Posts Tagged ‘Overcome’

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.

Fear of Public Speaking

This is one of the most common fears that people has, which is making a speech before an audience. Although this task appears to be rather straightforward, there are several factors that could come into play, which makes this a legitimate type of fear instead of being an irrational one.

Even those people whose job requires them to speak before a group of people are not exempted from this fear, which is surprising knowing that they do it often. So you might as well picture those individuals who only get to perform public speaking on given occasions and the amount of fear that is entailed with the task. In fact, the fear is so massive that it can result to stress for some people. This requires some attention knowing that some people who experience fear of public speaking end up not delivering a quality speech since they are overtaken by that fear. Indeed, the feeling of fear can cloud one's ability to focus on the task at hand. After all, an effective public speaking produces a satisfying experience for both the public speaker and its audience.

Steps to Overcome Fear of Public Speaking

Public speaking isn't an activity to be feared about. If this does not do the trick for you, then you might want to consider applying the following perspectives and behavior towards this and hopefully be able to overcome this type of fear.

Public Speaking Isn't Supposed to be Stressful

Fear of public speaking is quite common that some people think it is inherently stressful. Well, it is time you know it is not! Communicating with others is an activity with which humans do everyday, so why should public speaking be any different? Therefore, one way to overcome the fear of public speaking is to imagine this activity as any regular communication that you do everyday. The only difference with public speaking is that you are addressing more people than you normally would.

Acquiring this new perspective is not something that you can achieve overnight, though. However, just focus on what you need to share during your public speaking and less on the actual delivery process to lift off the burden.

Give Up The Idea of Delivering a Perfect Speech!

This is another major culprit as to why people fear the idea of speaking in public. Indeed, the idea of embarrassing yourself in front of many people is frightening. But the content of your speech is what is these people will remember, not how you flawlessly delivered the speech. Once you are able to get rid of this anxiety, then you will find that you become less frightened with the idea of making public speeches or talking in front of large groups.

Focus on the Purpose of the Speech!

One of the most common “hidden” causes of stress associated with public speaking is related to the cause above, which is trying to impress the audience with your delivery. Focus on what value the audience can get from your speech delivery instead of trying to make an impression on them. Although delivery will boost your success at a public speaking activity, the most important thing is to communicate effectively with them. If it offers any consolation, not all public speakers get 100% approval from their audience anyway.

Becoming a Good Public Speaker

Now that you have recognized the major cause of fear that most people experience when public speaking, here are factors that are important in not just overcoming this fear but also doing a good job at your speech.

• Study your subject matter thoroughly so you can be confident when its time to deliver it.
• Polish your speaking skills. This will enable you to relay the information clearly and authoritatively.
• Prepare all of your presentation materials so you can deliver an organized speech.
• Practice your delivery. Even the best public speakers do this.

Some people find it difficult to start a conversation with someone they have never met. It is not because they don’t have anything to say but the fear of the other person rejecting them. Fortunately, you can “seize the day” with a little help from a hypnotist that will make you overcome shyness through individual hypnosis.

But what is individual hypnosis? Basically, the hypnotist enters the mind of the patient and makes some changes in their subconscious. In this case, this will make the person feel at ease socializing with other people and make more friends.

Aside from meeting a hypnotist to do the work, you can also do it yourself through self-hypnosis. The only difference is that you will be doing is by yourself while listening to a recorded tape or CD.

To do this, you have to be willing to do whatever it takes to improve what you are right now which is the preparation stage of hypnosis.

When you are ready, you put on the tape and then sit on a chair or lie down and then follow the instructions. Just be careful that you don’t get too comfortable otherwise you will fall asleep.

One thing you have to do when you practice self-hypnosis is to control your breathing pattern. If there is noise around or you feel an itch, acknowledge that it is there but block it out and then focus your attention on the recording.

Eventually you will go into the deepening stage of hypnosis where you begin to address the issues of shyness. This is likely caused by bad experiences and you have to let them go and realize that such an experience could be different when you meet other people.

You have to learn to be optimistic also about the future and then slowly return to reality remembering everything you experienced throughout the session.

For people who find it difficult to do this on their own, they can always turn to a hypnotist. This person will guide them throughout the entire session and also wake up having the same feeling of positive energy all around them.

The challenge now is to meet people and then see how well they are able to react to them. If the person is able to have a conversation, then obviously there is an improvement. If the person does not have the guts yet, well you probably need a few more sessions to have the courage to change for the better.

Individual hypnosis can do a lot for a person and in some cases may not have a profound effect on them. If this has not worked well for you, don’t give up because there are other means to overcome shyness.

When you undergo individual or self hypnosis, you have done your share to improve who you are as a person. Will this change the outcome when you meet people? It depends who you meet because some people are friendly while others are not when you meet them up close.

If this is the case, the problem is not with you. The problem is with them and they have to realize that before they can get the same sort of counseling which you went through to also be able to socialize with other individuals.