What Is It About?
Napkin Version
Fear is one of our most primitive emotions, delivering a fast instinctive reaction to combat a threat. It usually moves us into rapid action or keeps us frozen until we can determine a better approach, so Fear is a healthy part of our survival toolbox.
In modern living, the triggers for Fear are more often found regarding longer term survival threats such as financial difficulties, or anything that may impact our sense of security and safety e.g. our connection with friends and family, reputation in the community, etc.
The intensity of Fear can be affected by the perceived size of the threat, any underlying Fears triggered e.g any related past traumas, as well as our more general (baseline) Fears e.g. fear of death, rejection, pain, etc. It reduces with the degree of relevant capability we feel we have for the situation.
Being a survival-oriented emotion, our initial Fear-based reaction is usually very instinctive. This can be anywhere between chaotic panic and highly effective, depending on our past experiences and capability.
The deeper our capabilities and experience goes for the situation, the more we can relax and trust ourselves and our ‘instinctive’ reactions more.
In a similar way, if we have a broad range of capabilities and helpful experiences across a variety of situations, our instinctive response will be more able to draw upon any transferable skills and knowledge.
Having this kind of toolbox within ourselves, gives us a lower baseline level of fear, and a general sense of confidence in every day life.
Handling Fear
In The Moment
Training our brain to use a relevant process helps us to focus more effectively and move on more easily. Using it often will also help our brain to catch Fear sooner, making it easier to manage.
If time is critical we usually have to trust our instincts, stay focussed, and do our best.
Otherwise if we have the time to do so, calming our nervous system can make it easier for us to focus, and to assess the situation more clearly. Breathing techniques such as the ‘box breathing’ technique may be quite useful here – using counts of 4 to make our way around each side:
Other techniques include:
Looking out into a safe space, far and wide, to offset the feeling of tunnel vision that often occurs
Shifting our focus onto something else that is distracting, or better still, calming for us.
Imagining flooding our body with the feeling of calmness (while gently exhaling).
Surveying to understand the situation, puts us in a better position to assess the actual risk, and the options available to us.
Once we have the info we need, and options available to us, consciously choosing our best course of action, along with the best timing to implement it, enables us to take assertive action.
Self-Reflection
If the emotion feels quite troubling, it’s usually worth checking if something else is going on first.
By resolving things in ourselves and clearing any other residual emotions, we can reduce the intensity of the emotion - now and when we encounter it again in future.
Doing so also makes us less likely to ‘attract’ other difficulties that leave us feeling the same way.
See the Processing and Clearing an Emotion page for a generic process to resolve and clear an emotion.
Working Through Fear
The actions we choose to take in response to an emotion can make a significant difference to how well we adjust and move on from it.
The more we take genuine actions that are uplifting and ‘right’ i.e., are good for ourselves and everyone else (including the environment and other living beings) - for now, and over the long-term, the better our experience of life becomes.
If we have time to work through our Fear, the different ways we do so will vary with the scenario, and what we are wanting to achieve:
IN GENERAL
If we have time to process our fear, the following can help:
Calming our physiology, so we can think more clearly e.g.
acknowledging our fear and noticing what our instincts want to do – but not blindly following them.
taking a few deep breaths and telling ourselves “I am safe”. The Box Breathing technique may be useful here.
shifting our focus away for a few moments to help our nerves calm, or if we can, finding humour in the situation.
surrounding ourselves with calm, positive types.
Rationally assessing the situation and checking assumptions.
If things don’t feel right, digging a bit deeper to find the cause.
Managing any risks that need to be managed.
Weighing up the short and long-term impacts of avoiding the risk (and the experience) vs managing the risk and still doing it.
Determining the best approach, and timing of it, to give ourselves the best chance of success.
Checking our intuition for more insights and ideas.
Preparing ourselves by increasing our knowledge, skills, tools, etc.
Focusing on what we can do with what we ‘ve got available to us.
Asking for support if we need it, so we’re not alone in tackling the challenge. Also helping others so they can do their best too.
IMPROVING OUR INSTINCTIVE RESPONSE ahead of time
If we are frequently exposed to a fearful situation, developing our sub-conscious competence can improve our ‘natural’ response, e.g:
Understanding the dynamics of the situation inside out.
Learning how others handle it (or similar situations).
Developing our capability in progressive steps, and practicing.
Reviewing and refining our technique.
Carrying out spaced, repetitive drills to program fast, effective, default responses into our sub-conscious memory.
If we know things are ok, having the courage to do it despite our fear, and having faith that we will be ok whatever happens.
REDUCING OUR BASELINE LEVEL OF FEAR
Things we can do to help reduce our baseline level of Fear include:
Progressively increasing our capabilities and knowledge across a wide range of situations, without adding too much risk. This gives us a breadth of experience and a range of transferable skills.
Taking care not to overload our nervous system by considering how stressful a situation may be, and the recovery time we’ll need.
Increasing our emotional intelligence so emotions are less troubling for us.
Coming to terms with death and discomfort as being a normal part of life as a human
DE-SENSITISING OURSELVES TO A SPECIFIC FEAR TRIGGER
If we suffer from a fear or phobia that stops us from enjoying an aspect of our life, we can minimise this specific fear through:
Using relaxation techniques during managed exposure of the trigger, ensuring we are only exposed to a level we are comfortable with. N.B. sometimes an active approach e.g. music and physical activity, can be more effective than a quiet and still approach.
Once we are ok with it, and our nervous system has calmed, increasing the level of exposure by a small amount.
Repeating the process until comfortable with a level a bit higher than we would be typically exposed to.
Clearing Residual Fear
Emotional energy can stick with us, even after we have worked through and resolved whatever caused it.
There are a number of ways we can clear the energy, including doing something physical in nature, imagining the emotion leaving our body, or for more intense emotions, there is a variety of different therapies and alternative forms of energy healing that can also help.
This short video has been created to help the imagination process:
Imagine holding a ball of energy in your hands, and ‘charging’ it with the feeling of love, and anything else that would help to offset it (especially any feelings that were missing in the situation)
Imagine any residual Fear energy flowing out of your body, into the ball, and being transformed into the positive equivalent.
Once all the residual energy has left, imagine the ball shooting far out into the atmosphere and dissolving into pure white light energy.
Emotions Swatch
QUICK REFERENCE CARDS FOR 21 EMOTIONS
This credit card sized swatch contains 1 card for each of the 21 emotions in this guide, hanging on a snap-lock ring.
Individual cards can be easily removed, and will fit nicely into the credit card slot of a wallet or purse, or can be placed in a more visible area.
Each card contains:
In the moment ‘1-2-3’ prompt.
Working through the emotion map
a QR code to take the user to the relevant page in this online guide.
Price: $12.50 per swatch
Prices are in NZD and include GST (if applicable)
Seagull Sunset - ‘Sleep-It-Off’ Story
The Seagull Sunset story has been created to help calm the nervous system and feed emotion wisdom, without requiring active ‘work’.
The storyline helps you to ease into a peaceful sleep, while providing the conscious & sub-conscious minds with self-development content to gently absorb by osmosis, for use in the dreaming process and in waking life.