Fears come in a variety of packages for people who have low self-esteem, such as the fear of:

• places: school, church, crowds, planes or enclosed places heights above or below ground

• animals: snakes, rats, mice

• objects: guns, knives, computers

• people: men or women, strangers, homosexuals, making problems or trouble for others, feeling over-responsible, not doing enough for others, losing others.

• events: nuclear holocaust, war, crime

• atmosphere: dark, shadowy, gloomy, foreboding, being alone, strange or unknown setting

• family member: getting ill, being lost, running away

• disaster: fire, hurricane, tornado, lightening, losing job or being fired, injury or pain (self or others), death (self or others) losing security and financial stability

• reactions or responses to self: rejection, not being liked, being made fun of, disappointing others, being ignored, being the "real" you

• results of taking a risk to do something: failure, success, making a mistake, being judged, repeating mistakes from the past

• public speaking: taking a leadership role, getting nervous in front of others, making a fool of yourself

• feelings about oneself: feeling guilty, "not being good enough", being unstable or crazy, being held accountable, being pressured to produce, explaining your behavior, being exposed for the weaknesses or failures in your past, being useless or unwanted

• the unknown: new things, e.g., technology, change, making a decision, growing old alone, retirement, inactivity

• authority figures: being told what to do, being embarrassed

Step 3: Once you have explored your motivation for confronting your fears, convince yourself of the need to address these fears. On a separate sheet of paper, answer these questions:

The Results of Fear Robert Elias Najemy

Overcoming Fear - Part 2

1. Fear & insecurity are synonymous. When we feel insecure, we naturally become concerned & spend great portions of time, energy, thought & money toward establishing external security.

We focus on acquiring & protecting our sources of persons, food, shelter, sex, money, possessions, prestige or any other external factors which will help us feel secure.

2. This type of thinking & living is often, by necessity, ego-centered & maintained at the expense of others. We don't feel secure enough to love & give, but need to take. When such a psychology permeates our social & national psyche, it can lead to conflict & war.

3. When we feel insecure, we seldom feel the confidence to try something new; we tend to stick to old habits & familiar ways. We fear the new & the unknown. Our lives become stale, boring, habitual, meaningless & without growth.

This boring, habitual kind of life leads to inertia; a waking sleep, a living death. Much time & energy are spent on satisfying our security addictions & there's little or no energy left for emotional, mental or spiritual growth.

4. Fear is also the cause & result of a feeling of vulnerability & mistrust. When we feel insecure, we feel threatened by unfamiliar situations or people, thus explaining the development of racial hatred, religious intolerance & international tensions & war. We mistrust each other & act in defensive & often offensive ways in order to protect ourselves from the imagined danger.

5. When we fear, our reason is nullified & our imagination runs wild, creating the worst possible scenarios, which are usually far from the actual reality.

6. Perception is distorted & we misinterpret others' intentions & actions. When our reason is sufficiently overcome by a panicking imagination, we're moved to prejudice, narrow-mindedness, anger, hate & in extreme cases aggression, violence, cruelty & war.

7. Such irrational behavior reaches its climax in the mob mentality. When many human beings gather into in a large group, their mentality often tends to be reduced to that of the lowest of the group's members.

9. Perhaps the most unfortunate result of fear is that it acts like a magnet, literally attracting to us to the very things that we fear the most.

"Fear is the dark room where the Devil develops his negatives."

Gary Busey

Managing the Fear
By Margaret Paul, Ph.D.
www.innerbonding.com

Our society is challenged as never before. Anxiety fills the air so thick we can feel it around us. Our sense of safety has been undermined & along with it our sense of control.

We lived under the illusion of control for so long that we may have come to believe in it. We may have believed we were, for the most part, in charge of our external safety - if only we drove carefully or didn’t walk in dangerous areas & so on.

That illusion of control has been pulled out from under us & many of us are left with knots of anxiety. How do we feel safe in such an unsafe world when death could come out of nowhere?

In reality, our external safety is never assured because we're mortal beings whose bodies can be harmed. To think otherwise is to maintain a belief in controlling others & external events that doesn't exist & never has existed.

When you ask your guidance (which can be your experience of God, or a light, a presence, a guardian angel, a mentor or teacher, or the highest part of yourself ), "What is most loving to me in this moment?

What is in my highest good?" you automatically raise your frequency & open the door to your personal spiritual guidance. Once your intention is to learn about loving yourself & you're willing to take the loving action you're guided to do, then all the other ways of raising the frequency may be of help to you.

It's when you can access your personal spiritual guidance that you're then able to take loving care of yourself. You'll create an inner sense of safety & serenity when you're willing to learn to take 100% responsibility for all your own feelings of both pain & joy.

Learning to hear, see & feel the messages from your spiritual guidance takes practice. The more you practice, the more you trust that you're never alone & that you really are being guided toward your highest good. This is what will create your sense of safety.

It may be difficult to practice opening to spiritual guidance if you believe it doesn’t exist, or that it'll not show up for you personally. The only way you'll know for sure whether or not this guidance is here is to practice moving into the intent to learn about loving yourself w/ your guidance & see what happens. It takes a leap of faith to open to learning with something that you're not sure even exists.

