The Guide To Overcoming Fears - Beat Social Anxiety

We tend to use the terms ‘anxiety’ and ‘fear’ interchangeably, but while anxiety is normally to do with worrying about possible events before they occur, fear can be defined as our psychological reaction to events that are happening. So anxiety is concerned with the future, often causing us to avoid situations, or stopping us from starting tasks or activities. Fear, on the other hand, is a reaction to what is happening in the present, and can cause us to stop what we’re doing or to underperform.

Fear is important and appropriate in many situations and is there for our protection; if a car is hurtling towards us at high speed, it’s appropriate to feel fear and get out of the way as quickly as possible. However, we can also feel fear in situations when it isn’t helpful, and it can stop us from stepping outside of our comfort zone.

When we are experiencing an event that causes fear to rise within us, we find it unpleasant and often try to withdraw, block, or distract ourselves from it. Sometimes these strategies work because we are in real danger and may need to flee or fight. It’s also reasonable to withdraw from a situation, or avoid it altogether, if the fear doesn’t present much of a problem or has little consequence for us.  If riding large roller coasters overwhelms you with fear, it won’t hold you back in life if you never bother to ride them. If you are afraid of public speaking, but have no desire to speak in public and are never required to do so, then the fear won’t impact on your life. 

However, when fear is holding us back from doing something we really value or want to do; or causes us extreme distress and arises frequently; then we need to work on tackling and overcoming it. We need to learn to tolerate our fear and become comfortable with feeling discomfort.

Tolerating Discomfort

When I was in my twenties, I helped a friend who owned a construction company by labouring for him on a building project. We had two weeks to demolish and rebuild some outside buildings for a supermarket. Most of my work involved demolishing walls, carrying bricks, clearing away rubbish, and mixing cement. On one particular Sunday morning, when the site was empty, I was due to work on one outside area on my own. It started pouring down with rain just as I arrived at the building site in the morning and it didn’t stop all day long. Regardless of the weather, the job had to be done.

Normally we try as much as possible to shelter ourselves from the rain, and if we do go out in it, we tend to cover ourselves with an umbrella or wear waterproofs. On this occasion I was left on the building site with a job that had to be finished, with no shelter from the rain, and no waterproofs to put on. For the first ten minutes I grumbled and complained to myself; my face was stinging from the hard, heavy rain, and my clothes got soaking wet as I carried brick after brick from the demolished building to a skip.

However, after a while I got used to the rain and it stopped bothering me. My inner complaining dialogue almost completely stopped and I got into a rhythm of working. I noticed how the raindrops felt softer when falling onto my arms than they did when they hit my face, and how the rain felt as it dripped from my hair, down my face, onto my neck, and settled at the top of the collar of my t-shirt. When I got used to the wet clothes sticking to my skin, that felt fine too. I noticed how the wet material of my t-shirt felt differently to that of my jeans against my skin. I had no choice but to stay there and get used to the discomfort, with no means of avoidance or distraction.

When I first arrived I’d had a sense of dread and self-pity when I noticed the rain starting to pour. However, as time passed and I mindfully noticed the present moment sensations of the rain, I discovered it was nowhere near as bad as I had initially expected. What I didn’t know at the time was I’d defused from my thoughts, accepted the discomfort, and engaged with the present moment. I can’t say I enjoyed it, but I did get the job done.

Suppose you could defuse from thoughts about how bad or unpleasant your fear is and how much you dislike it. If instead of trying to make it go away, you non-judgmentally notice the physical sensations and then focus your attention on engaging with what you are doing? Trying to get rid of fear and anxiety takes up a lot of energy and is very distracting. It’s like constantly wiping rain away from your face and pulling your wet clothes away from your skin. It’s hard to engage in life when you’re busy arguing with your thoughts and struggling with your feelings.

The Illusions of Fear

We often think that before we are able to do anything properly, we have to get rid of the fear of doing it. We believe we simply can’t function well when we are experiencing fear. However, there are a number of illusions surrounding fear that begin to fade away when we look at them a little more closely. 

