Don’t know how to face your fears? Do you think there is no effective way to solve your fears? Discover how to overcome fears through techniques based on psychology.
There is a recurring and common theme in the general population that causes a lot of demand in psychological therapies, it is fear, what fear is and how to deal with it. This is a question that human beings have asked themselves since ancient times since it is inherent to human existence and since then the distinction has been made between fear and anxiety. Anxiety is considered fear without an object. He fear For its part, it comes from a real danger that a specific situation generates.
We call fear to the response that mammals, among which we find ourselves, trigger when we are threatened by a real, external danger. Faced with this external and real threat, our body responds to save our lives, which is known as the biological survival response or fear response. It is a response that we have been modeling and perfecting throughout Evolution and that served to save the lives of our ancestors, when there were many dangers and threats in our environment.
For this reason, facing fears or knowing how to lose fear in some situations can seem very difficult. The reality is that every time fears arise we are facing one of the most instinctive parts of our brain. This is why it costs so much overcome fears irrational or real.
What is the difference between fear and anxiety?
When we generate that response without there being a real and proportionate stimulus from outside us, we are talking about anxiety. This would be that fear response without there being a real danger or threat outside, outside us. The ancients called it objectless fear, although we could also call it fear with an internal object, because the danger is not outside but inside us, in our mind. In anxiety the threat is imaginary. In the face of a real threat, fear is the response that allows us to save our lives. In our current ways of life we generally call anxiety fear, and we can deal with it, fear with an internal object or with an imaginary internal object.
Psychotherapy techniques are based on facing the imagined danger or threat. When faced with real danger, what we can do is fight against it, or flee, but when faced with imagined danger, since it does not exist we cannot fight or flee, what we can do is face it. Feared situations should be faced and not avoided, avoiding always generates problems and these are resolved by facing them. This coping can be on a real level or on an imaginary level.
Learn to accept your fears: You won’t solve your problems if you can’t embrace your fears and accept them for what they are. No matter what happens, they are part of you and recognizing them will be the best way to overcome them. For stop being afraid accepting what limits us is the first step we must take.
Learn relaxation techniques: The fundamental way to deal with anxiety or any fear is by learning and practicing a relaxation technique. In our current ways of life, especially in big cities, we are accumulating high levels of anxiety in our bodies. With the practice of relaxation we manage to reduce this anxiety that accumulates in the body, in addition to being a great way to be able to face our fears Relaxation training would be a way to prevent this buildup of anxiety or fear by preventing the Sympathetic nervous system from being activated.
Systematic desensitization technique: We can do a job with anxiety or fears starting from the state of relaxation. We settle into this state and imagine the feared situations. This is the technique of Systematic Desensitization, which is the oldest psychotherapy technique at a modern Western level. This consists of progressively facing the feared situations in imagination until we stop having anxiety or fear. I can also imagine feared situations without being in a state of relaxation, simply imagine how I behave in those situations in the way I would like to do it, in a calm, serene way. Suppose we have to go to a job interview tomorrow, imagine how I approach the interview calmly.
Exposure to fear: Another technique to deal with fear or anxiety It is the live exhibition, which consists of doing real rehearsals, in reality, and not just in imagination. Following the same example of the job interview, after exposing myself in imagination to the feared situation, whether in a state of relaxation or not, I go to the interview in reality.
Take action instead of paralyzing yourself: The only way to be able to overcome the fears we have is precisely to face fear head on. In this way, we must stop paralyzing ourselves in front of it and try to act in front of it. A way to get overcome fears It is remembering those moments in which we were able to defeat them despite all the fear they generated in us.
Analyze fear: On many occasions, and especially currently, fear usually comes from a completely irrational fact. In this way, one way to control fear is precisely by seeing where these feelings of fear come from. The fact that you have fear of a situation It doesn’t mean you can’t do anything about it.
Get motivated through internal dialogue: overcome a fear it’s hard. This is why you must find some method with which you can motivate yourself to combat the fear you have. The positive self-talk technique can be ideal for changing negative thoughts into positive ones. The moment you have this self-motivation, it will surely be much easier to face your fears.
Visualize yourself overcoming fears: One of the most effective options for lose the fear It is to visualize that you are capable of facing it. In this way, you can change the perspective of a situation and see another point of view with which you can control fear.
Become aware: In all the types of fears One of the parts that most influences their development is precisely the thoughts. In this way, in the vast majority of cases, if we become aware of what is happening inside us, we can overcome fear.
Practice mindfulness: Mindfulness is a technique that allows you to be in the here and now. So much so that practicing it can become a good method to fight fear that arises in you. In order to have this ability, you can do meditation or Mindfulness exercises.
Discover the root of your fears: To control fear It is essential that you know why you feel these fears. In this way, every time you have a panic attack or you find yourself conquered by fear, you should try to analyze where it comes from. This is how you will be able to discover what is the cause of the fears that haunt you and you will be able to solve it either with your own tools or by putting yourself in the hands of a professional psychologist.
Learn to listen to what you are thinking: For learn to live without fear It is important to know how to analyze our internal thoughts, really listen to them and change your internal language so that it is more positive. As you learn to challenge your negative thoughts and replace them with healthier ones, you will find that you will be able to overcome your fears and insecurities.
Distract your thoughts with something positive: Although distracting yourself will not help you at all, when you have analyzed your daily fears, it can be useful. Anything to get your mind off of what you’ve been fearing can be helpful to recharge your batteries for face fear that paralyzes you so much.
The solution is always to confront, whether in one way or another, in the imagination or in reality and never to avoid, which is what the body will naturally ask of us when faced with fear. Coping is how you know solve fears and we fully enjoy all facets of our lives.
