If you experience fear in any part of your life, then you know how debilitating it can be. We can have fears of things such as spiders, small spaces, heights or we can have fears such as public speaking, dying, being judged. The list is endless….
Logically you know it doesn’t make sense and yet you can’t seem to stop it from affecting how you feel and how you show up in your work and your life. If fear is something that is making you feel terrible and holding you back from thriving in your life, then here are 6 interesting facts that you need to know about fear
You are only born with two fears which are the fear of falling and loud noises. That means that all other fears are something we have got after we were born
A fear can be something that you learnt from someone else. When we are young children we’re making sense of the world around us so we take our cues of what is safe and dangerous from our caregivers and others in our life. So imagine you have a parent who is scared of spiders. If they show their fear in front of you, then you are highly likely to be also scared of spiders and this can be the same with any fear that you witness
A fear can be created from an individual experience. Through a life experience, we may decide that this situation is dangerous and we create a fear. An example of this could be being asked to stand up at school and read in front of others. When you do it, you make a mistake and everyone laughs at you. You feel traumatised from this experience so you create a belief that this is dangerous. Then every time you think of or have to do something similar, you feel the fear (this is a real-life story of how one of my fears of public speaking was created)
Feeling the fear and doing it anyway can re-traumatise you. I was always a big believer when I started my own personal development journey that to overcome the fear it was to feel it and push through it. What I now know is that this re-traumatises us as our brain still sees this as dangerous, so we might push through but we are reliving that fear and this causes havoc on our nervous system
You can overcome any fear that has been created in a safe way. We don’t do this through pushing through it but going back into your subconscious mind to the first time you experienced this and re-wire the brain, so in that moment where you felt that fear for the first time, you can feel safe and supported in that moment. When you shift that fear you will feel different and will be able to show up and do things without that fear imprinted in your subconscious brain.
So what does this mean for you? Basically, if you weren’t born with it you can fix it. That’s great news right!
Here are 3 steps that you can take to overcome ANY fear that you have:
Have a self-awareness of your fears - if you aren’t aware of them, then think of situations or things that trigger you ie make you feel a negative response that affects you in a big way
Decide you no longer wish to feel this way - it’s interesting that I meet people that have fears yet when I tell them they don’t have to feel that way, they say they don’t want to get rid of it. Only you can decide if you’re ready to let go of this fear
Work on overcoming the fear in a way that doesn’t re-traumatise you. My recommendation is to find a therapist that can help you to do this through a technique that works with your subconscious brain
If you’re ready to let go of the fear that is holding you back and you would like to know how I can support you to do this, book a curiosity call and let’s talk about how you can overcome your fears safely so you can rise and thrive in your work and life