How to kill fear in yourself audio magic. How to overcome your fears of fighting, death or sex. How to remove fear through meditation

Today we will talk about how to get rid of fear of a very different nature: fear of death, fear of animals or insects, phobia associated with illness, injury, death as a result of an accident, etc.

In this article, I will talk not only about techniques that will help you overcome fear, but also about how to properly relate to the feeling of fear and how to change your life in such a way that there is less room for anxiety in it.

I myself had to go through a lot of fears, especially during that period of my life when I experienced. I was afraid of dying or going crazy. I was afraid that my health would become completely unusable. I was afraid of dogs. I was afraid of so many things.

Since then, some of my fears have completely disappeared. I learned to control some fears. I learned to live with other fears. I've done a lot of work on myself. I hope my experience, which I will outline in this article, will help you too.

Where does fear come from?

Since ancient times, the mechanism of fear has performed a protective function. He protected us from danger. Many people are instinctively afraid of snakes because this quality was inherited from their ancestors. After all, those of them who were afraid of these animals and, as a result, avoided them, had a greater chance of not dying from a poisonous bite than those who showed fearlessness in relation to crawling creatures. Fear helped those who experienced it to survive and pass this quality on to their offspring. After all, only living things can reproduce.

Fear causes people to feel an intense desire to flee when they encounter something that their brain perceives as danger. Many people are afraid of heights. But they cannot help but guess about it until they find themselves high for the first time. Their legs will begin to instinctively give way. The brain will send alarm signals. The person will passionately want to leave this place.

But fear helps not only to protect yourself from danger when it occurs. It allows a person to avoid even potential danger wherever possible.

Anyone who is mortally afraid of heights will not climb onto the roof again, because he will remember what strong unpleasant emotions he experienced the last time he was there. And thus, perhaps protect yourself from the risk of death as a result of a fall.

Unfortunately, since the time of our distant ancestors, the environment in which we live has changed a lot. AND fear does not always meet our survival goals. And even if it answers, it does not contribute to our happiness and comfort in any way.

People experience many social fears that prevent them from achieving their goals. They are often afraid of things that pose no threat. Or this threat is negligible.

The chance of dying in a passenger plane crash is approximately one in 8 million. However, many people are afraid of traveling by air. There is no threat to getting to know another person, but many men or women experience extreme anxiety when being around other people.

Many quite ordinary fears can become uncontrollable. Natural concern for the safety of your children can turn into acute paranoia. Fear of losing your life or harming yourself sometimes turns into mania and an obsession with safety. Some people spend a lot of their time in seclusion, trying to protect themselves from the dangers that supposedly await them on the street.

We see that the natural mechanism formed by evolution often interferes with us. Many fears do not protect us, but rather make us vulnerable. This means we need to intervene in this process. Next I will tell you how to do this.

Method 1 - Stop being afraid of fear

The first tips will help you understand fear correctly.

You ask me: “I just want to stop being afraid of mice, spiders, open or closed spaces. Are you suggesting we just stop being afraid of fear itself?”

What reactions does fear cause in a person? As we found out earlier this:

1. The desire to eliminate the object of fear. (If a person is afraid of snakes, will he run away? when he sees them
2. Reluctance to repeat this feeling (The person will avoid snakes wherever possible, not build a dwelling near their lair, etc.)

Our instincts tell us these two reactions. A person who fears death in a plane crash will instinctively avoid airplanes. But if he suddenly has to fly somewhere, he will try to do everything so as not to feel a sense of fear. For example, he will get drunk, take sedative pills, and ask someone to calm him down. He will do this because he is afraid of the feeling of fear.

But in the context of fear management, such behavior often makes no sense. After all, the fight against fear is a fight against instincts. And if we want to defeat instincts, we should not be guided by their logic, which is indicated in two points above.

Of course, during an attack of fear, the most logical behavior for us is to run away or try to get rid of the attack of fear. But this logic is whispered to us by our instincts, which we must defeat!

It is precisely because during attacks of fear that people behave as their “guts” tell them, they cannot get rid of these fears. They go to the doctor, sign up for hypnosis and say: “I never want to experience this again! Fear torments me! I want to stop being afraid completely! Get me out of this!” Some methods may help them for a while, but fear can still return to them in one form or another. Because they listened to their instincts, which told them: “Fear fear!” You can only be free when you get rid of him!”

It turns out that many people cannot get rid of fear because they, first of all, strive to get rid of it! Now I will explain this paradox.

Fear is just a program

Imagine that you have invented a robot that washes your floors at home, including your balcony. Using the reflection of radio signals, the robot can estimate the height at which it is located. And to prevent him from falling off the edge of the balcony, you have programmed him in such a way that his brain signals him to stop if he is on the edge of a drop in height.

You left the house and left the robot to clean up. What did you find when you returned? The robot froze on the threshold between your room and the kitchen and could not cross it due to a slight difference in heights! A signal in his brain told him to stop!

If the robot had “mind”, “consciousness”, it would understand that there is no danger at the border of two rooms, since the height is small. And then he could cross it, despite the fact that the brain continues to signal danger! The robot's consciousness simply would not obey the absurd order of its brain.

A person has a consciousness that is also not obliged to follow the commands of his “primitive” brain. And the first thing you must do if you want to get rid of fear is stop trusting fear, stop perceiving it as a guide to action, stop being afraid of it. You need to act a little paradoxically, and not as your gut tells you.

After all, fear is just a feeling. Roughly speaking, this is the same program that the robot in our example executes when it approaches the balcony. This is a program that your brain launches on a chemical level (with the help of adrenaline, for example) after it receives information from your sensory organs.

Fear is simply a stream of chemical signals that are translated into commands for your body.

But your consciousness, despite the work of the program, can itself understand in which cases it is faced with a real danger, and in which situations it is dealing with a failure in the “instinctive program” (approximately the same failure that occurred with the robot when it could not climb over across the threshold).

If you experience fear, it does not mean that there is any danger. You should not always trust all your feelings, as they often deceive you. Do not run from a non-existent danger, do not try to somehow calm this feeling. Try to just calmly wait until the “siren” (“alarm! save yourself!”) in your head goes silent. Often this will simply be a false alarm.

And it is in this direction that you must move first if you want to get rid of fear. In the direction of allowing your consciousness, and not the “primitive” brain, to make decisions (getting on a plane, approaching a strange girl).

After all, there is nothing wrong with this feeling! There is nothing wrong with fear! It's just chemistry! It's an illusion! There is nothing terrible about experiencing this feeling sometimes.

It's normal to be afraid. There is no need to strive to immediately get rid of fear (or what this fear causes). Because if you are just thinking about how to get rid of him, you follow his lead, you listen to what he tells you, you obey him, do you take him seriously. You think: “I’m afraid to fly on a plane, so I won’t fly” or “I’ll fly on a plane only when I stop being afraid of flying,” “because I believe in fear and I’m afraid of it.” And then you keep feeding your fear! You can stop feeding him if only you stop giving him great importance.

When you think: “I'm afraid to fly on a plane, but I'll fly on it anyway. And I won’t be afraid of an attack of fear, because it’s just a feeling, chemistry, the play of my instincts. Let him come, because there is nothing terrible in fear!” Then you stop obeying fear.

You will get rid of fear only when you stop wanting to get rid of it and live with it!

Breaking the vicious circle

I have already spoken about this example from my life more than once and I will repeat it again here. I took the first step towards getting rid of panic attacks, as sudden attacks of fear, only when I stopped focusing on getting rid of it! I began to think: “let the attacks come. This fear is just an illusion. I can survive these attacks, there’s nothing scary about them.”