Years ago I read the Carlos Castenada’s books. Carlos was being mentored by a teacher named Don Juan. At one point, Don Juan stated that he'd choose the time of his own death. Carlos asked him (I'm paraphrasing the question since I no longer have the book) "What if you were walking thru the desert one day & someone was hiding behind a rock ready to shoot you?"

Don Juan’s answer was one I never forgot: "I wouldn’t be there." He wouldn’t be there because he would have tuned into his guidance & would have been told not to go there.

This is what we all need in these difficult times. We each need to do all we can to keep our frequency high, for this is how we can each help our planet. The attack on our country has made all of us vulnerable to the darkness of fear, anger, anxiety & depression. We can't afford to give in to this darkness.

We can each stay in love, peace & joy, rather than in fear, anxiety & depression, only when our intent is to learn about loving ourselves & we stay tapped into our guidance throughout the day.

Our very way of life is at stake here. Most of us can't go out & directly deal with the darkness that destroyed that killed so many innocent people. What we can do is stay in the light - in love, peace & joy thru our intent to learn & our connection with Spirit.

Darkness can't exist in the face of light. The more of us that stay in the light, the more power we have to overcome darkness. We each have the responsibility to move out of our intent to control & into the intent to learn about loving ourselves & others. We all have the responsibility to raise our frequency & stay in connection w/the God/Goddess energy of love & compassion.

We each need to become spiritual warriors, taking loving action even when it's hard to do so. Through our own loving action, perhaps then our country will be guided toward taking whatever action that is in our highest good & the highest good of all.

Courage skills are useful in dealing with real danger. They're also useful in dealing with situations that feel more dangerous than they really are.

Fear serves a purpose

Some people think that it would be good to be “fearless.” This isn't true. Fear is the brain’s signal that there may be danger. There's a good reason why we're able to feel fear! Fear tells us, “You’d better protect yourself!”

It’s our brains’ way of making danger stand out & be noticed. Because of fear, we don’t find ourselves thinking like this: “Humh, what’s the best thing for me to do now? Plan a vacation? Make up a poem? Or get out of the street so I won’t get run over by that big truck coming straight at me?”

When dangerous situations come up, fear helps them take over our attention & get us moving quickly toward safety.

Some people seem relatively fearless. Being fearless poses problems. When fearless people are children, they often wind up in emergency rooms. Some wind up dead. They're not afraid of climbing into high places or leaping from them. They're not afraid of running into streets.

If they make it thru childhood, fearless people often get killed from risky ventures like motorcycling or reckless driving or fighting. Fear is meant to keep us out of trouble. Much of the time it does that.

Fear wasn't invented just to keep us alive. It’s also meant to help us avoid losing precious things, such as our money & our reputations. People who have no fear of losing money often throw it away on risky deals. People who have no fear of losing their reputation often blow it by making fools of themselves.

Suppose a person is so fearless that he challenges someone else to a public debate. He knows little about the subject & doesn't work to prepare himself. He comes away from the debate looking foolish. He would've been better off if some fear had given him a signal that said, “Watch out!”

So having good courage skills isn't so simple as just trying to get rid of all your fear. We need fear to alert us of danger, whether physical, financial or social.

Too Much Fear Interferes With Life

On the other hand, you can have too much of a useful thing! And many, many people do have too much fear. Fear is very unpleasant. Fear is the emotion that goes along with blood-curdling screams & thoughts like “Aaah! Let me out of here!”

If you feel that emotion too often, it can make you enjoy life lots less. It’s a problem to solve.

Almost everyone feels a certain amount of “unrealistic fear.” Unrealistic fear is fear that is too big for the amount of danger. Suppose someone is going over a very well built bridge. The person feels huge fear, 10 on a scale of 10, that the bridge will collapse. He feels this even though he can say that it's almost impossible that the bridge will actually fall. This is unrealistic fear. It’s a problem to solve.

Sometimes people don’t use the word “fear” in describing the bad feeling that’s attached to a situation. Someone is “afraid ” of doing homework, for fear that she'll mess it up & do badly at it. But she might have other thoughts that make her feel angry about it, or bored w/it, or upset about it or that it disgusts her.

She may feel these other bad feelings more than fear. Most of what is said about fear goes for any bad feeling that's attached to a certain situation.

We’re lucky that there are some good ways of making fear go down. If you have too much fear, you'll benefit from learning these ways very well & using them very often. But first we need to talk about ways of assessing danger & dealing with real danger.

 

 

What To Do About Realistic Fear & Danger

Not all fears are unrealistic. And even for fears that are fairly unrealistic, there's often a realistic part.

Take the example of the man who feared that his pay would be reduced. It's not horrible if his pay is reduced, but it's undesirable. So if he can do something to prevent that, so much the better.

If he can find another job he likes just as well that pays more, he has dealt with the danger.

Or take the example of the child fearing kidnappers. The chance may be very low, but if the doors are unlocked, it makes sense to lower the chances by locking the doors.

Very often, there's something we can do to reduce danger, whether it's great or small. Here are 3 types of things we may choose to do:

• pump adrenalin
• avoid or escape the situation
• work toward skill in handling the situation well

1. Pumping adrenalin. Adrenalin is one of our hormones. Our body often pumps it out into the bloodstream when we're scared. It helps us if we need to run fast or fight hard or otherwise use lots of energy quickly. It gets our bodies ready for lots of hard exercise.

