Fears - What They Are And What To Do With Them

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

Lately, a lot of materials about fears have come across. I also decided to share what I know. So fears.

The first moment. All normal people have fears in a certain amount. Fears are normal. Fear is one of the seven basic emotions, if, according to Ekman, fear performs many useful functions for a person. But sometimes a person gets used to being afraid, and is afraid even when there are no special reasons and reasons for fear. Fear that has a cause and fear as a habit are different.

Now, in relation to fears, three categories of people can be distinguished very conditionally: 1) people who are not afraid to be afraid (who have few fears and who know how to overcome these fears); 2) people who have many fears, but who have learned to overcome their fears; 3) people who have many fears and who cook in these fears all their lives (in parallel, infecting their close circle with fear).

Well-founded fears

As I said above, fear performs many useful functions for a person. Fear often sends us a signal that something needs to be done, to pay attention to something. That is, fear in itself is not bad at all. Fear can manifest itself when a person does something completely new for himself, and then such fear is normal. For some people, fear is a good kick when you need to motivate yourself to move towards some goal (if you can't move a person in another way, then why not). As for me, this kind of fear is normal in itself and you don't need to do anything with it. Just take and do what you need or what you want.

The habit of being afraid and anxious

But if the fear is directed at something that may never happen (for example, some people paint themselves terrible pictures of disasters or something terrible), then there is reason to think. The fact is that for our brain, a real stressful situation and a colorful picture of a stressful situation are about the same thing. That is, in both the first and second cases, you get stress. Now imagine: a person has a habit of constantly drawing scary pictures of something terrible to himself (which will never happen, most likely) and while living these pictures he experiences the same stress as if it were happening in reality. That is, for no reason a person harasses himself (his nervous, vascular system) - just like that, for no reason. Good news? Any habit can be replaced with another habit. There are tools for this - they are different in different areas of work, but they are. There would be a desire to work.

Childhood fears

In my opinion, it is a big trouble when a child in childhood found himself alone with his fears, and there was no one to tell about these fears. This habit (keeping your fears to yourself) can make life very difficult even in adulthood. If there are many fears and they are far-fetched, it helps a lot to tell someone about these fears. But you need to tell about them either to people who have no such fears, or to those who know what it is and know how to overcome it. Because if two people who have a lot of fears sit down and start sharing their "experience", then it is very likely that they will intimidate each other even more. To stop being afraid, you need to go beyond fear. A person who is afraid himself will not get you out of it.

Fear motivation

Or even worse - adults raised the child by intimidation (don't go there - there will be something bad, then don't do it - otherwise everything will be terrible). Then a person begins to think like this: any goal or desire is perceived through the prism of “What bad can happen if I do this?”. Although the opposite motivation is much better suited for achieving goals - motivation with a plus sign (“What good will I get if I do this and this?). The second type of motivation can be developed at home, but this is a topic for a completely different article.

Fears from another reality

As far as I have noticed in myself and in others, there are many fears hailing from the distant, distant past, which has long been gone. Especially from the Soviet Union. The fear that property will be taken away, the fear of the camps, the fear of dying of hunger, the fear of being accused of speculation - it is irrelevant, because the reality is different, but the attitude is there and there is fear. You need to work with this - a lot comes up at the level of beliefs, a lot is visible in constellations. My position: you need to get rid of this, because such fears are both illogical and unproductive, but simply draw energy on themselves. You just sit and are afraid of something that no longer exists and, most likely, will not be.

Anxious people are hard

Moreover, it's hard not only for the anxious people themselves, but also for those around. And I don't want to offend anyone. I just say it as it is. If the child has an anxious mother, then the child will have emotional and not only problems (and partly the reason for these problems is in his mother's anxiety). If you have a close anxious person in your environment, then try to track changes in your state after communicating with this person. People who are chronically anxious tend to convey their anxiety to others, exaggerate, undermine confidence, and intimidate. Moreover, it seems to be happening with them on an unspecified basis. What do I want to say? If a person is anxious, then it is his responsibility - to take his anxiety and start working with it seriously (and this is possible). If you have very anxious people in your close environment, track how your state changes after communicating with them.

Phobias or fear of something specific

For example, once a person was very scared of a dog, and now, at the sight of any dog, he shivers or simply becomes ill. Or he got behind the wheel, almost got into an accident and got scared so much that now he cannot get behind the wheel. Or, for some reason, he cannot enter a building (the usual building itself), because it immediately becomes bad. I don't know how in other directions, but in NLP for such cases there are two techniques (for fears and phobias) that work great (tested).

And finally

Your fears, anxieties, phobias - no matter how terrible they may seem to you when you are in them - are actually no more than a habit of the brain and body, and no more than a state (from which you can go into another state, more resourceful). The habit of being afraid, the habit of worrying - you can work with them. Fear of something specific or panic at the sight of a spider - this can also be worked with. In general, you can work with everything, if you wish.