And then I stopped being afraid of them, I became ready for them. For four years I followed their lead, thinking: “when will this end, when will the attacks go away, what should I do?” But when I applied tactics in relation to them that were opposite to the logic of my instincts, when I stopped driving away fear, only then did it begin to go away!

Our instincts trap us. Of course, this thoughtless program of the body is aimed at making us obey it (roughly speaking, the instincts “want” us to obey them), so that we are afraid of the appearance of fear, and not accept it. But this only makes the whole situation worse.

When we begin to be afraid of our fears, to take them seriously, we only make them stronger. Fear of fear only increases the total amount of fear and even provokes fear itself. I personally became convinced of the truth of this principle when I suffered from panic attacks. The more afraid I was of new attacks of fear, the more often they happened.

My fear of attacks only fueled the fear that arises during a panic attack. These two fears (fear itself and fear of fear) are connected by positive feedback and reinforce each other.

A person engulfed by them finds himself in a vicious circle. He is afraid of new attacks and thereby causes them, and the attacks, in turn, cause even greater fear of them! We can get out of this vicious circle if we remove the fear of fear, and not the fear itself, as many people want. Since we can influence this type of fear much more than fear in its pure form.

If we talk about fear in its “pure form,” then it often does not have very much weight in the totality of fear. I want to say that if we are not afraid of it, then it is easier for us to survive these unpleasant sensations. Fear ceases to be “scary.”

Don't worry if these conclusions don't quite make sense to you, or if you don't quite understand how to achieve this attitude towards your fear. Such an understanding will not come immediately. But you will be able to understand it better when you read my following tips and apply the recommendations from them.

Method 2 - Think long term

I gave this advice in my last article. Here I will dwell on this point in more detail.

This advice may not help you cope with every fear, but it will help you cope with some anxieties. The fact is that when we are afraid, we tend to think about the very moment of realization of our fear, and not about what may await us in the future.

Let's say you're afraid of losing your job. It provides you with comfortable working conditions, and the salary at this place allows you to buy the things you want. The thought of losing her fills you with fear. You immediately imagine how you will have to look for another job, which may pay worse than the one you lost. You will no longer be able to spend as much money as you used to spend, and this...

But instead of imagining how bad you'll feel when you lose your job, think about what happens next. Mentally cross the line you are afraid to cross. Let's say you lose your job. Ask yourself what will happen in the future? Imagine your future over an extended period of time with all the nuances.

You will start looking for a new job. It is not at all necessary that you will not find a job with the same salary. There is a possibility that you will find an even higher paying position. You cannot know for sure how much you are willing to offer to a specialist of your level in other companies until you go to interviews.

Even if you have to work for less money, so what? You may not be able to frequent expensive restaurants for a while. You will buy cheaper food than you bought before, and prefer a holiday at your own or a friend’s dacha to a holiday abroad. I understand that now this seems scary to you, because you are used to living differently. But a person always gets used to everything. The time will come and you will get used to it, just as you have become accustomed to many things in your life. But it is quite possible that this situation will not last your entire life; you will be able to achieve a promotion in your new job!

When a child's toy is taken away, he stomps his foot and cries, because he cannot realize that in the future (perhaps in a couple of days) he will get used to the absence of this toy and other, more interesting things will appear. Because the child becomes a hostage to his momentary emotions and cannot think in the future!

Don't become that child. Think constructively about the things you fear.

If you are afraid that your husband will betray you and leave you for another woman, think, so what? Millions of couples break up and no one dies from it. You will suffer for a while, but then you will begin to live new life. After all, any human emotions are temporary! Don't be afraid of these emotions. They will come and go.

Imagine the real picture in your head: how you will live, how you will get out of suffering, how you will make new interesting acquaintances, how you will have a chance to correct the mistakes of the past! Think about prospects, not failures! About new happiness, not suffering!

Method 3 - Be Prepared

When I'm nervous on a plane about to land, it doesn't help much to think about plane crash statistics. So what if disasters happen rarely? So what if getting to the airport by car is statistically more life-threatening than flying by plane? These thoughts do not save me in those moments when the plane begins to shake or it continues to circle over the airport. Any person who experiences this fear will understand me.

In such situations, fear makes us think: “what if I am now on exactly one of the eight million flights that should turn into a disaster?” And no statistics can save you. After all, unlikely does not mean impossible! In this life, everything is possible, so you need to be prepared for anything.
Trying to reassure yourself, like: “everything will be fine, nothing will happen,” usually doesn’t help. Because such exhortations are lies. But the truth is that anything can happen! And we need to accept it.

“Not a very optimistic conclusion for an article about getting rid of fear,” you might think.

In fact, everything is not so bad; willingness helps to overcome fear. And do you know what line of thinking helps me out on such intense flights? I think: “Planes really rarely crash. It is very unlikely that something bad will happen right now. But, nevertheless, it is possible. At worst, I'll die. But I still have to die someday. Death is inevitable in any case. Each one ends with her human life. A catastrophe will simply bring closer what will happen someday anyway with 100% probability.”

As you can see, being prepared does not mean looking at things with a doomed look, thinking: “I’m going to die soon.” This simply means realistically assessing the situation: “it’s not a fact that a disaster will happen. But if it happens, then so be it.”

Of course, this does not eliminate fear completely. I'm still afraid of death, but it helps to be prepared. What's the point of worrying your whole life about something that will definitely happen? It’s better to be at least a little prepared and not think about your death as something that will never happen to us.
I understand that this advice is very difficult to implement in practice. And, moreover, not everyone always wants to think about death.

But people often write to me, tormented by the most absurd fears. Someone, for example, is afraid to go outside because they believe that it is dangerous there, whereas at home it is much safer. This person will have a hard time dealing with his fear if he waits for the fear to pass so he can go outside. But he may feel better if he thinks: “Even though there is danger on the street. But you can’t sit at home all the time! You cannot completely protect yourself, even if you are within four walls. Or I will go outside and expose myself to the danger of death and injury (this danger is negligible). Or I'll stay at home until I die! A death that will happen anyway. If I die now, then I will die. But most likely this will not happen in the near future.”

If people stop focusing so much on their fears, and can at least sometimes look them in the face, realizing that behind them there is nothing hidden except emptiness, then fears will cease to have so much power over us. We can’t be so afraid of losing what we are already going to lose.

Fear and emptiness

An attentive reader will ask me: “But if you take this logic to the limit, it turns out that if there is no point in being afraid of losing those things that we will lose anyway, then there is no point in being afraid of anything at all! After all, nothing lasts forever!

That's right, even though it contradicts ordinary logic. At the end of every fear lies emptiness. We have nothing to fear because all things are temporary.

This thesis may be very difficult to intuitively understand.

But I am not too keen for you to understand it on a theoretical level, but rather to use it in practice. How? I'll explain now.

I myself use this principle regularly. I'm still afraid of many things. But, remembering this principle, I understand that every fear of mine is meaningless. I shouldn’t “feed” him and get too carried away with him. When I think about this, I find the strength to not give in to fear.

Many people, when they are very afraid of something, subconsciously believe that they “should be afraid”, that there are really scary things. They think that no other reaction other than fear is possible in relation to these things. But if you know that in principle there is nothing to be afraid of in this life, since everything will happen someday, if you realize the meaninglessness, the “emptiness” of fear, if you understand that there are no truly terrible things, but only a subjective reaction to these things, then it will become easier to cope with fear. I will return to this point at the end of the article.

Method 4 - Observe

The following few methods will allow you to deal with fear as it arises.

