Making Friends With Your Fears
Feeling the discomfort and doing it anyway
Fear is a complicated emotion and can be mild (i.e., all the unknown factors before starting a new job) all the way up to very intense (i.e., when a bear is chasing you). In the latter case, fear is really useful to produce the adrenaline that will get you to safety. It’s the flight, fight or freeze response and it’s not as welcome when we’re faced with new challenges in our life.
Take a moment (and maybe get out a journal and a pen) and ponder the following question:
What am I afraid of? Write down everything you can think of, even if it feels ridiculous.
Developing an awareness of what brings the fear response out in you is the first step in learning how to deal with it.
For most of us, we are more afraid of our feelings than we are anything in the outside world. In my conversations with people, it seems that our two biggest social fears are fear of judgment and fear of making mistakes.
We know from studies in neuroscience that the brain really wants to keep us safe. It doesn’t like new, unfamiliar situations and will try to keep us safe by directing us away from anything it doesn’t know. Once we get familiar with our feelings, we learn to adjust to them and are reluctant to step out of our comfort zone.
So how can we learn to feel the fear and still move forward anyway? Here are a few suggestions:
Become really friendly with your fear. Get to know it; how it feels, what it looks like and where it sits in your body. Allow it to be there and notice what happens when you stop resisting it.
Instead of entertaining the “what ifs” (i.e., “What if she doesn’t like me?” or “What if I fail?), imagine yourself having already made the friendship, impressing the new boss or succeeding at the task that you’re so afraid of). Imagine the scene in all its vividness and let the feelings wash over you.
Don’t try to ditch the fear; let the fear come with you for the ride. You can imagine you’re driving a car and fear is a passenger. Make it sit in the backseat and tell it to be quiet until whatever it is you are trying to do is over.
Start doing small things that you’re afraid of, little by little. As you do begin to challenge your fears, you’ll be gathering evidence that you can feel the fear and move forward anyway. Over time, you’ll notice that you become more courageous and confident with every new thing you try.
It’s scary to do new things that could potentially be embarrassing or increase the chance of rejection, but that’s part of being brave and authentic. Everyone moves at their own pace and how quickly or how much you attempt at one time is entirely up to you. Remind yourself that fear (or any feeling) is simply a reaction to a thought and is merely a vibration in your body. You may start feeling jittery and your heart might race but you will survive. Meet yourself with compassion and allow yourself to feel what you feel. Then take a deep breath and keep going.
To become more mindful and self-aware about your fear, here are some journal prompts to start reframing your thoughts:
What is the story I’m telling myself that’s causing fear?
Is the story true? Explain why or why not in detail.
What would I do if I wasn’t afraid? Knowing that, how do I want to proceed?
If my fear was a person, place or thing, what would it be? How big is it? What colour is it? How else can I describe it?
Always remember that it’s okay to feel a little scared when you’re starting something new and getting rid of the fear isn’t likely. It’s important to decide what fear means to you and stop allowing it to hold you back. Fear has a purpose; it causes us to take the time to really think about what we’re doing and make the right decisions moving forward. Learn to trust your fear, even befriend it if you can, and then you’ll be free to live the life you really want.
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"I felt at complete ease with Sharon from our first conversation. She has a wonderful, gentle but firm way that made me focus on my thoughts / feelings so I could remove / change to move forward with a completely different feeling to what felt like obstacles. It was great having regular coaching that gently kept me accountable to actioning and moving towards my goals. Sharon has vast experience in so many areas, I felt that makes her an amazing coach.”
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