|
Conquering fear
Please give feedback on this information
This booklet can also be viewed in pdf format and purchased from the online shop.
How does recognising fear help?
What is fear?
What are we afraid of?
What of this fear of illness and dying?
How do we know?
How can I tell which sort of person I am?
How does recognising this help?
What else makes a difference?
So how do we conquer fear?
References
Useful organisations
Further reading
John looks very organised and self-assured. He expresses his views confidently, and he has a ‘can do’ attitude to all practical problems. The only sign of his anxiety is that, if he has to sit for more than a few minutes, one of his heels starts a fast, silent drumming on the floor. Only by being very busy can he keep his anxiety under control. In the middle of the night, he will wake with a start and is filled with a nameless dread.
Laura describes herself as ‘very nervy, just like my mother’. She sees danger everywhere: a gift of flowers is sure to bring out an allergic rash; a visit from a friend leaves her worrying about the quality of her coffee and about what a remark made by her friend actually meant. She is frightened of all strangers, especially people in authority or from a foreign country, and she worries constantly that she has upset her family and friends. She hates leaving home, because she knows that every journey will end in disaster, so she stays home and worries that life is passing her by.
The lives of both John and Laura are dominated by fear.
Fear helps to protect us from death and danger, but being too afraid stops us from living life to the full. The type of people we are, whether introvert or extravert, can define what frightens us.
This booklet can help you work out what your worst fears are, and what you can do about them. It tells you what you have to do to survive as a person, psychologically.
Back to top
Fear is what we feel when we are unable to predict what is going to happen, and we think that what is going to happen is likely to be bad for us. Fear is a very useful emotion, because it helps keep us alive. If we never felt fear, we wouldn’t be aware of danger, and so we wouldn’t do what’s necessary to protect ourselves.
However, many of our fears are misplaced, or out of proportion to the danger we are in.
Back to top
We fear anything that threatens our survival. We need to survive in two ways: as a body, that is physically, and as a person, that is psychologically.
Death threatens us in both ways. We try to survive as a body by staying healthy, avoiding illness and physical danger that could damage or kill us. We try to survive as a person, and overcome our fear of death, by believing that when we die some important part of us will continue on. This could mean our soul or spirit, our children, our work, or the memory people have of us.
Surviving as a person means being the person that you know yourself to be, not giving yourself up to be what someone else wants you to be. It’s about not shrinking under the weight of humiliation or cruelty to become an object, a nothing. It means not falling apart, or disappearing, when overwhelmed by unexpected events.
We try to survive as a person by maintaining our sense of self-worth, personal pride, dignity and respect. All of these are threatened when other people don’t respect us, when they ignore or humiliate us, or treat us like an object to be used and abused.
When we are faced with a crisis that reveals a serious difference between what we thought our life was and what it actually is, we try to survive as a person by interpreting what has happened. We can choose to do so in one of two ways. We may tell ourselves that the crisis is a challenge, which we will master, and thus we become courageous. Or we may tell ourselves that the crisis is our punishment for our wickedness, or that we are weak and helpless and there’s nothing we can do to protect ourselves. In this case, we increase our fear.
Back to top
We fear illness, disability and the process of dying because we lose control over our lives. We become helpless, and being helpless can be a tremendous threat to our sense of being a person.
Clare
All her life, whenever someone told Clare she couldn’t do something, she would prove them wrong. So, when her doctor told her that her stomach cancer was inoperable and that she had only a short time to live, she proved him wrong by having an operation and surviving.
Four years later, the cancer came back, and when the pain couldn’t be controlled, Clare went into a hospice where, to her great horror, she lost control of her bowels. She felt shamed and humiliated. Her great courage deserted her. Then she was visited by a young woman, a Buddhist, who told her that she should leave the matter of her bowels to the nurses, and that, by accepting her helplessness, she would regain her courage. This Clare did, and she lived the remainder of her life with courage and patience.
Clare had no difficulty in trusting the people she knew to be competent. Sean, on the other hand, could trust no-one but himself.
Sean
As a sales representative, Sean drove hundreds of miles each week, often breaking the speed limits on the motorway, but he could not bring himself to fly. Just the thought of stepping on a plane terrified him. He knew that the risk of dying on a motorway is far, far greater than the risk of dying in a plane crash, but he wouldn’t question why he couldn’t trust the pilot and the people who built or navigated the plane.
We fear death itself because we enter death alone, no matter how many people are at our bedside, and the process of death takes us over, no matter what we want to do. Being utterly alone and not being in control of ourselves are our greatest fears.