Instead of giving in to fear, try simply observing it from the outside. Try to localize this fear in your thoughts, to feel it as some kind of energy that is formed in certain parts of the body. Mentally direct your breath to these areas. Try to make your breathing slow and calm.

Don't get caught up in your fear with your thoughts. Just watch how it forms. Sometimes this helps remove fear completely. Even if the fear doesn't go away, it's okay. By becoming a dispassionate observer, you begin to recognize your fear as something external to your “I”, as something that no longer has such power over this “I”.

When you observe, fear is much easier to control. After all, the feeling of fear forms like a snowball. At first you are simply scared, then all sorts of thoughts begin to creep into your head: “what if something bad happens,” “what is that strange sound that appeared when the plane was landing?”, “what if something bad happens to my health?”

And these thoughts fuel fear, it becomes even stronger and causes even more anxious thoughts. We find ourselves again inside a vicious circle!

But by observing the feelings, we try to get rid of any thoughts and interpretations. We do not feed our fear with our thoughts, and then it becomes weaker. Don't let your own mind increase fear. To do this, simply turn off thinking, evaluation and interpretation and go into observation mode. Don't think about the past or the future stay in the present moment with your fear!

Method 5 - Breathe

During attacks of fear, try to breathe deeply, taking longer inhalations and exhalations. Diaphragmatic breathing calms the nervous system and, according to scientific research, stops the fight-or-flight response, which is directly related to the feeling of fear.

Diaphragmatic breathing means that you breathe from your stomach rather than from your chest. Focus on how you breathe. Count the time of inhalation and exhalation. Try to keep this time equal for inhalation and exhalation and long enough. (4 – 10 seconds.) Just don’t choke. Breathing should be comfortable.

Method 6 - Relax your body

When fear attacks you, try to relax. Calmly move your attention over each muscle in your body and relax it. You can combine this technique with breathing. Mentally direct your breath to different parts of your body, in order, starting with your head and ending with your feet.

Method 7 - Remember how your fear did not come true

This method helps to cope with minor and recurring fears. For example, you are constantly afraid that you might offend someone or make a bad impression on them. But, as a rule, it turns out that your fear was never realized. It turned out that you had not offended anyone, and it was just your own mind that frightened you.

If this repeats over and over again, then when you again fear that you said the wrong things when communicating, remember how often your fear was not realized. And most likely, you will understand that there is absolutely nothing to be afraid of.

But be prepared for anything! Even if there is a possibility that someone is offended by you, then it’s not a big deal! Make peace! Don't make a big deal about what has already happened. Most of your own mistakes can be corrected.

Method 8 - Treat fear as a thrill

Remember when I wrote that fear is just a feeling? If you are afraid of something, it does not mean that there is any danger. This feeling is sometimes not reality, but is just a spontaneous chemical reaction in your head. Instead of being afraid of this reaction, treat it as a thrill, as a free ride. You don't have to pay money or put yourself in danger by skydiving to get the adrenaline rush. This adrenaline appears out of the blue. Beauty!

Method 9 - Accept your fear, don't resist

Above, I talked about techniques that will help you quickly cope with your fear at the moment it arises. But you don't need to get attached to these techniques. When people hear about ways to control fear or fear, they sometimes fall into the trap of believing in self-control. They start thinking: “Hurray! It turns out fear can be controlled! And now I know how to do it! Then I’ll definitely get rid of him!”

They begin to rely heavily on these techniques. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don't. And when people fail to cope with fear using these methods, they begin to panic: “I can’t control this! Why? Yesterday it worked, but today it doesn’t! What should I do? I need to deal with this urgently somehow! I have to manage this!”

They begin to worry and thereby only increase their fear. But the truth is that it's far away you can't always control everything. Sometimes these techniques will work, sometimes they won't. Of course, try to breathe, observe the fear, but if it doesn’t go away, there’s nothing terrible about it. No need to panic, no need to look for a new way out of the situation, leave everything as it is, accept your fear. You don't "have to" get rid of it at that moment. The word “should” does not apply here at all. Because you feel the way you feel now. What happens, happens. Accept it and stop resisting.

Method 10 - Don't get attached to things

The following methods will allow you to remove fears from your life

As the Buddha said: “the basis of human suffering (dissatisfaction, inability to achieve final satisfaction) is attachment (desire).” Attachment, in my opinion, is understood more as dependence than love.

If we are strongly attached to something, for example, we strongly need to produce an effect on the opposite sex, to achieve constant victories on the love front, then this will lead us into a state of eternal dissatisfaction, and not happiness and pleasure, as we think . Sexual feeling and self-esteem cannot be completely satisfied. After each new victory, these feelings will demand more and more. New successes on the love front will bring you less and less pleasure over time (“pleasure inflation”), while failures will make us suffer. We will live in constant fear that we will lose our charm and attractiveness (and sooner or later this will still happen with the advent of old age) and again we will suffer. At a time when no love affairs occur, we will not feel the joy of life.

Perhaps some people will find it easier to understand attachment using the example of money. While we strive for money, it seems to us that by earning a certain amount of money, we will achieve happiness. But when we achieve this goal, happiness does not come and we want more! Complete satisfaction is unattainable! We are chasing carrots on a fishing rod.

But it would be much easier for you if you weren’t so attached to it and were happy with what we have (it’s not necessary to stop striving for the best). This is what the Buddha meant when he said that the cause of dissatisfaction is attachment. But attachments not only give rise to dissatisfaction and suffering, they create fear.

After all, we are afraid of losing exactly what we are so attached to!

I'm not saying that you need to go to the mountains, give up your personal life and destroy all attachments. Complete release from attachments is an extreme teaching, suitable for extreme cases. But despite this, modern man can derive some benefit from this principle for himself without going to extremes.

To experience less fear, you don’t need to get too hung up on certain things and make them the basis of your existence. If you think: “I live for my work,” “I live only for my children,” then you may have a strong fear of losing these things. After all, your whole life comes down to them.

That's why try to diversify your life as much as possible, let a lot of new things into it, enjoy many things, and not just one thing. Be happy because you are breathing and living, and not just because you have a lot of money and are attractive to the opposite sex. Although, as I said above, the latter things will not bring you happiness.

(In this sense, attachments are not only the cause of suffering, but its consequence! People who are deeply unhappy inside begin to desperately cling to external things in search of satisfaction: sex, entertainment, alcohol, new experiences. But happy people, as a rule, are more self-sufficient. The basis of their happiness is life itself, not things. Therefore, they are not so afraid of losing them.)

Affection does not mean absence of love. As I wrote above, this is understood more as addiction than love. For example, I have very high hopes for this site. I love developing it. If something bad suddenly happens to him, it will be a blow for me, but not the end of my whole life! After all, I have many other interesting things to do in my life. But my happiness is formed not only by them, but by the very fact that I live.

Method 11 - Nurture Your Ego

Remember, you are not alone in this world. The whole existence is not limited to just your fears and problems. Stop focusing on yourself. There are other people in the world with their own fears and worries.

Understand that there is an immense world around you with its laws. Everything in nature is subject to birth, death, decay, disease. Everything in this world is finite. And you yourself are part of this universal order, and not the center of it!

If you feel yourself in harmony with this world, without opposing yourself to it, and realize your existence as an integral part of the natural order, you will understand that you are not alone, that you, together with all living beings, are moving in the same direction. And this has always happened, forever and ever.

With this consciousness your fears will disappear. How to achieve such consciousness? It must come with the development of personality. One way to achieve this state is to practice meditation.

Method 12 - Meditate

In this article, I talked about the fact that you cannot identify yourself with your fear, that it is just a feeling, that you need to be prepared for anything, that you cannot put your own ego at the center of all existence.

