Our modern society stokes the fire for our fears. There is a 24-hour news cycle with bold headlines exclaiming “Alert!” and our concern for safety sometimes seems to trump living life to the fullest. Compared to years ago, our schools and offices close more easily and more frequently with the threat of bad weather and it almost feels like we just can’t keep ourselves safe enough. The truth is that living involves uncertainty and it is impossible to make SURE we are ALWAYS safe. The notion that we must always be safe contributes to our anxieties and we are left with finding ways to manage our fears.
When we feel afraid it is natural to try to avoid that which we fear. For example, if we fear dogs, we may decide to go out of our way to always avoid having to see a dog. However, when we avoid what we fear, the fear actually grows. In fact, the treatment for anxiety involves helping us to approach the feared experience or object. When we avoid what we fear we never experience doing what we are afraid of with nothing bad happening. It is only when we pair doing what we are afraid of with nothing bad happening that our anxiety can begin to fade.
So, how can we approach what we fear? There are two major steps involved: 1) Utilizing strategies to reduce the fear enough to be able to 2) tolerate the lowered degree of anxiety in order to do what we are afraid of. If we think of a number line from 1-10, fear rated 8,9, or 10 may feel impossible to tolerate. Therefore, we would need to find strategies to lower the fear to a 4 or 5 in order to approach the feared experience or object. It is probably unrealistic, at least initially, to expect to lower the anxiety to 0 before we approach what is feared. Some fear will need to be tolerated while we do what we are afraid of doing and over time, this fear should subside. For instance, if we fear riding elevators, we would want to practice strategies to lower our fear to a 4 or a 5, tolerate a moderate amount of anxiety, ride the elevator, and over time as we continue to ride elevators, this anxiety should begin to dissipate.
There are several techniques that can be used to lower our anxiety ratings from 9 or 10 to 4 or 5 and help us move toward rather than away from our fears:
1) Breathwork- Managing our breath is the fastest way to begin to relax. When we are anxious we tend to breathe from our chest in a shallow rapid fashion. This type of breathing triggers an anxious biological response from our brain with stress chemicals being sent throughout our body making us feel even more anxious. When we consciously slow our breathing, taking deep breaths from our abdomen, breathing in and out through our noses, and making the exhales a bit longer than our inhales, we trick our brains into thinking we are calm. Then our brains stop sending out those stress chemicals and we being to relax.
2) Many times the thoughts and pictures we have in our imaginations serve to make us more anxious. For example, we may imagine walking up to a dog and having it bare its teeth and bark fiercely. Having this thought actually feeds our fear of dogs. But, we can change the channel on our imagination and imagine walking up to the dog, having it smile and lick us gently, and this image would probably lower the intensity of our fear. We are in charge of what we say to ourselves and the pictures we have in our head; we just have to acknowledge this and take charge of our imagination.
3) We can choose a time of day for our worry time when we MUST worry and write in our worry book. We would allow about 10 minutes to write and once this time is up, we would close our worry book and tell ourselves we won’t worry about these things until tomorrow during our worry time. When our fears, worries, or anxieties surface at other times during the day, we would then gently remind ourselves that it is not yet time to worry and we will have time to worry and journal about our worries later. This technique is a more general worry technique which can be used to lower the intensity and pervasiveness of our fears.
4) We can also employ a personal reward system to be utilized when we approach what we fear. We can keep points and reward ourselves after a certain number of points, or we could reward ourselves after each approach to the feared experience or object. Rewards could include a desired piece of clothing or electronics, a special dining or entertainment experience, or time for ourselves to read or listen to music.
We can learn ways to manage our anxieties and fears. When we avoid what we fear the fear grows, so it is important to begin to lower the intensity of our felt fear, tolerate that fear, and approach the feared experience or object. Once we begin to approach what we fear, that fear will most likely dissipate. Over time, we may even say to ourselves, “I was once afraid of that?”
Marcia Kaufman, Ph.D.
Licensed Clinical Psychologist