What is happening in that scene? What, exactly, are you afraid of? Watch your inner space the way you'd watch something happening across the room.

Then get curious about it. The old line about curiosity and the cat doesn't apply when you're investigating your own mind. Which thoughts set off the fear? Where do you feel it in the body? How do you react when it shows up? Just observe, without rushing to fix.

Drop into the present moment and ask what you actually lack right now, this second. Usually the answer is nothing. When you center on now, you tend to see that things are simply as they are, and you can accept them. Sometimes that's as plain as taking one breath and feeling your body.

EFT, or Emotional Freedom Techniques, is worth a try. You tap meridian points on your body with your fingertips while holding the fear in mind, and for a lot of people it takes the edge off. Occasionally the relief lasts.

The Sedona Method works along similar lines: you hold your attention on the fear and ask yourself a short series of questions. Simple, and effective for many.

The Work is close cousin to that. It uses a set of questions too, and it's a solid way to sit with anxiety, fears and worries instead of being swept away by them.

Hypnosis is another option. It can plant better thoughts and loosen negative beliefs. It helps some people and does nothing for others, so treat it as an experiment.

Try swapping fear for gratitude. Say public speaking terrifies you. You could instead be grateful for an audience that showed up to hear you, and for the chance to reach that many people at once.

Write the fears down. Turning them over in your head doesn't resolve them; it just lets them circle. Paper gives the negativity somewhere to go other than back into the same loop.

Talking helps too, as long as it doesn't become a pity party. Think about how often you swallow the dark thoughts simply because you're unsure how someone will react to them.

Therapy can be meaningful, occasionally life-changing, if you land on the right person. Finding that person is the hard part. Choose someone who leaves you feeling more capable, not less.

NLP, Neuro-Linguistic Programming, is a way to understand the machinery of your own mind. It's among the stronger tools for clearing out fears, phobias and other stuck emotional patterns.

A good life coach can help you trace where a fear started and sort out what you actually want. Opening up to one can feel intimidating. It can also be the thing that finally names what's been holding you back.

Read. Books on your particular fear can teach you how to loosen its grip, and motivational or inspirational material does its own quiet work.

Act. Fear is largely your mind spinning up imagined scenarios and selling them to you as fact. Face the thing and it weakens, and you start to see that what scared you was invention, not reality.

Watch something. A documentary or a film can be as revealing as a good book, and a well-chosen distraction is a legitimate way to handle a fear for a while.

Mind your diet. What you eat moves your mood more than people expect. Keep it clean, because additives, sweeteners, sugar and assorted chemicals can tip your whole system off balance.

Lean toward the positive outcome. When fear takes hold, picture things going well instead of going wrong. Rather than bombing that talk, imagine it going better than you dared hope.

Put the negative thoughts in proportion. Most of us inflate the bad far past its real size.

Let go of control. We crave predictability even though it's never truly available, and the gap between wanting control and not having it is where fear lives. Give up the illusion and something in you relaxes.

Turn outward. Instead of circling your own self-consciousness, look for ways to be useful and kind. Doing something for another person is a reliable way to feel better yourself.

Rethink what failure means. Realizing it isn't the end of the world is freeing. More often than not, a failure is just one step on the way to getting it right.

Go looking for the root. Meditation is one way to trace a fear back to where it actually started.

And breathe. Breath can carry you through the worst of it, and of everything here, this is the one I'd call most powerful. Keep listening to your inner voice while you face what scares you. It's a skill, and it takes time to build, but once you have it you can clear those fears out, with any luck for good. - Erin