Back to top
What we fear most is the opposite of what we hold as our top priority, which is either having a sense of achievement, organisation and control, or being in relationship with other people.
We often reveal which are our top priority and our greatest fear in our conversation. For example, the singer Craig David said the following:
‘I’ll religiously do a hundred press-ups and a hundred sit-ups in my room, before I get into bed, even if I’m smashed. If I don’t do that, it’s as if I haven’t achieved. I am a workaholic... Any time I have off I try to use to my advantage, either writing a song or doing an extra interview.’
The artist and entertainer Rolf Harris said, on the other hand:
‘It’s still a shock if people don’t like me, because I’ve always wanted desperately to be liked. I can still remember the debilitating insecurities I had when I was 15. Every morning, I used to cycle down to the bus stop and be so afraid of what the other people would say to me, and think of me, that I used to cry. Then I’d pretend to the group waiting for the bus that the tears were caused by cycling downhill in the wind.’
I call Craig David an introvert, meaning a ‘What Have I Achieved Today Person’, and Rolf Harris an extravert, meaning a ‘People Person’.
Back to top
Of course, we all want to achieve, and have good relationships with other people, but in a situation where we have to choose one or the other, introverts and extraverts respond differently. Suppose you were in a situation where you could act in only one of two ways. If you acted in one way, people wouldn’t like you, but you would respect yourself. If you acted in the other way, people would like you, but you wouldn’t respect yourself. Which would you choose?
Introverts have no difficulty with this choice, because being liked is not their top priority, but extraverts are torn between wanting to respect themselves and their fear of being disliked, rejected and abandoned.
This was why Laura (see above), who is an extravert, worried so much about upsetting her family and friends. She was afraid of strangers, because she expected them to dislike her for being different from them. She was afraid of people in authority, because she was sure they’d think she was stupid.
What an introvert fears most is not achieving their goals, losing control and falling into chaos. This was why John (see above) was so anxious. He drove himself hard, whatever he did, and he tried to keep everything under control. He couldn’t accept that it’s not humanly possible to keep the whole world under control, and he certainly didn’t accept one of the great sayings, ‘If a job’s worth doing, it’s worth doing badly.’ John’s view was, ‘If a job’s worth doing, it’s worth doing perfectly.’ If you’re trying to work out whether you’re an extravert or an introvert, don’t rely on behaviour for guidance. Socially skilled introverts can behave in extroverted ways, enjoying an audience and company, while shy extraverts can behave in introverted ways, being very quiet. This is because, although we are born either an extravert or an introvert, how we express these potentialities depends on what we encounter once we're born. An extravert baby, who arrives wanting to party, may be a joy to an extravert mother, who also wants to party, but nothing but a bother for an introvert mother, who wants peace and quiet.
Instead of behaviour, think of motivation, and remember it’s not what you do, but why you do it. Both extraverts and introverts will want to achieve things in life, but if an extravert is asked, ‘Why is it important to you to achieve?’ they’ll talk about it strengthening their relationships with other people, by getting people to like or admire them. If an introvert is asked the same question, they will say, ‘That’s what life’s about’.
Back to top
You need to be very clear in your own mind what your greatest fear is. If you don’t, you will go on trying to avoid that fear, and this can make your life even more painful.
Sylvia and Michael
Sylvia was ecstatic. As a mature student she had, at last, got herself on a hairdressing course. But when I met her a few weeks later, she was very unhappy. She said the course itself was good, but all the other students hated her. Yet Sylvia is a warm, very likeable extravert.
It turned out that all the other students were teenagers. I reminded Sylvia that teenagers are totally self-absorbed and regard anyone over 20 as ancient and uninteresting. These students didn’t dislike her. They just weren’t interested in her. Sylvia clung to her belief, so I asked her:
‘Suppose you were alone on a space ship that was running out of fuel. You’ve got just enough to get to one of two planets, Planet A and Planet B. On Planet A, the people wouldn’t harm you in any way, but they would ignore you. On Planet B, the people would notice you, but only to be extremely unpleasant to you. Which planet would you choose?
Sylvia didn’t hesitate, and chose Planet B. I made a suggestion: ‘So, on your course, you’d prefer to believe that the students hate you than that they aren’t interested in you?’
Sylvia agreed that this was so. It was so important to her that people related to her, she chose to believe that people hated her, even though being hated frightened her.