• Fear is a weakness: when we step out of our comfort zone we will experience fear. It’s natural and normal. There’s no way of expanding your comfort zone without stepping outside of it and feeling fear. Fear is not a sign of weakness, it is a sign we are pushing our boundaries and progressing.

• Fear is debilitating: when we leave our comfort zone and ‘put ourselves out there’, especially into public arena, we are taking a risk. This can trip our fight, flight, or freeze response, along with many of the physiological reactions we have already talked about. In most cases it’s unavoidable, and we need to accept this. Sporting or artistic performers sometimes refer to this fear as being ‘psyched up’, ‘pumped’, or ‘wired’. In many situations we can learn to channel our fear and use it to good effect, increasing the level of our performance. More often than not, the fear won’t debilitate us, but focusing on the fear will.
   
• Fear will keep us stuck: when we hold on to the attitude fear is bad and we can’t do anything until it goes away, it will keep us stuck. When facing challenges, some people use drugs to numb the fear; cancel or avoid appointments, performances, and tasks; or even stop doing things altogether, especially after a bad experience. However, this will often make things worse in the long-term. Fear doesn’t hold us back, but our attitude to fear does.

Managing Fear

Knowing the illusions surrounding fear is all well and good, but when we’re in a real-life challenging situation that doesn’t require us to fight, flee, or freeze, what can we practically do when we feel fear rising up?

1. Firstly, we need to accept it. We can’t numb, push away, or eliminate fear when it arises. Battling or arguing with it will only take our attention away from the situation or task in hand, meaning we’ll be unable to be present and do whatever we need to as well as we possibly can. When I first started university lecturing, I was terrified, and would often spend much of the lecture caught up in my fear; criticising myself for feeling so afraid, wondering what the students were thinking about my shaky voice and trembling hands, slowly becoming convinced I didn’t have what it took to do the job properly. It was only after I accepted the fear and focused on my lecture material that my performances improved and I became more confident. I still often feel fear when lecturing, but I’ve learned to accept it and focus on the task in hand.

2. It can also help if we take a step further than just accepting fear when it arises, and purposely welcome it.  Hello fear my old friend. That’s not to say we go out looking for fear, or we like it’s presence, but when we do notice it we aren’t harsh or bitter, instead we’re warm and welcoming to it. We need to be aware fear evolved to help keep us safe in challenging situations, to alert us to risks, and to prime us for action. It means well and is on our side. We can build a positive relationship with fear, win its trust, and discover it’s harmless. While this may sound ridiculous, it will allow us to see fear for what it is and to work at being confident in those situations and tasks we want, or need to do. So accept it and welcome it.

3. Finally, we can use it. When we feel fear and our sympathetic nervous system initiates the emergency or challenge response, our senses get heightened, our reflexes quicken, we get greater strength, and our body is energised and ready for action. Sometimes we can use this extra energy and focus to our advantage. It can be particularly helpful for physical tasks or activities.

We may also benefit from changing the way we interpret the symptoms of fear. We talked about how important mindset is in the Introduction. Adding to that evidence is some new research suggesting that if we interpret our fear as ‘excitement’, we’re more likely to use it to take action that will result in more positive behaviour. This is because excitement, like fear, is a high arousal state. Eliminating a high arousal state is almost impossible, but reinterpreting it is relatively easy. The research demonstrated that reframing fear as excitement increased performance in a number of tasks, particularly those involving social evaluation. So accept fear, welcome it as a friend, and when possible, use it to your benefit.

There will of course be situations in which we can’t use the energy fear provides, like when we sit down to take an exam, or have to talk to our manager at work.  So if you’re  in a situation in which you can’t use your fear, just make room for it and then focus on engaging in the present moment and the task at hand.

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So fear and anxiety shouldn’t stop us from doing anything we want, or need to do. We can use the same principles to become confident at doing almost anything, even the things we currently don’t have the skills or experience to do. We’ll look at how this is possible in the next chapter.

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