I’m Afraid Of My Own Fear
Fear is a necessary emotion, so much so that it has helped us to survive the adversities we have encountered throughout history, both personal and part of the time course of our species.
It is essential, an ally, a friend. It is the alarm that helps us identify what can be dangerous for our survival. But this supposed friend can also stop being all these things and, thus, fear can become an enemy.
The reality is that he has never intended it, he has always wanted to help us. It is we ourselves who make him a rival, an adversary who must be annihilated in order to live in peace.
One of these mechanisms is to make us sweat so that our skin becomes slippery, since if a predator bites us, it will be easier for it to slip. It also carries blood from the stomach to the feet and hands, in order to run faster or fight harder.
Other mechanisms that this emotion sets in motion are to dilate our pupils, make us hyperventilate, etc. All this is aimed at helping us, to put us safe, because that is the objective of the human being: to survive in the world. Nature, which is wise, has given us resources for this.
Why can’t I bear to be afraid?
Yes you can bear it, but you tell yourself that you can’t stand it. Therein lies the problem. Fear pretends to be your friend and warn you that a car can hit you, a dog bite you or be mugged. To give you these warnings, it needs to start, as we have said, its mechanisms, the only ones it knows about.
Those mechanisms are interpreted by you as terrible, unbearable, horrible … and in this way you call him again to come and save you. This time, the danger is the very symptoms that want to save you.
What a contradiction, right? Well, although it is paradoxical, it is what happens to many people. In panic disorder, for example, the person begins to feel the manifestations of fear and interprets them as dangerous because they think: “I’m having a heart attack!”, “I’m going to die right here!”
Obviously, this provokes more terror, which increases palpitations, sweats or tremors much more, confirming the catastrophic interpretations. In the end, a vicious circle is closed that is unbearable for us.
Thus the fear of fear itself is consolidated, which is extremely disabling because in reality the shadow of which we are afraid is our own.
How to cut the circle of fear?
There is a way to cut that vicious cycle of fear, although for this you will have to accept that you are going to be a little scared. Yes, another contradiction! To get rid of your own fear you have to accept it and integrate it as part of you.
In order to reach that acceptance, the first step is not to judge it and to let it be. Feel it, hug it and talk to it like a friend with whom you are reconciling.
The second step, once you have accepted your fear is to debate with it, but always from acceptance. Fear is going to make you interpret it as dangerous, but you know that it is not, that if you feel it, it is only because you are believing that it is so, even if it is false.
Ask those anxious thoughts : How do I know this is a heart attack? Isn’t it much more likely that it’s anxiety symptoms? If this has happened to me more times and I have never passed out, why should it happen now?
Once you honestly answer yourself all these questions, you will realize that your interpretations are responsible for the fear being put to work at a higher intensity than necessary or remaining in time when we have already verified that it is not justified.