Sylvia went on to tell me about her husband Michael. He hadn’t been at all bothered when he did a course where he was the only foreigner, and where the other students weren’t particularly friendly. Michael is an introvert (couples are usually one of each; opposites attract) and could tolerate not being liked. His anxieties were different. He’d set himself the goal of building up his own business, and his fear of failing and falling into financial chaos expressed itself in a myriad of worries.
Sylvia and Michael loved one another, and together they could have had a happy life, but they made their lives a misery by failing to recognise the sources of their fears and dealing sensibly with them.
Back to top
We create many of our fears, because they come from needing to fulfil our top priority and from the results of not doing so. But we multiply them many times over when we fail to value and accept ourselves.
This way of thinking goes back to our earliest childhood, when most of us lost the unconscious self-confidence we were born with. This is when we were taught that we weren’t good enough as we were, and that we had to work hard to be good. The trouble with that way of thinking is that we can never be good enough. We can never reach perfection. If we tell ourselves that we are good enough, we feel we are indulging in vanity, and that shows that we aren’t good enough. So we feel guilty for not being good enough – and guilt is fear of being punished.
John
John’s father had been a tyrant who beat his children. John learned to avoid beatings by doing everything his father wanted, to the extremely high standard his father expected. Even after his father was dead, John still lived in fear of his anger. He defended himself against this fear by keeping busy, but, when he was asleep, these defences would disappear and the fear came through as nightmares and overwhelming dread.
Laura
When Laura was four, her father deserted the family. Laura came to believe that, if she’d been really, really good, her father wouldn’t have left. Her mother had an anxious, gloomy outlook on life. She taught this to Laura by constantly warning her how dangerous the world was and how treacherous people always are. Laura never questioned this view. She felt guilty and frightened of everything.
Sean
Sean had never been loved or respected by his mother. She often betrayed him, in all the ways adults can betray children, so he ceased to trust her. He came to hate her so much, he wanted to kill her, but this hate frightened him, and he refused to admit to himself that this was how he felt. He could have learnt to overcome his fear of flying, by consulting a psychologist who was skilled in cognitive behaviour therapy, but to do this he’d have to examine his feelings, and this he wouldn’t do.
Sylvia and Michael
Sylvia and her husband Michael had each grown up in very religious families, where they had been taught that children are born bad and have to learn how to keep this badness under control. Even as adults, they accepted, without question, that they were essentially bad and had to strive hard to be good. Their self-confidence was always undermined by their fear that they didn’t deserve to be liked and to achieve anything.
Clare
Clare, too, had been given a religious education, but in adult life she faced the demons from her childhood. Long before she became ill, she gave up worrying about whether she was good enough and, instead, accepted herself as she was. The standard she set herself was to be a good friend, to enjoy life, and to be practical and sensible.
She worked out that her priorities were the company of friends, music, books and art, and she made sure that these were always part of her life. She dealt with the extravert’s fear of being disliked by saying to herself, ‘If anyone doesn’t like me, that person is a fool, and I have no time for fools.’ Thus, when faced with death, she could meet it and all that it entailed with courage.
Back to top
- Know yourself. Know what your priorities are and what these priorities lead you to fear.
- Value and accept yourself. Don’t set yourself impossible standards and judge yourself harshly. Don’t believe that you have to deserve all the good things that happen to you. Don’t believe that you deserve the bad things that happen to you.
- Look after yourself. Eat food that’s good for you, exercise regularly, get plenty of sleep and relaxation, and be moderate in your vices.
- Don’t carry any health measure to extremes. If you do, it’s because you haven’t recognised the presence of your greatest fear.
- Assess dangers realistically. Understand probabilities, for example that you are more likely to be killed by smoking than by being struck by a meteorite. Understand and accept that we live in a world where things happen by chance. Remember that things are resolved, one way or another, and that everything passes. Don’t try to control everything or to force people and things to be what they can’t be. Let people and things be themselves.
- Know that our greatest fear is fear of something that can’t happen.
No matter what happens to us, we can’t be annihilated as a person.
When people treat us badly, when they humiliate, betray or ignore us, and when we discover that the world and life is not what we thought, we can feel that we are fragmenting and diminishing to the point of disappearing. But this will not and can’t happen. You’re still there, observing this process. It's not you who are fragmenting and disappearing, but some of your ideas. These are the ideas that no longer give an accurate picture of what is happening. You go on existing, but you have to change some of your ideas. This can be painful and confusing, but time will pass and you’ll survive.
If you do all these things, then fear will present you, not with a disaster, but with a challenge that you can master.