Once I was walking by myself in a rough section of Chicago, late at night. (I furnished a very bad example of decision-making skill.) Three big, mean-looking guys started following me. Then they started running after me. I’m very thankful that my body pumped adrenalin. It helped me to run the fastest 200 yards of my life. We pump adrenalin when we're scared, so that we can save ourselves in situations like this.

Sometimes, though, pumping adrenalin gets in the way. Suppose I’m going to put on a violin concert. Pumping adrenalin makes my muscles ready to work hard. The muscles are so ready to move that they tremble. I don’t want trembling muscles when I play the violin.

I need to teach my body not to pump too much adrenalin. Pumping adrenalin doesn't help me do a violin concert, the way it helps get away from mean guys. Let’s look at other things we can do about danger & realistic fear.

2. Avoiding or escaping. This means to stay away from the situation that causes the danger. Or if I’m already in the situation, it means to get out of it.

This would have been the smartest thing to do when I got the urge for exercise in the middle of the night, on the night I told you about. Realistic fear might have led me to lift weights inside rather than walk around outside.

Avoidance would also be a good way for me to reduce danger in putting on a violin concert. To reduce the realistic danger of looking foolish, I avoid scheduling violin concerts for myself. I stick to an instrument that I've learned how to play!

Suppose that I’m out with some friends & someone dares me to dive off a cliff into a river below. If don’t have total certainty that I won’t land on some rocks & kill myself, I have reason for realistic fear! Avoidance is the best strategy in this situation.

Avoidance & escape are often extremely wise choices. I wish that I could magically give more people realistic fear of alcohol, cigarettes & other recreational drugs & promote more of a strategy of avoiding these substances.

But sometimes avoidance has big costs. Suppose I'm very much frightened of doing a bad job on a paper I’m assigned to write. Every time I think of writing, I feel scared. So I avoid by not thinking about it. I end up not turning in a paper & getting a zero for a grade. I'd have been better off writing a bad paper! 

Suppose that I'm lonely & would like to invite someone to do something with me. I think about calling up someone & inviting this person. I have some fear that I'll look foolish & will just get a rejection.

If I use avoidance & escape, I might simply decide not to invite the other person. The loneliness is the price I pay for avoidance.

3. Skill-building & preparing. This means to build the skills necessary to handle the situation well. If you're a violin player, it means practicing the song so thoroughly that you can almost do it in your sleep.

It also means practicing getting worked up to just the right degree of excitement, not too much, not too little, but just the right amount. It means practicing playing the song in front of people. It means practicing in your mind playing it in front of the people at the concert.

Suppose someone has “test anxiety.” This means that when tests come up at school, the person gets very scared. Skill building & preparing means working very hard to prepare for the test.

It could mean making up tests over the material & practicing taking them. If someone has made up very difficult tests & taken them, scored them & passed them with flying colors, the person has less cause for realistic fear of failing the test.

Suppose I'm scared of looking foolish when calling someone up & inviting the person to do something with me. Skill building & preparing means that I prepare myself thoroughly in the art of social conversation skills.

I rehearse in my mind various comfortable & genuine conversations. I prepare so much that I assure myself that even if my invitation is declined, I'll have acted appropriately & will not feel foolish.

Suppose that I sign up for a sports team. I'm afraid of being embarrassed. I’m afraid that other people will be lots better than I. Skill-building & preparing means that I do my homework ahead of time.

I observe to see how good the people are whom I'll be playing with. I check to see where my skills are now. I work & practice to see if I can get my skills to a level where I’ll realistically feel confident. If lots of work & practice can get me to that level, I’ve used skill building & preparation successfully. If I find that I can’t get to that level, then my preparation has at least led me to make a wise choice of avoidance.

Suppose that I have a fear of driving a car. If I use avoidance, I simply stay away from the steering wheel. Skill building & preparation, however, might involve lots of careful watching while someone else drives.

It might involve lots of study of a manual. It might involve practicing with a computer simulation. It might involve going out to practice on a parking lot in the wee hours of the morning when no one else is there. I can use lots of fantasy rehearsal of handling more difficult traffic.

Suppose I find out that I’m at risk for heart disease. This causes some realistic fear. The strategy of avoidance might lead me to turn my eyes away whenever I catch a glimpse of an article on heart disease. Skill building & preparation might involve eating a very healthy diet, building a sensible exercise program & so forth.

Suppose there's someone who is very much afraid of living his life in poverty. In order to defend against this fear, he spends a great deal of time studying to decide how he can make enough money. He spends time building the skills he needs for a high-paying profession. He spends time deciding how to save & invest the money he makes.

Suppose someone is very scared of writing badly & having her writing look foolish. She studies manuals on how to write well; she studies good writing so that she can imitate it; she practices writing very often; she does lots & lots of revision; she starts very early to give herself lots of time before any deadline.

There’s one short word that summarizes what’s we need for skill building & preparation strategies. When I say it, you’ll immediately know why many people don’t use these strategies enough.