This is easy to understand on a theoretical level, but not always easy to apply in practice. It is not enough to just read about it, it needs to be practiced, day after day, applying it in real life. Not all things in this world are accessible to “intellectual” knowledge.

The attitude towards fears that I spoke about at the beginning needs to be cultivated in oneself. The way to come to these conclusions in practice, to realize that fear is just an illusion, is meditation.

Meditation makes it possible to “reprogram” yourself to be happier and freer. Nature is an excellent “constructor”, but her creations are not ideal; biological mechanisms (the mechanism of fear) that worked in the Stone Age do not always work in the modern world.

Meditation will allow you to partially correct the imperfections of nature, change your standard emotional reactions to many things, move away from fear to calmness, come to a clearer understanding of the illusory nature of fear, understand that fear is not part of your personality and free yourself from it!

With practice, you can find the source of happiness within yourself and not have strong attachments to different things. You will learn to accept your emotions and fears rather than resist them. Meditation will teach you to observe your fear from the outside without getting involved in it.

Meditation will not only help you come to some important understanding of yourself and life. The practice has been scientifically proven to calm the sympathetic nervous system, which is responsible for feelings of stress. It will make you calmer and less stressed. She will teach you to relax deeply and get rid of fatigue and tension. And this is very important for people who experience fear.

You can listen to my short lecture on this by following the link.

Method 13 - Don't let fear dictate you

Many of us are accustomed to the fact that everyone around us just talks about how scary it is to live, what terrible diseases exist, they gasp and groan. And this perception is transferred to us. We start to think that there are really scary things that we “should” be afraid of, since everyone else is afraid of them!

Fear, surprisingly, can be a consequence of stereotypes. It is natural to be afraid of death, and almost all people are afraid of it. But when we see the constant lamentations of other people about the death of loved ones, when we watch how our elderly friend cannot come to terms with the death of her son, who died 30 years ago, then we begin to think that this is not just scary, but terrible! That there is no chance to perceive it any other way.

In fact, these things become so terrible only in our perception. And there is always the possibility of treating them differently. When Einstein died, he accepted death completely calmly, he treated it as an unchangeable order of things. If you ask some spiritually developed person, perhaps a religious ascetic, a convinced Christian or a Buddhist, how he feels about death, he will probably be calm about this. And this is not necessarily connected only with the fact that the first believes in an immortal soul, posthumous existence, and the second, although he does not believe in the soul, believes in reincarnation. This is due to the fact that they are spiritually developed and have tamed their ego. No, I’m not saying that we need to seek salvation in religion, I’m trying to prove that a different attitude towards those things that we consider terrible is possible, and it can be achieved along with spiritual development!

Don't listen to those who talk about how scary everything is. These people are wrong. In fact, there are almost no things in this world to be afraid of. Or not at all.

And watch less TV.

Method 14 - Do not avoid situations in which fear arises (!!!)

I highlighted this point with three exclamation points because it is one of the most important tips in this article. I briefly touched on this issue in the first paragraphs, but here I will dwell on it in more detail.

I have already said that the instinctive tactics of behavior during fear (run away, be afraid, avoid some situations) are the wrong tactics in the context of the task of getting rid of fear. If you are afraid to leave the house, then you will never cope with this fear if you stay at home.

So what should we do? Go outside! Forget about your fear! Let him appear, don’t be afraid of him, let him in and don’t resist. However, do not take it seriously, because it is just a feeling. You can get rid of your fear only when you begin to ignore the very fact of its occurrence and live as if there is no fear!

• To overcome your fear of flying on airplanes, you need to fly on airplanes as often as possible.
• To overcome the fear of the need for self-defense, you need to enroll in the martial arts section.
• To overcome the fear of meeting girls, you need to meet girls!

You must do what you are afraid to do! There is no easy way. Forget about what you “should” do and get rid of your fear as soon as possible. Just take action.

Method 15 - Strengthen your nervous system

The extent to which you are susceptible to fear very much depends on the state of your health in general and the health of your nervous system in particular. Therefore, improve your work, learn to cope with stress, do yoga, quit. I have discussed these points in my other articles, so I will not write about it here. Strengthening your body is a very important thing in the fight against depression, fears and bad mood. Please don't neglect this and don't limit yourself to just "emotional work." In a healthy body healthy mind.

Conclusion

This article does not encourage you to immerse yourself in a world of sweet dreams and hide from fear. In this article, I tried to tell you how important it is to learn to face your fears, accept them, live with them, and not hide from them.

This path may not be the easiest, but it is the right one. All your fears will disappear only when you stop being afraid of the very feeling of fear. When you're done trusting him. When you don’t allow him to tell you what kind of transport to get to your vacation spot, how often to go outside, what people to communicate with. When you start living as if there is no fear.

Only then will he leave. Or he won't leave. But this will no longer matter much to you, since fear will become only a minor obstacle for you. Why give importance to little things?

Fear is a natural and necessary emotion for life, or rather an affective state. Healthy fear ensures self-preservation. This is a sign of intelligence and imagination, the desire to live. Justified fear, such as the fear of a fire caused by an electrical appliance being left on, is useful. Like pain, it alerts us to a possible or emerging problem. But what to do if fear is out of control and interferes with life? Read on.

Like any phenomenon, fear can be viewed from two sides, positive and negative:

• The negative power of fear is that, being uncontrollable or turning into anxiety, behavioral disorders and the like, it ruins the life of an individual.
• The positive power of fear is that it ensures development. Out of fear of ignorance, schools appeared, out of fear of death and injury in road accidents, mechanics are improving cars, fear of poisoning forces us to process and store food more carefully.

Differences between fear and anxiety

Fear is an emotion that is closely related to another one - anxiety. Sometimes these definitions can be confused. However, there are 3 characteristics that distinguish these concepts:

1. Fear is more specific, for example, there is a fear of heights. While anxiety does not have clear outlines.
2. Anxiety is a subjectively significant emotion. It is caused by things and values ​​that are significant for a particular individual. Anxiety arises against the background of a threat to the personality itself, its essence, and worldview.
3. When faced with anxiety, a person is often helpless. For example, if uncertainty during an earthquake causes anxiety, then a person is unable to influence it.
4. Anxiety is a constant phenomenon, fear is determined by a specific situation.

Specifics of fear

You can distinguish between real and false fear:

• We experience the first in critical situations. For example, when a car is caught in a snow drift and is about to roll over.
• False fear - imaginary worries about what did not happen (“What if I get into a skid?”). It is precisely false fears that need to be fought.

When we experience fear, there is an increase in sensory attention and motor tension. That is, we are more actively observing and are ready to quickly run (act).

Uncontrolled and unprocessed fears turn into phobias and anxieties, which provokes neuroticism of the individual.

Signs of fear

Signs of fear include:

• anxiety;
• anxiety;
• jealousy;
• shyness;
• other subjective states;
• uncertainty;
• physiological changes;
• avoidance of the object of discomfort.

Causes of fear

Among the reasons are:

• self-doubt and other disorders;
• childhood psychological trauma;
• constant stress and frequently recurring critical situations;
• the instinct of self-preservation.

The last reason encourages normative fear.

As V. A. Kostina and O. V. Doronina note, fear can be hereditary. Moreover, women are more likely to have social fears, while men are more likely to have a fear of heights. Fear of heights, darkness, fear of doctors, punishment, and loss of loved ones is inherited.

Why is fear dangerous?

