Topic: anxiety

Question: Overcoming fears
I have a fear of something and I want to face that fear to overcome it, but I don't know how. What can I do?

Answer (from Cory Ian Shafer LPCPsychotherapist, Jungian, Hypnotherapy):
Fears are not that difficult to deal with, first you need to train yourself to relax using some relaxation strategy, once you are able to employ that in your daily life, you then need to start facing your fear, for instance I'll use an example of a man who has a fear of driving over a bridge. We would build a hierarchy of fears, that is a list of fears ranging from least to most, for example the man may want to start by looking at a picture of a bridge while employing his relation technique, then he may want to see a real bridge from a distance while employing that same relaxation technique, then moving closer to the bridge, then maybe standing on a bridge, all the while moving closer to his fear while relaxing, until you come to most fearful proposition which is crossing that bridge, or you can also engage in flooding which is for example, if you were scared of an elevator, go into an elevator until you are not panicking anymore, in the movie Batman Begins, Bruce Wayne who has a great fear of bats, goes into this cave and allows himself to be surrounded by bats until he is no longer fearful of them. Secondly, look at your fears, do they even need to be worked on, some fears are healthy, for example if i was a therapist in New York City and someone came to me and said "I'm scared of snakes", I would probably say that is OK because there are very little snakes left in ManhattanHope that helps C

Answer (from Dr. Meredyth LawrynceServing Clients Nationwide):
It is commendable that you have acknowledged the fact that you have this fear and that you want to overcome it! 👏🏽👏🏽  Micro steps, doing a little bit each day to get closer to your goal of overcoming it.  Working thru a list of mini-steps that you can accomplish until you are fully immersed in your fear and overcoming it.  As you accomplish each step along the way implementing micro rewards so you can feel a sense of accomplishment and reward at each interval, helps to want to keep going forward.  Immersive therapy could help in this area.

Answer (from Kellie Spear, LCMHC, LMFTCompassionate online support & encouragement ):
Everyone has fears. Whatever your fear is it can be helpful to breakdown the thing that creates anxiety or fear into small steps. For instance, let's say you are afraid of speaking in public. If your goal would be to one day speak to a room of people, you would start by creating a list of lesser fears that would eventually lead to the main fear of speaking in public. You could start your list with things that might be less anxiety-producing such as, asking for help at a store or speaking up in class or at work if something is bothering you. As you build-up to what you fear the most you will have taken baby steps while assessing whether or not what you feared most was as bad as you thought it would be. If it wasn't, that will help boost your confidence and help move you to the next step. This is called an exposure hierarchy and it is something you can do on your own or with the help of a counselor.

Answer (from Kaileen McMickle, MS, LPCLicensed Professional Counselor):
I think it's super brave to want to face your fears, so you are already moving in a great direction!No matter if your fear is something rational (e.g., fear of spiders), or something that seems irrational (e.g., fear of clocks), there is always a reason your brain has considered the thing you fear to be a threat.  Having a fear of spiders makes sense because in evolutionary terms, we need to fear things that could harm us.  On the other hand, fearing clocks may seem irrational without context; however, if you experienced something traumatic while listening to the ticking of a clock throughout the event, your brain may equate clocks with danger.  The reason for this is clear in much of the neuroscience research we have available.  In our brains we have amygdalae, which are basically just the "watch dogs" of the brain.  They are incredibly good at scanning our environment for any threats, whether or not we perceive those threats as rational because this part of the brain does not operate via logic--and it shouldn't.  If we sense danger because there's a bear in our presence, we don't need logic to survive--we need to just respond in ways that keep us safe.  If something really terrifying happens to us, our brains burn that all that information into the amygdalae, including any peripheral information.  This is why we can fear things that really aren't innately scary, like clocks.Moving through something you fear isn't easy.  It can be very emotionally difficult and feel pretty awful.  The good news is working with fears is one of the most researched areas of psychology and there are many evidence-based techniques that can help.One of the best techniques for changing the brain's response is exposure.  This technique involves exposing yourself, little by little, to the very thing you fear.  The reason this is so effective is because the amygdalae can only learn via experience.  If you avoid what you fear, that teaches your brain that that object or situation is dangerous, and over time that only strengthens the fear.  Conversely, if you expose yourself to something you fear and sit through a full fear response, eventually your anxiety returns to your baseline which sends the message that the object or situation is not dangerous.To begin with exposure, first it's important to have some mindfulness techniques built up.  This can be deep breathing, muscle tension/relaxation, etc.  It's important to know that this is in place for relaxation, not to distract from the exposure process because you really want to feel that anxiety to "wake up" the amygdalae--your brain can't learn a new response if you distract from the anxiety.  There's countless videos and recordings on youtube, as well as apps like Calm or Headspace that can teach some of those techniques.Next you can create a fear hierarchy.  Start with things connected to your fear that serve as triggers, but don't completely overwhelm you.  For example, if you have a fear of spiders you may start with pictures of spiders, then videos, then fake plastic spiders, seeing a spider in person, and finally touching a spider (non-poisonous).  This is a very simple list--some people have many, many triggers associated with their fears and that's normal.  When you have your list, you can scale each trigger by how much anxiety it gives you.  So on a scale from 1-100, if seeing pictures of spiders puts you at a 60, then your goal for that part of the hierarchy is to cut it in half to 30 (meaning you cut your anxiety in half).  Sometimes this can take multiple exposures with the same trigger, though exposure is very powerful and tends to be a much quicker process than most people think.  I know this is a lot of information to take in and I hope it all makes sense!  It's not all you can do, but it's so effective.  And of course it is best when you are getting assistance from a counselor (if you feel that you need that kind of support).  A counselor would be able to actually do some in-session mindfulness and exposure techniques with you (depending on the fear) to help prepare you for doing it on your own.