The word is work. It takes lots of work to get really prepared & to build skills. But work can make great things happen. People who are in a habit of working hard & long to improve their prospects of success are very lucky. They have a great way to defend themselves against fear.

To summarize: pumping adrenalin, avoidance & escape & skill building & preparation all have their place in dealing with real danger & realistic fear. Having good courage skills involves choosing appropriately among these strategies.

 

If one of your fears is of social embarrassment, then showing someone this list may be a scary situation in itself! Or perhaps even the prospect of telling someone about these situations is scary. If recounting the real situations is too scary for now, you can still work by making up stories.

Make up situations that are like the ones you're afraid of, situations you'd be afraid of, but which haven't happened. You can envision these situations as happening to someone else, not you, if you like. Or someone else can make up specific situations for you, based on some knowledge of the type of situations that are hard for you to handle.

Sometimes the hardest task is figuring out exactly what situations you're afraid of. Sometimes what really triggers the fear are thoughts or images that you forget about soon after having them.

Here’s an example. A man notices himself getting anxious approximately the same month each year. He doesn’t know why. He just feels “imminent doom.”

He finally spends some time posing the question, “What am I afraid of” & letting his mind drift to an answer. The image comes to his mind of his dying of a heart attack. He then remembers that it was at this time of year that his own father died of a heart attack.

He gets in touch w/the image of his own children struggling & being victimized after he dies. His thoughts are, “Their lives are going to be terrible.” Now he has “gotten in touch with” what he is really afraid of.

Here’s another example. A teenaged girl finds herself w/a pounding heart, trembling & vomiting on certain mornings during the week. At first she thinks that something is physically wrong w/her.

She finally asks herself why the symptoms come on certain days & not others. She realizes that on those days she is scheduled to come in contact w/a couple of boys at her school who harass her. They sometimes poke or grab her in very unwanted ways.

She becomes aware of how much she mistrusts the school authorities. She is afraid that if she tells, she will only be doubted, laughed at & embarrassed. She now has some very real problems to solve. But the fear is now attached to concrete situations rather than being mysterious & unknowable.

A boy finds it very hard to get to sleep at night. He gets very “wired up” & tense. The next morning he can’t remember what he was tense about. He resolves to keep track of the thoughts that go thru his mind.

He lies down in his bed at night & immediately the image comes to his mind that a criminal will sneak in his window & kidnap him. He saw this image in a movie & he recalls it vividly. He realizes that this is what's scaring him.

I've talked about this process earlier in this book. I have referred to it as filling in the STEB matrix. You get aware of what situations you are having trouble with, what thoughts you're having in those situations, what emotions you're feeling & what behaviors you are doing.

How do you come to realize what's really scaring you? Sometimes you just ask yourself questions & give your mind time to answer.

• What bad things am I worried will happen?
• What is the worst that could happen in this situation?
• What would happen as a result of that?
• What scary scene am I trying to keep out of my mind?

Answering these questions can be very uncomfortable. You answer them when you're ready to handle that discomfort, in exchange for having a better chance to solve the problems.

When you make lists of the types of situations you want to handle better, you're really on the road to improvement. This is often a very hard step. It’s much easier for most people to tell themselves that something or someone else is the problem, not that their own reactions are the problem.

i.e., Instead of “I have math anxiety,” the person thinks, “Math is stupid & boring.”

Instead of “I’m scared of meeting new people,” the person thinks, “These parties are stupid wastes of times.”

Instead of “My fear of failure makes me anxious all the time at school,” the person thinks, “All the teachers are bad & nothing that I’m taught is worthwhile.”

Instead of “I’m scared I might say the wrong thing & embarrass myself,” the person thinks “I don’t want to meet those people; I have nothing in common w/them.”

Blaming other people or other things is a tempting pattern to get into, because it saves face. It allows us not to have to admit any imperfection in ourselves. But we pay a severe price for doing this.

First, it doesn’t lead us toward making the changes in ourselves that we need to make. Many people have spent their whole lives complaining about other people & other things & avoiding making changes that would make them much happier.

There’s another severe price. When there are lots of negative thoughts & beliefs about the world & other people & activities, these thoughts are very depressing. Perhaps this is a reason why anxiety & depression tend to go together.

In summary, a first very important step in overcoming fears & gaining courage is simply to admit to yourself, “Here’s a situation that scares me more than I’d like it to.” If you can have the courage to say that to yourself, you’re on the way.

2. Rate your handling of them.

Rating Your Handling of the Situations

How good was your handling of each of the situations? Or how good is your imaginary handling of it, now? You can use the following scale:

0=Very bad

2=Bad

4=So-so

6=OK

8=Good

10=Very good

Or you can rate the sheer degree of discomfort or distress you'd feel in this situation. This is referred to as a SUD rating: subjective units of discomfort.

0=None

2=Very little

4=Some but not much

6=Moderate amount

8=Great amount

10=Very great amount

These two ratings measure very different things: how successfully you behave in the situation & how you feel in the situation.

If you want to change something, it’s important to measure it. If you want to improve your responses to situations that are scary to you, measure those responses.

3. Use behavior, not feeling, as the measure of your success at the beginning.

Use Behavior, Not feeling, As the Measure of success at the Beginning

I recommend rating situations in both of the above ways. But then when you start practicing w/the situations, I recommend making your first measure of success whether you behaved the way you want.