When fear occurs, a number of physiological changes occur in the body. The work includes the hypothalamus, pituitary gland and adrenal cortex. As a result of activation of the hypothalamus, corticotropin is produced. It in turn includes the nervous system and the pituitary gland. It triggers the adrenal glands and produces prolactin. The adrenal glands secrete cortisol. At the same time, adrenaline and norepinephrine are produced. All this manifests itself externally and internally:

• increase in pressure;
• increased heart rate and breathing;
• opening of the bronchi;
• "goose bumps";
• decreased blood flow to the organs of the digestive and reproductive systems;
• dilated pupils;
• release of glucose into the blood;
• rapid fat burning;
• increased acidity in the stomach and decreased enzyme production;
• shutting down the immune system.

That is, the body comes into tension and takes a low start.

In real danger, this allows you to think faster, see better, hit harder, run faster. But if the fear is imaginary and constant, then the body is not benefited by everything that happens to it at that moment. This is why psychosomatic diseases develop against a background of fear:

• stool disorders,
• bronchial edema,
• dyspnea,
• chest pain.

Thus, a vicious circle arises. For example, you are afraid of getting sick, but against the backdrop of fear you get sick. In addition, the more often you experience fear (stress), the less you can rationally assess the situation, which results in chronic phobias.

Don't say that you now have a fear of fear (that wasn't my goal). In any case, we’ll deal with him now. Read on.

The most popular fears: description and solution

One of the popular fears is the fear of death (your own or loved ones). This is the most ambiguous phenomenon:

• On the one hand, it can reach such proportions that a person will close himself within four walls and simply rewind the allotted time.
• But on the other hand, this is a normal fear that makes us look around when we cross the road.

There is only one way to cope with it - accept it. All people are mortal. There is no point in experiencing death several times in your thoughts and darkening your whole life with this.

Other popular fears include fear of others, of oneself, of time, and of fear.

Fear of others

The basis of fear is criticism, and yours first of all. To overcome this problem, try not to criticize, but to praise. It is human nature to project our shortcomings or problems onto others, that is, in people we notice and criticize what we do not accept in ourselves. And we seem to be playing ahead of the curve until they notice it in our country. That is, we are afraid that our shortcomings will be noticed. This also includes:

• pickiness;
• grievances;
• vindictiveness;
• unpleasant character traits (conflict, deceit, dishonesty, avoidance of problems, indecisiveness).

If you notice this in people and are afraid to experience it yourself, then you have probably already experienced it in yourself a long time ago. On the same basis, there is a fear of appearing funny, of falling under the evil spirit of someone. Solution to the problem: demonstrate yourself what you want to see in others.

Fear of yourself

We are talking about the fear of one’s own ailments, imperfections of the body, loss of strength, and the like. The solution to such a problem is to achieve harmony of the body, brain and soul. This is a very difficult and wide path. Simply put, this is getting rid of psychosomatics.

Learn to listen to your body and accept the fact that it is a system capable of self-regulation if it is not interfered with by imaginary fears. Have you ever said: “I don’t understand how I could do this. I won’t repeat it now on purpose”? Here is the answer.

Fear of time

Learn the “here and now” principle. Fear of time passing is often accompanied by self-flagellation due to postponing something for later or to the will of fate. You need to learn to act and take responsibility for your actions.

• Get rid of laziness.
• Learn the principle “for everything there is a time,” but in the context of your fulfilling your life plan and creating favorable conditions, and not waiting for the intervention of external forces.
• Scroll through situations in your head before doing something in practice (only with a successful outcome, of course).

Fear of fear

First of all, learn to call a spade a spade. Not “I’m nervous”, but “I’m afraid of something.” Basically we are talking about fear of the unknown. Read about overcoming it in the paragraph “From fear to freedom” of this article.

1. Learn to overcome your fears and use them for good. There is no need to be ashamed of fear, but you need to overcome it and resist. The optimal method in this case is “wedge by wedge”. It is important to face your fears. If in alcoholism treatment begins with the acceptance (voicing, recognition) of the problem, then the correction of fears begins with a confrontation.
2. When working with fears, it is important to understand that it will not work out the first time. You must be aware that it will not be easy, but it will be worth it. In case of failure, have an alternative plan (people with fears are best at coming up with workarounds), but only use it as a plan B.
3. Pretend you're not afraid of anything. Imagine that you have to play a role on stage. After a while, your brain will believe that you really are not afraid of anything.
4. Fears about the future are least justified. You create your own future, so pay attention to the present. Fears about him are much more justified. By torturing yourself with something from the future, you ruin your whole life. You exist, not live.
5. Accept the fact that our life consists of white and black stripes, sometimes gray. Troubles, difficulties and uncertainty will often appear. The important thing is not to be afraid to face it, but to be confident that you can handle it. To do this you need to be the master of your life.
6. Most fears stem from childhood. But, firstly, a child and an adult perceive the same things differently. Secondly, often fear or disagreement with a specific person is projected onto the subject. For example, you have problems in your relationship with your parents, but you are afraid of the dark (you were once locked in a closet). Then there is only one solution - let go or discuss the grievances.
7. Have you noticed that fears are always directed to the future (even if they are based on the experience of the past), and fears develop due to the imagination? So why not redirect your energies, for example, into creativity? Learn to switch your attention. Realize that you are expending real physical, mental, and psychological strength working through future events that most likely won't happen. Don't you feel sorry for this?
8. Fear of the unknown is the most unjustified. You don’t yet know the object (phenomenon) itself, so how do you know that you need to be afraid of it? Give it a try. Haven't been on a plane? Give it a try. And then decide whether you will be afraid or not.

I would like to make a reservation that you should not rush headlong into the pool and neglect your safety. That is, living a full life without fears does not mean going snowboarding, getting hurt and remaining disabled. Living without fear means making your own decisions and taking responsibility for them, understanding all the risks and possible consequences.

The body is capable of self-healing. Your task is to bring him out of the state of eternal tension. And this is what relaxation was invented for. We are talking about conscious relaxation of the body, replacing negative emotions with positive ones. But let me remind you once again that you only need to get rid of unhealthy fear.

Healing Plan

To overcome fear, you need to consistently solve a number of problems.

1. Replace faith in the bad (this is fear) with faith in the good. There is a recipe for everyone: some turn to nature, others to spirits, God, their own old pleasant memories.
2. Next, find support from someone and give it yourself.
3. Learn to listen to your body and trust your intuition.
4. Find the root cause of false fear.
5. Create your own recipe for courage. These are detailed aspirations (desires) and ways to achieve them. It is important to describe not only what needs to be done, but also what you can do.
6. Refocus your attention from the result to the process.

You can read about each of these points and how to implement them in L. Rankin’s book “Healing from Fear.” The work provides practical recommendations on meditation, finding inner strength, and developing courage. For each element (beliefs, courage, search for reasons, etc.) a whole list of techniques with descriptions is presented. The author presented so many techniques in one publication that I think you will definitely find something for yourself there.

From fear to freedom

If you are still reading this article, then you are probably in constant captivity of your own fears and are looking for a way to freedom. Right? Well, he is. Includes 5 items:

1. Exit from the unconscious. Avoiding risk takes more energy than taking the risk itself. A person is driven by the thought “better security than regret.” In order to step over this step, ask yourself the question: is the comfort zone really what it is for you? Imagine who you could be if you didn't have fears.
2. Getting out of your perceived comfort zone. At this stage, a person is driven by the conviction that uncertainty is the only constant and clear thing in his life. That is, a person understands that he is infringing on himself, but remains in his old place. At this stage, it is important to stimulate yourself with praise. You are a brave person and will be able to get out of your zone.
3. At the third stage, a person is not afraid of uncertainty, but also does not seek it. Doubt more, be curious.
4. Search for the uncertain, the unknown, the new. Learn to see opportunities.
5. Acceptance of uncertainty as such (in the concept of peace). Realize that anything can happen, but every event has meaning.

