Posts Tagged ‘Fears’

Overcoming fears might appear simple in concept, but actual application of these techniques are never easy, especially for the person directly involved. Depending on the intensity of the fear, some people might be able to confront it themselves while others require the help of others. Nonetheless, it is important that you do something about it. When you are able to successfully overcome your fears, you will open up more opportunities for personal and career growth while also forging more successful relationships.

Taking Slow and Steady Steps

This is highly suggested for individuals who have difficulty coping with the overwhelming feeling of fear that people often experience. It does not necessarily mean that the fear is so intense as it can be as simple as your fear of being rejected on your request for a date, but it concerns one's inability to take action due to the presence of fear. Hence, take one initial, small step instead of aiming for a big one right away. Being able to do that should provide you enough confidence to take succeeding steps.

In order for you to build up courage and make that small step, identifying your fear is essential. Before long, you will realize that your confidence will extend to other areas of your life as well.

Find a Motivation

Overcoming fears often entail a difficult process that requires time. When this happens, people often can easily get demoralized. One way to keep yourself actively make an effort to combat your fears is by replacing your negative thoughts with ones that motivate.

One way to concretize this step is to list down all the benefits that you can get if you decide to make that change, which is to overcome your fears. Seeing all these wonderful benefits that you can enjoy should motivate you to get going in your advocacy to eliminate fear in your life.

Changing Perspectives

When people suffer from failure or rejection, it often spirals into more negative thoughts that lead to self-destructive behaviors. However, all people go through failure at some point in their lives. This is a reality that you need to understand and be aware of.

It is therefore recommended that you change your view about failure and rejection. Instead of letting it demoralize you, use it as a learning process instead where you can pinpoint areas of your life that needs to be improved if success were to be desired.

Facing Your Reality

Most fears are associated with unpleasant experiences in the past or worries about the future. Therefore, one way you can overcome such fears is to focus on the present. Learn how to make plans and realize them. This is your best bet at succeeding in life and your endeavors, instead of wearing yourself out with worries and fears. If you fail to get yourself out of that situation, you neither fail nor achieve anything.

Redefining Your Perceptions of Fear

One of the most effective ways to overcome fears is to redefine yourself and how you view fear. You need to actively participate in each of these steps in order to effectively progress in your fight against fear. When you dedicate yourself at these steps, then they will eventually become natural to you. Also, it allows you to see things in a more positive light where fear does not exist.

What is Fear?

Fear is one type of emotion that impacts one's life significantly. Animals and humans alike have this emotional response based on any events in the environment that poses danger, whether physical, mental, or emotional. Indeed, fear takes on different forms and it will be discussed later. However, the effect that fear has on a person is important because it can potentially alter one's life and how he or she deals with the environment.

How do you know when one is undergoing fear? Despite of its cause, there are common physical indicators of fear. They are as follows:

• increase in heart rate and blood pressure
• tightened muscles
• inability to focus your senses
• dilated pupils
• sweating

Different Forms of Fear

Fear comes in various forms. And yet, its effects are similarly devastating to the person involved. There are various triggers for these fears but all have the potential to impact one's ability to think clearly and respond to situations logically.

Below is a list of the different forms of fears:

• Places: crowds, enclosed places, below ground, or heights
• Animals: rats, snakes, mice, spiders, etc
• People: strangers, homosexuals, feeling over-responsible for others, talking to groups of people, etc
• Events: war, crime, public speaking, etc
• Family member/loved ones: death of family member, getting ill
• Disaster: hurricane, lightening, injury or pain, blood, death, earthquake, etc
• Other people's reactions or responses: rejection, disapproval, being humiliated, being ignored, pretension, insecurity
• Feelings about one's self: taking the leadership role, speaking to a large crowd, stage fright, embarassing yourself

There are more different categories of fear that is experienced by people, hence people response differently. Some are able to use that fear they experience in order to sharpen their responses to a given situation. Others, however, do not have control over the level of fear they are experiencing, which often leads to panicking.

Negative Impacts of Fear

Fear is not always negative, provided that you learn how to deal with the feeling of fear. And yet it can be potentially dangerous when the feeling of fear has gotten really extreme. Therefore, it is important that you are able to understand where fear is coming from and deal with it logically. If not, it can lead to you making irrational responses on the situation at hand, such as the following:

• Inability to make clear and logical decisions.
• Prevents your ability to trust in your surroundings and other people, which is crucial in your own growth and development.
• Brings about fear of change due to the uncertainty of events, even though the situation requires it.
• Results to resistance of help from others.
• It confines you and unable you to explore opportunities that come your way.
• You become unmotivated to pursue your dreams.
• Tendency to exhibit self-destructive behavior.