The reason for this is to avoid vicious cycles. Suppose I’m really intent on giving a speech w/out fear. I stand up on the stage. I think, “Am I scared?” I notice my trembling hands & my rapid breath & my sweaty palms.

I notice the urge to run out the side door. The answer is, “Yes, I’m scared!” Now I can think, “Oh, no, my fear-reduction techniques aren’t working! I’m failing at the goal I had wished for so strongly!” These thoughts make me even more scared.

When I notice this happening, I say to myself, “Oh, no, I’m even more scared than before! When is this going to stop?!” A vicious cycle has set in. I'm monitoring my fear & when I find it, that makes me more scared.

On the other hand, suppose my main criterion is behavior. I'm thinking, “My goal is to get my ideas across. It doesn’t matter if I’m terrified the whole time. I just want to get these words out.” I start giving the speech.

This time, if I notice my sweaty palms & pounding heart, I think, “Who cares? The words are coming out! I’m succeeding!”

Eventually, I want not only to handle the situation well, but to enjoy myself while doing it. Eventually, I want the SUD level to go down. But the first priority is establishing some memories of “success experiences,” of behaving the way I wanted to in the situation.

4. Move up the hierarchy of difficulty.

Move up the Hierarchy of Difficulty

Once you have listed the scary situations, you want to arrange them in order: in a “hierarchy.” You arrange them in order of their SUD rating. Which are the 2's & 3's & 4's, that are uncomfortable but not terribly so? Which are the 8's & 9's & 10's, that are the big fear-provokers? And which are the 5's, 6's & 7's, that are in the middle range?

After you arrange the situations in order, you'll usually want to start out w/the low level ones & work your way up. This way you get some success experiences under your belt before going into the really tough situations.

This way you learn to trust that the fear reduction techniques will really work, before you take on the biggest fears.

In research studies, sometimes people have jumped right to the scariest situation & have stuck w/it for a long time. If you can hang in there & stick w/it, this seems to work for fear reduction just as well as moving gradually up the hierarchy.

But I still recommend working up the hierarchy if possible. This is because you want to avoid attempting the scariest situation, getting too scared of it & escaping from it. As we’ll see in the next section, escaping when your fear is greatest can do more harm than good.

There are many instances where you'll have no choice but to start high on the hierarchy. i.e., you take on a very important job & you're anxious about your ability to perform in it, but there are very great costs if you try to escape or avoid it.

Or you find yourself in a school situation that causes great anxiety, but the costs of dropping out are far greater than those of staying in. In situations where you can’t have the luxury of working your way up the hierarchy of difficulty gradually, you’re going to need to get tough & tolerate some pain. The consolation is that you can probably get over the problem more quickly than you would have if you had taken it gradually.

5. Use prolonged enough exposure.

Use Prolonged Enough Exposure

There have been lots of different programs for fear reduction. Many different ones have been successful. But the one thing that successful programs seem to have in common is prolonged exposure. This means that you have to be in the situation that you're unrealistically afraid of, you have to expose yourself to it. And you have to stay in it long enough, the exposure has to be prolonged enough, that the fear goes way down.

This is one of the main secrets of fear reduction that most people don’t know. It’s important to understand this principle.

Suppose someone says, “I get exposed to the scary situation all the time. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t have a problem. Why doesn’t the fear go away, if exposure cures fears?”

Let’s understand the difference between prolonged exposure & short exposure. Let’s imagine I’m working w/a fear of being on an elevator.

Suppose I get on an elevator & I notice myself feeling scared. I feel a great urge to escape. Now the door finally opens & I get off in a hurry. “Thank goodness I’m off,” I say to myself & my fear goes down.

The students of behavior speak of “negative reinforcement.” This means that a behavior is rewarded by the turning off of something unpleasant.

i.e., there’s an unpleasant noise coming from an alarm clock; the stopping of the noise rewards the behavior of turning off the clock. Is negative reinforcement going on in the situation of brief exposure to the elevator? And what is being reinforced?

When the fear goes down, that's the turning off of something unpleasant. And the behavior that it rewarded was hurrying off the elevator. In other words, fear-reduction rewarded escape behavior.

But what is fear? It’s largely the urge to escape. Rewarding escape has much the same function as rewarding fear itself. The fear is likely to be just as great, or greater, the next time I get on the elevator.

On the other hand, suppose that I make myself get on the elevator & just stay on it. I ride up & down & watch the door open & close. At first my fear is very great. Then it starts to go down. The emotional part of my brain is gradually finding out that nothing horrible is happening.

I’m gradually starting to really appreciate that I’m not in big danger. It takes time for this to get thru. But over time, it does & the fear goes down. My SUD rating gradually goes from 10 down to 1 or 2.

Now the fear-reduction hasn't rewarded escape behavior. If anything, it's rewarded courage behavior, staying w/the feared situation. The next time I get on the elevator, the fear is very likely to be less. If I repeat the prolonged exposure enough, I can reduce the fear to a very low level or to zero.

This story has a very important moral for all who would reduce unrealistic fear. Once you have decided a fear is unrealistic, you want to avoid getting scared of the situation & then escaping from it before the fear has gone down. You want to set yourself up for prolonged exposures.