Back to top
References
Beyond fear D. Rowe (HarperCollins)
The successful self: freeing our hidden inner strengths D. Rowe (HarperCollins)
Back to top
Useful organisations
Mind
Mind is the leading mental health organisation in England and Wales, providing a unique range of services through its local associations, to enable people with experience of mental distress to have a better quality of life. For more information about any mental health issues, including details of your nearest local Mind association, visit the Mind website: www.mind.org.uk or contact the MindinfoLine on 0845 766 0163.
British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP)
BACP House, 35–37 Albert Street, Rugby CV21 2SG
tel. 0870 443 5252, fax: 0870 443 5161, minicom: 0870 443 5162
email: bacp@bacp.co.uk web: www.bacp.co.uk
See website or send A5 SAE for details of practitioners in your area
British Association for Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapies (BABCP)
The Globe Centre, PO Box 9, Accrington BB5 0XB
tel. 01254 875 277, fax: 01254 239 114
email: babcp@babcp.com web: www.babcp.com
Promotes the development of the theory and practice of behavioural and cognitive psychotherapies. Can provide details of accredited therapists. Full directory of psychotherapists available online
British Autogenic Society
The Royal London Homoeopathic Hospital, Greenwell Street, London W1W 5BF
tel./fax: 020 7383 5108, web: www.autogenic-therapy.org.uk
Autogenics teaches people simple exercises in body awareness and relaxation, designed to switch off the stress-related ‘fight and flight’ system of the body and switch on the ‘rest, relaxation and recreation’ system
The Food and Mood Project
PO Box 2737, Lewes BN7 2GN
fax: 01273 478 108
email: info@foodandmood.org web: www.foodandmood.org
Aims to help people explore the relationship between what they eat and how they feel
The Institute for Complementary Medicine (ICM)
PO Box 194, London SE16 7QZ
tel. 020 7237 5165, fax: 020 7237 5175
email: icm@icmedicine.co.uk web: www.icmedicine.co.uk
Provides information and can send a list of professional, competent practitioners on receipt of an SAE and two loose stamps
The Institute for Optimum Nutrition
Avalon House, 72 Lower Mortlake Road, Richmond, Surrey, TW9 2JY
tel. 0870 979 112, fax: 0870 979 113
email: info@ion.ac.uk web: www.ion.ac.uk
Charity dedicated to principles of optimum nutrition and to further the knowledge and practice of nutritional therapy as a treatment complementary to traditional forms of medicine
United Kingdom Council for Psychotherapy (UKCP)
167–169 Great Portland Street, London W1W 5PF
tel. 020 7436 3002, fax: 020 7436 3013
email: ukcp@psychotherapy.org.uk web: www.psychotherapy.org.uk
Umbrella organisation for psychotherapy in UK. Regional lists of psychotherapists are available free
Back to top
Further reading
Confidence works: learn to be your own life coach G. McMahon (Sheldon Press 2001)
Depression: the way out of your prison D. Rowe (Brunner-Routledge 1996)
The food and mood handbook A. Geary (Thorsons 2001)
Good mood food M. Van Straten (Casssell 2002)
Heal the hurt: how to forgive and move on A. Macaskill (Sheldon Press 2002)
How to accept yourself Dr W. Dryden (Sheldon Press 1999)
How to assert yourself (Mind 2003)
How to cope with loneliness (Mind 2002)
How to cope with relationship problems (Mind 2003)
How to deal with anger (Mind 2003)
How to improve your mental wellbeing (Mind 2002)
How to increase your self-esteem (Mind 2003)
How to look after yourself (Mind 2002)
How to stop worrying (Mind 2003)
How to survive family life (Mind 2002)
How to survive mid-life crisis (Mind 2002)
Making sense of cognitive behaviour therapy (Mind 2001)
Making sense of herbal remedies (Mind 2000)
Making sense of homeopathy (Mind 2001)
The Mind guide to food and mood (Mind 2000)
The Mind guide to managing stress (Mind 2003)
The Mind guide to physical activity (Mind 2001)
The Mind guide to relaxation (Mind 2001)
The Mind guide to surviving working life (Mind 2003)
Overcoming childhood trauma: a self-help guide using cognitive behavioural techniques H. Kennerley (Robinson 2000)
Sunbathing in the rain: a cheerful book about depression G. Lewis (Flamingo 2003)
Understanding anxiety (Mind 2003)
Understanding depression (Mind 2003)
Understanding mental illness (Mind 2003)
Understanding talking treatments (Mind 2002)
This booklet was written by Dorothy Rowe
ISBN 1-903567-49-1 © Mind 2003
No reproduction without permission
|