Confronting Your Fears

Before you even think about overcoming your fears, confronting them is a necessary first step. You start off by recognizing your fear. If you have several types of fears, then you can rank them according to intensity. That way, you will be able to recognize which fear needs attended to the most as it can also produce the most negative impact to you.

The best way to get yourself to confront your fears is realizing what you can get once you have let go of these fears. The lack of such fears in your life will motivate you to take steps to rid yourself of it. Whether it's regaining control over your life or improving your own self image, losing that fear will help boost your confidence about yourself and the world so you can become a better individual.

Overcoming Fears

The most effective means to overcoming your fears is to change your perspective and behavior towards it. Since it is not easy to do, you need to keep yourself motivated in order to live life free of fears. The first step is identification of fear, which is closely tied with the step of confronting your fear. Then, honestly assess the extent of your fear. This is the only way that you can logically come up with methods that can reduce or eliminate the fear you are experiencing.

When you encounter a stimuli that could potentially trigger the feeling of fear, think of ways to release tension and keep yourself in a relaxed state. This is important since once you have acknowledged fear, it can quickly consume and overtake you. If possible, tap the help of others (whether your friends or family) to provide assistance in conquering your fears. Lastly, this is a long-term procedure and you cannot expect to get rid of your fears overnight.

Finding the Source of Your Fear

Any problem cannot be resolved unless you get to the source of the problem. The same is the case with your fears. If you are serious about getting rid of those fears and lead a more rewarding life free of fears, then you have to take care of this step before you proceed any further.

Why is finding the source of your fear important? Identifying the triggers of your fears will help you either manage, eliminate, or combat them. Regardless of the type of fear you have, there is always a source that triggers it. Hence, you can take the time to list down your fears and their level of intensity. Then, take note about environmental, emotional, or other factors that could trigger that fear. This will help you trace the source of your fear. Aside from external triggers, make sure that you also consider the internal triggers. Was there something in your past that created this emotional responses? It is basically as simple as asking yourself, “Why am I afraid?”!

Another important reason why finding the source of your fear is of essential is that it enables you to assess whether it is something that you can manage and control on your own, or whether you need professional help.

Getting Started

If you want more success in overcoming your fears, then you need to take the initiative so you can get proper help for whatever fears or anxieties that consume you. Here are tips to get you started on the right track:

• Remain positive. Fears that produce negative impact are also triggered by negative thoughts and outlook in life. Therefore, you must try to brush aside those negative ideas from your mind and prevent yourself from feeling depressed.
• Communicate with your internal self. There is no better person who knows about your fears than you do. So, you need to create awareness about your fears by identifying them and breaking them down into more manageable parts.
• Assess your fears. Some fears are irrational and often takes place in the mind of the person instead of actual reality.

Overcoming Your Fears

The importance of learning how to overcome your fears is rather obvious. No one wants to live their life in constant worry or fear, no matter how intense it may be. An anxiety-free life is one that provides more opportunity for growth and liberates you.

Here are basic techniques that you can try if you want to find relief from your fears or totally eliminate them:

*Visualization
*Gather facts
*Get professional help

Visualization

Take time each day to find a place where you can be isolated and be able to concentrate. Your objective is to transport yourself in a low stress situation wherein you have control over your fear, instead of the other way around. Imagine your fear as a concrete object that you destroy. You will never realize how it is able to calm you down.

Gather Facts

Most fears are caused by the unknown or people's inability to have control over a given situation. When you are suffering from certain types of fear, you need to look into the reality of the situation and gather information that you can. The more facts you have in hand, the less you become stressed about your situation because you always know you can manage it.

Professional Help

If you are one of those people who are too afraid to perform self-talk or confront their fears head-on, then it is best to seek professional help. They will start by assessing your fears and then suggest techniques that you can employ to combat those fears. Overcoming fears is often a long process, so don't expect to get rid of all your fears (if you have many) at once.

As much as there are several potential triggers to your fear, there are also as many types of fears. However, they can be categorized into three basic fears: external, internal, or subconscious. Among the three, the subconscious and internal type of fear are most difficult to find treatment to because the person must take the initiative to recognize the source of fear and take necessary steps to overcome it. Recognizing the category in which your fears fit into will help you know how to deal with it.

External Fear

Among the types of fear, this one is the easiest to diagnose and manage. It is similar to phobias wherein an outside source elicit a degree of internal fear or any manageable level of anxiety. For example, fear of spiders or fear of heights are among the most common phobias that several people share. A feeling of fear, anxiety or discomfort is experienced by the person with that particular fear when the situation confronts them with those triggers. Since the source of fear is easier to identify, then one can easily look for alternative ways in which to confront that trigger and overcome fear.

Since external fears are often caused by negative experiences in the past involving those external sources of fears, you can adapt some techniques that will help you understand the reality of the situation. Hypnosis or some other psychological methods are employed in order to erase any previous negative associations with these objects or creatures that elicit fear.