Suppose that a girl has stage fright. Suppose someone says to her, “Well, just come to the recital. If you feel too scared, you don’t have to play. If you're not scared, you can play.” Is this a good plan? The reasoning we just went thru helps us know that it isn’t. You don’t want to reward fear by making escape or avoidance depend on it.

Suppose that the same girl gets a choice. “You can have a recital in front of just a few people you know well & play all the songs you know well. Or you can be in a big recital & just play a very short piece.

That way you won’t have to be on the stage very long.” For fear-reduction, which would be better for her to choose? The longer she can be on the stage, the better. And if having a small group makes it easier for her to put on a long recital, then she should go for it. The best thing for her would be to get an audience who was willing to keep listening until her SUD rating was low.

There’s a word worth knowing, in talking about the effects of exposure. The word habituation refers to the fact that we gradually get used to things. If we stay in scary but nondangerous situations long enough, we habituate to them.

6. Choose your self-talk.

Consciously Choosing Your Self-Talk

One of the most helpful discoveries in the field of fear-reduction is that you can change how you feel by what you think.

If you're saying to yourself, “This is going to be awful! I can’t stand this! I’ll never live this down. I’m going to be so humiliated!” then it’s easy to see why there would be some fear.

But people often say things like this to themselves w/out even being aware of it, or at least without remembering it well enough to recount later. So one of the first steps in choosing your self-talk is becoming aware of what you automatically say to yourself.

If you notice that you're saying things to yourself like, “Something horrible is about to happen,” this isn't something to regret or to punish yourself for. This is something to celebrate! Why? Because you've become aware of your self-talk & this is an important step in changing it. Try to congratulate yourself for taking this important step.

In thinking about your own thoughts, it’s useful to refer to the categorization we’ve used several times before in this book:

1. Awfulizing

2. Getting down on yourself

3. Blaming someone else

4. Not awfulizing

5. Not getting down on yourself

6. Not blaming someone else

7. Goal-setting

8. Listing options & choosing

9. Learning from the experience

10. Celebrating what happened to happen

11. Celebrating someone else’s choice

12. Celebrating your own choice

If you want to reduce fear, you want to choose things to say to yourself that are “not awfulizing” statements or even “celebrating” statements rather than “awfulizing.” You want to choose statements such as the following:

“I am safe, because...”

“I know that I can handle this situation successfully, because ... “

“There’s no need for me to escape. This will come out ok.”

“I’m so glad that I prepared for this situation well.”

“I’m glad that I can trust another person to make it come out ok because...”

“I’m glad that it so happens that the danger level is very low.”

What if you don’t believe that these statements are true? What if you’re really in great danger? Then you’re dealing w/realistic fear. Maybe you really do need to escape or avoid. But if you have carefully figured out beforehand that you're not in danger & that any fear that you'll feel is going to be unrealistic, you need to remind yourself of the reasons for this.

In addition to reminding yourself that you're not in grave danger, there’s another useful line of self-talk. This is to remind yourself of the advantages of being tough & strong. These fall into the category of goal-setting. These are self-statements like:

“I want to make myself tougher.”

“If I can tough out this situation, I’ll be more able to handle others.”

“I won’t have to be bothered so much by fear if I can get tougher.”

“I’ll like myself better if I can learn to be strong on this.”

“If I can just get over this hump, I’ll save myself a lot of pain from then on out.”

As you continue to stay in the scary situation, there’s still another line of self-talk that is very useful: self-reinforcement, or celebrating your own choices. This includes self-statements like this:

“Hooray for me! I’m gutting it out!”

“I’m doing it. I’m being brave.”

“Some people may not have thought I could do it. But I’m doing it! I’m making a triumph for myself.”

7. Choose your Imagery.

7.1 Use positive imagery.

7.2 Transfer success image to the scary situation.

7.3 Habituate to scary images.

Consciously Choosing Your Imagery

What you say to yourself in words is an important portion of your thoughts. But another important portion is the mental images you give yourself. Suppose you're trying to write an article & you're struggling against the fear that causes writer’s block.

It doesn’t do much good to say the words “I am safe,” if you're visualizing a committee of readers frowning at you & hearing in your mind their highly critical tones of voice.

It’s good to cultivate, consciously, an image of getting positive feedback, perhaps accompanied by some useful criticism. You “keep your eyes on the prize,” & imagine the good consequences that writing the article will bring.

Choosing positive imagery

If you’re afraid of flying, it doesn’t help to say, “I know the chances of a safe flight are very high,” if the image you're seeing & hearing in your mind is plummeting toward the earth w/people screaming. You visualize the airplane flying safely & uneventfully, on a boringly routine flight that's nonetheless a triumph for you.

If you’re giving a speech, you might imagine that at least one person will enjoy it, find it useful, or be excited by it. You may know that others will disagree, but you focus at least some attention on the sympathetic listener.

Some people are helped by calling to mind the image of a very nurturing, loyal, strong & dependable friend to take w/them into scary situations. Some people have referred to this as the “inner guide” image.

Transferring a success image to this situation

Here’s an imagery technique that lots of people have found useful. You first ask yourself, “How would I like to feel & act in this situation?”