The fifth stage is the final one. This is the freedom without fear that you need to enjoy. However, this is the most unstable stage. Your freedom must be constantly reinforced and supported by practice. Otherwise it's easy to lose it.

Emergency help

1. If fear takes you by surprise, you can quickly find inner strength by switching your attention. Having realized the fear, direct your attention to your brightest passion, desire. Concentrate on this. Want it so much that there is no room for fear. Even if the objects of passion and fear are from different “worlds”. Convince yourself that you will quickly deal with what scares you, and then do what you want.
2. The second way to quickly overcome fear is to imagine what it deprives you of. Usually people evaluate only one side: what fear saves them from. Imagine how fear clamps down on your potential, your individuality, your originality.
3. Practice self-hypnosis. Repeat daily in front of the mirror, “I am the master of my life. Everything that happens (both good and bad) depends on me. There is no place for fear, as well as meaning in it.”
4. If the fear is clearly defined, then thoroughly study all its aspects. Look him in the face. Find the positives.
5. The most non-standard and categorical method of struggle is worrying about the consequences of worries. This is a dubious method, but it exists. Imagine how the situation will worsen from your worries (after reading this article, you know what your body experiences during a period of fear). Oddly enough, the awareness of “playing against yourself” will calm you down. But I’ll say right away that this method is not suitable for everyone. You can go into even greater self-torture. Be careful!

Childhood fears

Despite the individual nature of fears (although, as we remember, they are not as subjective as anxiety), they are based on the current need of age. Therefore, we can generally classify fears by age:

1. Up to six months - fear of sudden and loud sounds and movements, loss of support.
2. From six months to a year - fear of changing clothes, changing what is familiar, unfamiliar people, heights.
3. From one to two years - fear of doctors, injuries, separation from parents.
4. From two to three years - fear of the dark, parental rejection, animals, loneliness, nightmares.
5. From three to seven years - fear of insects, water, heights, fairy-tale characters, misfortunes, disasters, fires, school.
6. School period - fear of sharp sounds, death, physical violence, loss of loved ones. Along with this, social fears arise that persist in the future (fear of being late, not being able to complete a task, of being punished). If you don’t work through these fears, then there will be a fear of not living up to expectations, of looking stupid; relationship problems.

Age-related fears are normative if the child does not drop out of life (sociable, open). They will pass on their own. But if a child avoids communication, is constantly afraid and worried, then professional correction is needed.

Children's fears can be imitative or personal in nature. In the first case – copying someone’s behavior, in the second – your emotions under the influence of difficult situations.

In addition, fears can be short-term (up to 20 minutes), fleeting (go away after a conversation), or prolonged (up to 2 months, even with correctional work).

Children's fears: what to do?

You can fight children's fears with the help of fairy tale therapy. As part of this, I recommend that you read the book by R. M. Tkach “Fairytale Therapy for Children’s Problems.” In the work you can find not only a description of the method, but also the material (plots) of the fairy tales themselves.

1. Don't shame your child for his fears, but ask about them. For example, what he saw, what it looked like, why it came.
2. Accept your child's fear and tell a real or fictional story of personal fear and overcoming it.
3. Do not lock your child in a dark room for punishment, do not scare him with Baba Yaga or the “evil uncle” who will take him away. This is a direct path to neuroses and fears.
4. Ask what your child is watching or reading. Discuss this together.
5. To overcome specific fears, use fairy tale therapy or ridiculing fears.

Ridiculing involves visualizing fear (on a piece of paper) and then adding elements that are funny (for a child).

I also recommend the book by S. V. Bedredinova and A. I. Tashcheva “Prevention and correction of fears: a textbook.” It presents many practical options for therapy with children to overcome fears. I don’t think it makes sense to list the methods here. The manual describes doll therapy, art therapy, a correction program, and much more (with indications and contraindications for each method, features of implementation). The phenomenon of children's fears themselves is also described.

Results and literature on the topic

Fear is the echo of the animal in man, the primitive. Previously, this emotion was justified even if it was constant. But in the modern world this prevents a person from living. The situation gets even worse if fear is intertwined with anxiety, shame, guilt and other emotions.

The danger of fear is not far-fetched. It not only creates psychological discomfort, but also destroys the body on a physical level. In part, the phrase “Whoever is afraid of something will happen to him” is true. And we are not talking about the highest powers, attracting misfortunes and illnesses. The point is that, experiencing fear, our body radically changes its functioning: an excess of hormones arises (with prolonged excessive influence they provoke imbalance and intoxication, destruction of organs), the digestive and reproductive systems fade into the background, activities of cardio-vascular system gaining momentum. A person can really get sick.

You need to get rid of fear (let me remind you, false fear). But only childhood fears can go away on their own. Adults will have to consciously break themselves, rebuild their belief system, challenge themselves constantly, and draw up an action plan.

I recommend reading another book: D. T. Mangan “The Secret of an Easy Life: How to Live Without Problems.” The author reveals his own concept, according to which we are a complex mechanism whose systems require passwords to enable or disable them. The book provides practical recommendations for restructuring your thinking, including getting rid of fears. To solve each problem, Mangan suggests using a unique password. These are the words to say in difficult situations. And from them, supposedly, the situation will turn in your favor. I haven’t tried this approach myself, so I can’t say anything good or bad. But in my opinion, the idea of ​​the concept itself is interesting.

In the fight against fears, as in any business, the main thing is the beginning! You yourself will not notice how it will become easier to fight. Gradually it will no longer be a struggle. Well, the result in the form of complete mental freedom is the highest reward. I wish you success in your fight against your inner demons!

In any stressful situation, certain biochemical processes occur in the body that allow you to experience strong emotions. The fear hormone, also called adrenaline, is released into the blood, forcing our organs to work in emergency mode.

One can name a number of incredible situations when, for example, a person jumped over a two-meter fence or a woman saw a wall falling on her child and held it to save the child, which is basically impossible. Therefore, our fears even sometimes help us in life.

But, on the other hand, strong fears do not allow us to live in peace, especially if they are obsessive in nature. However, the more fears you have, the less successful you are in life. Fears poison our lives, so we need to get rid of them as quickly as possible. Today we’ll talk about how to kill fear in yourself.

According to statistics, there are only 5-10% of fears that we really need; all other fears are far-fetched. But even these fears are not fears in the full sense of the word, they are rather a manifestation common sense The one that stops us from sticking our hand into fire, jumping off a roof, or entering a tiger's cage.

What are the fears?

There is hardly a person who has not heard about phobias. Nowadays, almost all people suffer from phobias, but some are fixated on their fears, while others do not attach much importance to them. Well, they were afraid and forgot. Sometimes attacks of fear can come suddenly. In this case, psychologists advise first to understand the reasons that cause stress when you see something, or when reminded of some unpleasant event.

If fears become obsessive and radically change a person’s lifestyle, then you cannot do without a specialist.

Feelings of anxiety and fear visit every person, but some can cope with it on their own.

Absolutely all our fears have scientific names. There are very rare and exotic fears, for example, the fear of the “number 13” (triskaidekaphobia) or the fear of speaking in public and meeting new people (social phobia) or the fear of the dead (necrophobia).

The most common fears are:

• Fear of death
• Fear of new relationships
• Fear of sex
• Fear of speed
• Stage fright
• Fear of going crazy
• Fear of flying on a plane, riding a train or driving a car
• Fear of insects
• Fear of dirt.