Internal Fear

This type of fear is closely associated with low levels of self esteem or confidence. But like with external fear, the triggers are coming from an outside source and yet it produces a negative emotion. This trigger will then produce internal reactions or fears such as self doubt or questioning one's capability to do something. Most often, when people begin to question their own abilities, failure is inevitable. This type of fear often impacts one's ability to interact with the social environment.

If you want to conquer internal types of fear, you often have to go back at your childhood years wherein character development is at its peak. This is the stage in people's lives wherein they build characters and develop fears. Some people seek professional help that enables them to adapt a new perspective in life and change any behaviors that produce such insecurities and fears.

Subconscious Fear

This type of fear is produced by accepted beliefs in your mind that serve to limit your potentials and worse, could end up in self sabotage. This one is somewhat associated with the internal type of fear wherein you have the tendency to question your capacity to achieve something. Thus, the tendency for self doubt and negative self talk. This one requires you to take active steps towards reversing those beliefs and enable you to maximize your potential.

Goals to Overcome Your Fears

One of the many reasons why people neglect the need to overcome their fears is the lack of motivation. Therefore, setting goals will help increase the desire to manage and overcome your fears. Aside from that, this will enable you to take careful methods toward your goal and provide a sense of direction. One benefit you can get from it is that aside from getting rid of your fears, it offers more focused direction in your everyday living as opposed to not having a clear idea of what you want to do in life.

Setting goals as motivation to overcoming your fears will also enable you to have a bigger grasp at the need to fight your fears as an opportunity to grow and delimit yourself.

What is Performance Fear?

Performance fear or performance anxiety takes on different forms. However, it is associated with the growing awareness and the need to perform according to the standard of your own field of activity, whether in the workplace, or an upcoming presentation, or for a sports activity. With the pressure to perform one's best, there is always this preconditioned mindset for the person suffering from performance fear that anything could go wrong that will eventually impact your performance and reduce it to failure.

Studies are still ongoing to determine exactly the cause of this fear but it is closely tied up to one's desire to do better at something. However, you need to understand that experiencing performance fear is completely normal. But some often have unrealistic fear or misconception about given situations that impair their logical decision making capacities and end up in your not performing up to standard.

Different Types of Performance Anxiety

There are various types of performance fears or anxiety, whether at the workplace, sex, speech delivery, or sports. Therefore, the ways in which you deal with them must differ as well. Below are some basic methods suggested in order to minimize the level of fear associated with performing these different tasks and the level of anxiety that is entailed.

Sports

The best way to get rid of any performance fears associated when competing at a sports event is to take it easy on yourself. Even the world's best sportsmen or women have their days off, wherein they do not perform at their maximum potential. When engaged in sports, you cannot expect to win all the time and you will find your team lose on some occasions. Whatever your sport, setting realistic goals is then the first step that will help you deal with sports performance fears and anxiety. However, you can turn that adrenaline produced by your anxious feelings into energy that you can harness to perform better at your sport. And when you are on the actual performance, try to enjoy the experience and you will find the process of competition more rewarding.

Speech Delivery

Several people have this fear of speaking in public. Much of that fear is produced by the pressure of having to deliver a flawless speech that is able to communicate the message to the audience effectively. Instead of letting that fear overtake you, harness it into a systematic plan that will ensure you have control over the situation.

Here are added tips you can apply:

• Carefully plan ahead your speech.
• Do some research to be well-equipped about the topic you are going to deliver a speech on, even when you are already an 'expert' at that field.
• Practice. Practice. Practice.
• Plan ahead the schedule and venue where the speech is going to be held.

Workplace

There are a few innately stressful jobs that require high level of standards for their employees to meet. To keep up with performance anxiety, you need to stop and talk about it, with either your boss, co-workers, or family members. Being in isolation and confronting your fears alone could increase the fear or make the situation worse. It is important to have the support of other people.

Then, change your perspective. There are moments wherein there are job inadequacies but use that as a learning curve. Aiming for perfectionism is good but you need to realize that it is unachievable. Just try to focus on what you can contribute to the company instead of what you are failing to deliver.

Managing and Overcoming This Fear

You need to understand that you have power over your fear, especially when it determines how well you perform at something. Then, think of the following steps that must be taken in order for you to overcome these fears:

• Try to identify the source of your problematic perception or anything that could trigger such fears.
• Then, once you have identified the outside source for such levels of anxiety, look into yourself. Determine how you react to it and why you react that way.
• Refrain from criticizing yourself nor questioning your ability to perform.
• Instead of letting fear consume you, make the necessary preparations needed for your performance, whether at a sports event or at the workplace.
• Once you are through with the performance, do not focus on areas of mistakes or failures in a way that it impairs your self-confidence. Instead, look at them as areas that need improvement in order for you to do better in your next performance.