Perhaps the answer is relaxed, perhaps brave, confident, silly, slaphappy, assertive, or pleasantly excited. Then you search thru your memory bank for at least one memory of feeling & acting that way.

If you haven’t ever felt & acted that way yourself, then you search for an image of someone else’s doing so. (I've written some “modeling stories” for the purpose of providing suitable images.) We can call a memory of the desirable pattern the “resource,” because we draw upon this resource in handling the scary situation.

The next step is to imagine very vividly the resource image. You run it thru your consciousness perhaps several times, as though playing a videotape.

The next step is to take the scary situation & imagine yourself handling the scary situation in the same way that you (or someone else) handled the resource situation.

In other words, you take the desirable pattern & just transfer it over to the situation you want to handle well. You run this sequence thru your imagination repeatedly. Then you step into the situation in real life, & enact the sequence that you've been imagining. If you're successful, then the success experience you've just created can be a new resource!

Here’s an example. One afternoon I spoke w/a woman who was experiencing great anxiety. She was retiring & there was to be a dinner in her honor later that evening. She'd be asked to say a few words & she faced this prospect w/terror.

I asked her how she'd like to feel, instead, during these moments. She'd rather feel relaxed, humorous, grateful & in charge of things.

I asked her whether she'd ever had these feelings before, especially in public speaking sorts of situations. She was a schoolteacher & could retrieve lots of memories of times she'd felt that way, in front of her classes.

I asked her to retrieve memories of very specific times & places & to run these images thru her mind in great detail. After she'd done so, I asked her to take the same pattern of her thoughts, feelings & behaviors & lift it over to the scene that she'd experience later in the evening.

I asked her to imagine feeling & acting the same way at the dinner. She was able to do so. I asked to keep practicing this fantasy. Later I found out from her that the evening had gone well.

Habituating to negative images

There’s sometimes a problem w/consciously choosing your imagery. If you try NOT to think of a certain image, it'll often pop right into your head. A story by Tolstoy had to do w/someone’s trying not to think of a white bear. If you try, right now, not to think of a white bear, does the image pop into your head despite your efforts?

This brings up another imagery technique worth using. If the worst outcome pops into your head, you can go ahead & expose yourself to it in your imagination & become less scared of it. You purposely keep imagining one of the worst outcomes.

You imagine yourself handling it, maintaining your courage & dignity, prevailing, even in this unwanted event.

i.e., I imagine myself coming to the end of the speech I’m giving. The people don’t applaud. One by one they start hissing & booing. I remain calm, pack up my materials & stand proudly as they yell insults at me.

Here’s another example. I imagine calling someone, to invite the person to do something w/me. The person says, “With you? You think that I'd get together w/you? Ha! Ha! No way! You’re such a klutz. I'd never want to be seen near you! If you ever come close to me, I’ll get out a sign that says, ‘I didn't invite this ridiculous person to come near me.’” 

But in the image, you're not devastated, but you're thinking, “I can handle this. It’s not the end of the world if this particular person doesn’t like me. I’m not giving this person the power to determine how I feel. I can be strong.”

Or I imagine that the airplane I’m riding on is going straight down &d people all around me are screaming. I relax & give thanks that I've had the opportunity to be alive. I review some of the best moments of my life. I check & see if there's anyone whom I can comfort by my calmness in the remaining seconds of my life.

Or I imagine that I hand in a written article. Rather than getting an A, it not only gets an F, but also it gets loudly criticized before a whole group of people. The critic very sarcastically comments on every paragraph, after which he rips the paper into small pieces.

Meanwhile I take some pleasure in being able to watch this spectacle calmly & w/dignity. Perhaps if the critics make some good points, I tell them so & if I disagree, I voice my opposing opinions.

The same principles of exposure apply to imaginary situations as apply to real situations. If there's an image that scares you more than you’d like, you can habituate to it by prolonged exposure. You can remind yourself that the image itself isn't dangerous, even though the real life situation may be dangerous.

If I find that one of these images is too scary at the beginning, I can change it around, until it's at the right point on the hierarchy of difficulty. Perhaps I imagine the critic of my article w/a banana peel draped across his head. This image is so silly that the whole scene is sapped of some of its ability to scare me.

There are other ways to make a scary image more tolerable at the beginning. You can choose to see it in black & white rather than in color. You can see it on a television screen rather than in real life. You can make the image small & far away. You can see yourself as though watching yourself from the outside, rather than looking out from your own eyes.

Some people have found that w/scary memories, it helps to visualize the whole scene running very rapidly backwards, as in a videotape played backwards very quickly. My guess is that when this method helps, the helpful thing is learning that you can control the frightening image. You learn that imagining it isn't something that just happens to you, but that it's something you can change around in any way you wish.

If you become an expert in manipulating the images in your own imagination, you're well on your way to conquering any problems w/ unrealistic fear.

Relaxation

When most people get scared, they tense up. They may clench their teeth or tighten their face muscles or grip w/their hands. For this reason, you probably come to associate tense muscles w/scary situations & relaxed muscles w/safe & secure situations. If you can learn to relax your muscles on purpose, you can help yourself to feel safe & secure.

