Is Fear Getting In Your Way?

Fear can be normal and healthy, and serve an important purpose. But sometimes, our fears hold us back, and create blocks that stop us from living a happy and fulfilled life. 

When we allow irrational fears to shape our decisions and actions, we give them the power to shape who we are. 

What is fear? 

When we experience fear, a biochemical reaction occurs in our body; the amygdala triggers a response in the nervous system, releasing cortisol and adrenaline. As a result, our heart rate and blood pressure increase. That experience is universal among humans and serves an important purpose.

Our emotional response to fear stimuli is more individual. Some people actively seek out fear-inducing experiences because they enjoy the ‘adrenaline rush’, while other people experience fear as an overwhelmingly negative emotion.

Fear is about the ‘now’. It is our response to immediate and specific dangers. Whereas anxiety is our response to more generalised, non-specific threats, or anticipated events in the future. 

When is fear a good thing?

Fear has a function; it is there to keep us safe. Some fears are innate, and important. Fear of an animal that poses a genuine and immediate threat to your life, for example, is perfectly sensible.

Healthy fear is about helping us to identify genuine threats and dangers. It is a survival mechanism that puts our body into a ‘fight or flight’ response, which helps us to confront or escape immediate danger. 

These physical responses in our body are an evolutionary function that happen automatically in response to perceived threats. When those threats are real, our fear response is not only a good thing, it can be essential to our survival.

Certain fears might motivate us to develop and grow. The fear of failure, or losing our job, for example, could push us to learn more, and work harder. The problem is, instead of providing motivation, fears like this can often paralyse us, and make us feel trapped…

When does fear become unhelpful?

Fear is our response to ‘perceived threats’. So, what happens when our perception is misguided or incorrect, and the ‘threat’ in question doesn’t actually pose any real danger? 

When that happens, we find our choices unnecessarily restricted by our desire to avoid these perceived dangers. This can become incredibly limiting, and the longer it goes on, the more it will block our ability to move forward. 

Fear can kill ambition, and stifle creativity. It can force us to stagnate personally and professionally, because we are too afraid to leave the perceived safety of our comfort zone. It creates mental blocks that keep us trapped, or stuck in place.

When choices are influenced by fear, we are more likely to avoid challenges, which can often lead to missed opportunities. 

What can we do about it?

Become conscious

Many limiting fears are unconscious, meaning we’re either not aware of them, or we’re not aware of how they influence our decision making. That means that the first step to overcoming them is to become aware. 

By recognising any fears we are harbouring, and how those fears are shaping the way we think and behave, we are able to move on to the next important step.

Challenge it

In almost every case, these fears are learned. Perhaps as a result of a traumatic experience, or because we have been programmed to believe certain ideas. 

The reason for our fears isn’t actually very important. What is important is the fact that if the fear is LEARNED, it can be UNLEARNED. The first step in that process is to challenge the beliefs that reinforce that fear. Examine the ‘threat’, and decide if it does, in fact, pose a real and immediate danger. 

Reprogram the unconscious

NLP techniques can help us to program a new set of beliefs into our unconscious, replacing limiting fears with a new outlook that doesn’t stand in our way. 

Reinforce the learning

This is an ongoing process. Once we have removed the fear, we need to put new habits in place, and to reinforce our new way of thinking, through practice and repetition. 

It can appear to be incredibly difficult to remove the barriers put in place by fear. But it is so rewarding when we do. 

Imagine how it would feel to stop running away from something, and start moving towards the life you always wanted.