Surprisingly, all famous and outstanding people suffered from some kind of phobia.

• For example, Gogol was afraid of being buried alive, so he gave instructions in advance that he would be buried when his body began to decompose.
• Napoleon suffered from hippophobia (fear of horses) and leukophobia (fear of the color white). However, all portraits show him riding a white horse. Psychologists believe that in this way the famous Frenchman sought to fight his fears.
• The head of the totalitarian state, I. Stalin, suffered from aviophobia, so he traveled exclusively by train or car and planned all his trips in advance.

There are even special prayers for fear, but still the main way to get rid of the feeling of fear is based on introspection and work on oneself.

Fears are different, some girls are afraid and don’t know. It's actually simple.

Even guys are sometimes afraid of dating and cannot take the first step. Our tips on the link: will help you overcome yourself.

How to overcome the fear of fighting

On the Internet in various forums you can find similar phrases, the essence of which is something like this: “I’m already so old, but I’m afraid to fight.”

How to overcome the fear of fighting and what are its causes?
Psychologists believe that the fear of fighting is neurotic, that is, it is not attached to any object. Such fear is caused, rather, by self-doubt and an unconscious desire to take care of oneself, to protect oneself from danger.

• Develop new qualities and skills in yourself

To get rid of the fear of a fight, acquire new qualities and skills that may be useful to you in the upcoming fight. In parallel with simulating various emergency situations, you must master skills such as self-hypnosis and psychophysical relaxation.

If you master these techniques, you will have confidence in own strength, which will ensure you are emotionally prepared for any danger.

• Learn to create positive emotions in yourself

Having learned special techniques, you can easily suppress in the bud negative emotions and create special mental relaxation states. In this case, the method of refusing a detailed analysis of the situation is often used. This method involves abruptly entering a critical situation, which must necessarily be accompanied by a wave of emotional outburst: screaming, swearing with obscene expressions.

If you do not analyze the situation in detail, you will notice a number of changes that will begin to occur in your body. Strength, acuity and performance will increase.

• Sign up for a self-defense course

You can partially overcome fear by enrolling in self-defense courses. If you are afraid of fighting because you simply don’t know how to do it, then you definitely need to enroll in the wushu, karate or judo section. To eliminate self-doubt, praise yourself more often and increase your self-esteem. Think about how important it is for you to take part in a fight and how necessary it is to fight with your fists.

Perhaps you will be able to avoid a fight altogether, because the best fight is considered to be the one that was prevented.

How to get rid of the fear of death

Quite often you hear the question: “How to overcome the fear of death?”
It happens that it is simply impossible to get rid of a phobia on your own. However, if you find the strength to overcome fear, then your phobia will cease to exist. If you are afraid of death and are trying in every possible way to get rid of this unpleasant feeling, use the following tips:

• Analyze your life and try to find the reason that contributed to the emergence of this fear. If you stop thinking about death constantly and can accept it as a natural physiological process, then over time your fears will fade into the background, and then disappear altogether;
• Try to let go of your fear. This can be done by understanding its nature. Change your worldview. After all, the human soul lives forever. Who knows, maybe a clot of energetic matter, called a soul, can live tens or hundreds of lives, in different bodies;
• Don’t hide your fear, it’s better to admit to yourself that you are afraid of something, then it will be much easier for you to get rid of it;
• If you are a believer, talk about your fear of death with a clergyman. Pasteur will answer you that God gave each person his time to live;
• Often the fear of death arises when a person sins a lot. In this case, the fear of death is caused by the fear of going to hell. Change your behavior towards other people: help the helpless, give to the suffering, do charity, and your good deeds will be appreciated in the next world;
• Some people are frightened by the unknown, because they do not know what may await them beyond the limits of life. Try to believe that life after death exists, because no one has yet proven otherwise;

If none of the proposed methods can alleviate your condition, contact a psychologist. With the help of special techniques, trance, hypnosis, a specialist will be able to free you from the fear of death.

How to get rid of obsessive fears

Oddly enough, obsessive fears represent the other side of personal dominance. Sometimes our shortcomings are a continuation of our advantages.

For example, a musician is afraid of injuring his hands. And this is natural, since with a broken finger he will not be able to play the instrument. Therefore, a person tries in every possible way to protect his hands from injury. The musician increasingly begins to think about his hands in his thoughts and simulate circumstances in which his fingers are in danger. This is how obsessive fears appear.

To get rid of obsessive fears, it is necessary to fully analyze the problem causing this fear.

For example, when leaving for work or leaving the city, many are afraid that they did not close the front door or turn off the kettle. The further a person moves away from home, the more firmly this thought sticks into the brain.

However, this expresses a lack of confidence in oneself. If you were always vigilant and turned off electrical appliances, gas, lights, and even more so closed the door before leaving, then this time you did everything according to the given scheme and simply forgot about it. Therefore, experiencing this kind of fear is simply stupid;

Try to move from a simple understanding of the core of the problem to an ironic attitude towards it and towards yourself, and your obsessive fears will disappear.

To get rid of obsessive fear, focus your attention on specific things. For example, when turning off the kettle, look carefully at the handle of the gas stove and fix in your head the moment when you turn it. The same needs to be done with the front door;

Many psychologists advise facing your fear “face to face.” This way you can survive your fear and understand that what you have been thinking about for so long is not so scary.

Fear is one of the constituent parts of our psyche. This is the body's natural defense mechanism. If you think that fears are preventing you from living fully, begin to slowly banish them from your mind. It is difficult to do this on your own, contact a specialist. In the end, just try to live and enjoy every day.

Aug 13, 2013 LittleToxa

When a person experiences unjustified, irrational fear, the right hemisphere of the brain is activated. Therefore, to restore mental balance, you should use the left hemisphere, which is responsible for logic and rationalism.

Rational therapy is the treatment of fear with persuasion through logic and reason. In the fight against fear, it is important to cool your emotions and turn on your reason.

The basic principles in overcoming fear come down to the following:

• Stop worrying about fear. Don't increase your anxiety.

• Identify the subject of fear and try to understand how absurd and unreasonable it is.

• Try to identify the shortcomings in yourself that provoke fear and overcome them through self-education.

For example, touchiness and fear of looking stupid are the result of painful pride. Fear of illness is treated by the belief that, from a medical point of view, health indicators are normal and there is no reason to be afraid.

When a person is unable to accept logical arguments, the most productive methods are suggestion, self-hypnosis, autogenic training and neurolinguistic programming, when working together with a psychotherapist.

How to overcome fear? It is important to assess the chances that the worst will happen and understand that they are always negligible. For example, in plane crashes, according to statistics, 1 person per 1,000,000 transported by air fleet dies, which is only 0.0001%. This is significantly lower than the risk of dying from a heart attack or in a car accident. Therefore, when experiencing fear, it is important to analyze the magnitude of the risk.

1. Compare your fear with a stronger one.

Sometimes a person may feel like the whole world is against him. Material well-being, career and relationships with loved ones are at risk. It seems the situation is so hopeless and nothing can save it. How to overcome fear in this case? Don't exaggerate or dramatize your situation! Compare your situation with real tragedies, and you will understand that you are very lucky!

People who were able to survive truly terrible moments, being one step away from death, say that they no longer know how to worry about trifles and appreciate every day they live.

2. Imagine that everything you are afraid of has already happened.

In the most critical and dead-end situation, throw away fear and assess the current situation calmly. Imagine the worst that could happen. Now try to come to terms with this. Now you need to relax, throw away unnecessary tension and collect all the energy to try to improve the worst situation that you imagined.