It takes some people a great deal of work & practice to learn to relax their muscles thoroughly & completely. Many people aren't willing to do this work. But the work of refining this skill can be of great benefit.

How do you work at developing muscular relaxation skill? You practice noticing how tense your muscles are. You make them a little tenser on purpose & pay attention to the feeling. Then you let the tension off & pay attention to the feeling changes. You do this separately for every muscle group of your body. If you have access to an EMG (electromyogram) biofeedback machine, you can help yourself by measuring your degree of muscle tension, rather than just feeling it.

If you tend to get sweaty hands when you get scared, this is a clue that your “skin conductance” is a measure of how nervous you are. It may be useful to get a machine that measures skin conductance & use it as you train yourself to relax.

Having dry hands gives you feedback that you're relaxed. Likewise, if you get cold hands when you get scared, you can train yourself to warm your hands, using a suitable thermometer for feedback.

Sometimes thinking of comforting & relaxing images works well in getting the muscles relaxed. Some people practice saying a “mantra” to themselves, such as the word “one,” that gives themselves a signal to relax. There are many techniques & I've written more about these in the chapter on relaxation skills.

You first practice relaxing at regular times, in the sort of situation most conducive to success. When you've gotten very good at relaxing, you're then ready to use your relaxation skills to help in fear reduction. You get yourself relaxed & then you practice handling the scary situation (using role-playing or fantasy rehearsal, or real life exposure) while trying to stay as relaxed as you can.

Fantasy Rehearsal

I've spoken in previous chapters about the technique of fantasy rehearsal. Let’s review this crucially important way of practicing.

Positive fantasy rehearsal means imagining yourself handling a situation as you'd most like to handle it. You imagine yourself coming out w/the thoughts, emotions & behaviors that are the very best you can pick.

Each fantasy rehearsal builds up the habit strength of the new & better response just a little bit. You have to do lots of them to build up the habit strength to the point where you'll automatically act this way in real life.

One type of fantasy rehearsal is the “fantasy rehearsal out loud.” You speak aloud, describing the situation, your thoughts, your emotions & your behaviors. Let’s imagine that I have a fear of spiders. Here is what a fantasy rehearsal out loud might sound like:

Situation: I’m walking thru the front hall of my house & in front of me I see a spider dangling from a thread from the ceiling. It’s a brown spider & not a poisonous one. I stop & look at it.

Thoughts: I can handle this. I'm many times bigger than this creature; it’s not dangerous to me. I could easily kill it if I wanted to. What do I want to do? I want to try to put it outside w/out harming it. Dealing in a brave yet gentle way w/this spider will be a big accomplishment for me. I am relaxing my muscles.

Emotions: I’m feeling compassion for the spider. I’m feeling calm & safe.

Behavior: I’m getting a tissue; I’m lowering the spider to the floor & trapping him gently in the tissue. I’m opening the front door & putting him outside. I’m wishing him a good life.

Celebration: Hooray, I handled this situation well!

Here is a generic outline for fantasy rehearsals of courage skills.

Situation: Describe the situation, as if it's happening now. What are the sights & sounds?

Thoughts: Here’s an opportunity. It'll be an accomplishment if I can tough this out.

What bad could happen? How bad is it? How likely is it? How much danger am I in?

Let me remember a time when I handled a situation like this well. I want to see & hear it in my mind.

I want to relax my muscles. This isn't the end of the world; this isn't awful. Here are my options:... Here’s the one I want to pick.

Emotions:

• Excited?
• Brave?
• Confident?
• Happy?
• Relaxed?
• Having fun?

Behavior: I’m doing something that makes sense. I’m doing something that's reasonable.

Celebration: Hooray for me! I handled this situation well!

If there are situations that you really want to handle differently, I strongly recommend making a taped or written record of fantasy rehearsals of them. Then listen to the tape or read the words, every day. Experience these patterns over & over until they become second nature.

Millions of people are plagued w/overly great fears & very few of those have ever written or taped a fantasy rehearsal to present to themselves over & over. I believe that this powerful technique is vastly underused.

Real life exposure & practice are great, if available. But sometimes real life exposure can’t last long enough, as w/fears of certain fleeting social situations. Sometimes, as w/the fear of nuclear war, going crazy, or death, real life exposure isn't practical. With fantasy rehearsals you can engineer the length of exposure & the response you make so that it's best for you.

Reinforce Courage, Not Fear

It’s often easier to work toward goals if you can rig up some reward for achieving them. Can you find a way of getting rewarded for each step toward success?

i.e., suppose someone is afraid of public speaking. He sets a goal of successfully giving 5 speeches. He gives $100 to a friend & the friend gives back $20 for each speech that he gives. This arrangement is called “contingency contracting.”

By the same token, it’s important to make sure that you aren’t getting rewarded for the fear itself. Suppose that someone gets to take a paid “sick day” off from work whenever his anxiety gets too high.

The holiday is a reinforcer, a reward for most people. It’s hard to get rid of anxiety when you’re getting a powerful reinforcer for it. If you discover any rewards that you're getting for having anxiety, you should try to eliminate them.

additional definitions

a·larm·ist  

 n.

A person who needlessly alarms or attempts to alarm others, as by inventing or spreading false or exaggerated rumors of impending danger or catastrophe.