By doing this, you stop wasting all your body’s reserves on unnecessary experiences and free up your mind for useful activities - finding ways out of this situation. Believe me, as soon as you calm down, a way out of the impasse will be found very quickly.

3. Load yourself up with work as much as possible.

The danger that awaits us is terrible only until the moment it is unknown. As soon as it becomes clear, all your strength goes into fighting it, and there is no time to worry.

How to overcome fear even in the most dangerous situation? Don't give yourself a minute of free time. When activity completely fills consciousness, it displaces fear. Intense activity is one of the most effective ways to overcome anxiety, worry and fear.

As D. Carnegie wrote: “A person suffering from anxiety must lose himself completely in his work. Otherwise he will dry up in despair. Roll up your sleeves and get to work. The blood will begin to circulate, the brain will become more active and very soon your vitality will increase, which will allow you to forget about anxiety. Keep busy. This is the cheapest medicine against fear – and the most effective!”

4. Remember: you are not alone in your fear.

It seems to every person who comes to a session with a psychologist that their problem is the most complex and unique. It seems to him that only he has problems with communication, sex life, insomnia, courage, while others have nothing of the kind.

In this case, group therapy is a very effective cure for fear. When people meet, get to know each other and discuss common problems together, the severity of the experience is significantly reduced.

5. Act as if the fear is no longer there.

Physiological and emotional reactions of a person are interconnected. Even if you don't feel the way you want at this moment, you can pretend, and this will gradually bring your inner feelings into line.

The best conscious way to become cheerful is to sit cheerfully and talk and act as if you are full of cheerfulness. To feel courageous, act as if you are inspired by courage. If you exert all your will, the attack of fear will be replaced by a surge of courage.

6. Live here and now.

This advice applies more to those who are worried about an uncertain future. As the English philosopher Thomas Carlyle said: “Our main task is not to look into the foggy future, but to act now, in the direction that is visible”.

Scaring yourself with a terrible future is one of the stupidest things to do, and yet many are happy to spend their time on it. The burden of the past and the burden of the future that a person takes upon himself turns out to be so heavy that it makes even the strongest stumble.

How to deal with fear of the future? The best thing is to live in the present, enjoy the present and hope for a better future. Even if it doesn’t turn out that way, in any case you won’t be able to blame yourself for ruining the present with your painful experiences.

Psychologists advise taking the “here and now” not just a minute and a second, but the current day. As Carnegie wrote: « Any of us can live with hope in the soul, tenderness and patience, with love for others until sunset ».

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Please tell me how I can get rid of fear... fear of sharp objects and fear of committing murder... I’m just not capable of this... Sometimes I don’t want to live from my pity and disgust with myself. When thoughts come that I will be afraid again, I try to think about something positive so that these thoughts go away... It all started when a few years ago my mother told me that when I was little, she was often in quarrels with her father, he was unpredictable in his behavior and she was afraid that he would kill her...I was very scared then after my mother’s story...I am still afraid for her...We live with my husband and child abroad, far from my parents...
I have a wonderful family, wonderful loving husband, daughter is 1.5 years old.
I used to be very cheerful. I had a wonderful job in my country, many friends...Now abroad I have to start everything again: learn the language, get to know everything around...but I can’t...fear squeezes me out...especially in the evenings... I can’t go to a psychologist here, because... I don’t know the language yet, but it doesn’t work in my country, because... I don’t want my husband to know about my problems... He loves me very much, he does everything for my daughter and me and I don’t want to hurt him... I thought maybe the problem is that I used to watch a lot of horror films and when I was scared... I don’t remember... my fear appeared three years ago and since then I haven’t watched such films... thank you, Lena.
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Elena, age: 28 / 09/06/2012

Responses:

Dear Lena! I am well acquainted with psychology, I have read many books. Any psychologist will tell you that you have all the symptoms of obsessive neurosis. This can be treated under the supervision of a specialist. So it’s better to tell your husband about your situation. You need help. Don’t be discouraged. Everything will work out. !!!There is a lot of information on the Internet about this disease. Read, look at the symptoms. For example, I found one article: Main forms of neuroses Obsessive-compulsive neurosis (obsessive neurosis)

Certain thoughts, memories, ideas, doubts, and actions can be obsessive, that is, existing against the will and desire of a person. Obsessive fears are usually classified as obsessive-compulsive neurosis. If a person experiences unaccountable fear of something unknown, then they speak of fear syndrome; if he is specifically afraid of the dark, heights, sharp objects, closed spaces, such obsessive states are defined as phobias, specifying their type or direction in the name. For example, cancerophobia - fear of getting cancer, claustrophobia - fear of closed spaces, hypsophobia - heights, mysophobia - pollution, pantophobia - everything around you.

Sometimes phobias appear only in the appropriate situation: fear of heights only when climbing to a height, fear of mice at the sight of a mouse (Peter I, for example, was terribly afraid of cockroaches) - but often they arise with just the thought of something.

Fear is inherent in the nature of fallen man (“Fear is the deprivation of firm hope,” says St. John of Damascus) and is deeply biological, for
a person also carries within himself an animal nature that instinctively fears a threat from the outside: darkness, attacks, etc. In many cases, it is he
acts as a kind of defense mechanism, protecting us from everything that threatens our well-being. By being afraid, a person becomes more vigilant, able to protect himself from harm, to save himself from an impending threat.

However, neurotic fears are characteristic of the fact that they are not caused by any real threat or this threat is illusory and unlikely. For example, a certain person suffers from cardiophobic neurosis, that is, he is afraid that his heart may one day stop. On the one hand, this is theoretically possible, because sudden death also happens in young people who were previously
considered healthy people, but the objective probability of such a sudden cardiac arrest in this particular person is negligible, and there is a far-fetched, imaginary, fantasized danger to life, caused by false thoughts and unfounded fears.

Obsessive thoughts often begin with the question: “What if?” Then they become automated, take root in the mind and, repeated many times, create significant difficulties in life. The more a person struggles, wanting to get rid of them, the more they take possession of him.

An important reason for the development and very existence of neurotic fear is a developed sensory imagination, which is usually ignored
Special literature devoted to this topic is available. After all, a person, for example, is not only afraid of falling from a height, but also in every possible way
“inflames” a fictitious situation, imagining his funeral, himself lying in a coffin, etc.
Lena, this is where you work with your thinking. Try treatment and you will feel free from fear!!!

Nina, age: 25 / 09/06/2012

Think about the fact that fear is what we are afraid of, take a piece of paper and write down in detail what you are so afraid of, write everything that comes to mind. In general, if you have time, just do some handicraft, any kind, it helps a lot, even if you don’t finish the job. Relax, everything is fine with you.

Olga, age: 51 / 09/06/2012

Hello. Perhaps the psyche was damaged, and if the psyche is damaged, it is better to consult a doctor in person. It is quite possible that they will help get rid of obsessive fear. The only thing to be afraid of is fear itself. God bless you!

Rusik, age: 23 / 09/06/2012

Dora Kulman, age: 33 / 09/07/2012

Lenochka, psychologists successfully consult on Skype from any country.
I have the impression that you are now going through a difficult period of adaptation to new conditions and hence all the fears. But it's better to talk to a specialist.
I recommend finding Dale Carnegie’s book “How to Stop Worrying and Start Living” on the Internet. He gives simple and effective recommendations.
I also want to admire you - you are learning a new language, you will work in a completely unusual environment for you, and you are also taking care of your husband and baby! This deserves great respect. And your fears will gradually pass, just help yourself a little. Focus not on fears and obsessive thoughts, but on the good things you have and what you want to achieve. Good luck!

Elena, age: 35 / 09/07/2012

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