As someone who has a lot of irrational fears, I worry about things that will never happen, and situations that will never materialize in real life.
Why do I do this? The main reason is that fear, and imagining and cataloging all of the bad things can happen, prepares me in a way. As anyone knows, preparation is the key to being ready for what materializes, so it doesn’t catch you by surprise. It protects you from danger by letting you know that you have to take action to be prepared.
But sometimes the need to be prepared can greatly exaggerate the actual danger until it loses all sense of proportion and has no real link to what can actually happen.
1. Is fear irrational?
The things that most people fear the most will never happen. These are irrational fears, fears that spring up without reason in your consciousness.
But first, not all types of fears are irrational. Some examples of rational fear are fearing for your health if you should find yourself in a poor physical or mental condition. Life and death situations, when they do arise, is another example of when fear is the right way to respond.
During other situations, your flight or fight reaction kicks in and you do anything to avoid danger, including exaggerating the one in front of you. Your instincts for self-preservation kicks in and overtakes your sense of proportion. Everything is heightened, including your sense of danger.
This is when fear becomes irrational, and leads you to avoid situations and places that cause that fear.
2. Don’t let anxiety rule your life and actions
In trying to guard your safety, your instinct for self-preservation can lead you to make decisions that you later regret. I can attest to that.
Don’t let fear run your life and make all of your decisions for you. Even avoidance and inaction, where you don’t consciously make a decision, is a decision in itself. You might be mired in inaction because it’s the safest route. If you don’t do anything, nothing bad will happen, right?
Making a decision can feel like opening the door and inviting in the monster to hide under your bed. You don’t like surprises, especially the ones that jump out from nowhere and scare you. When that happens, the situation becomes out of your control, inducing stress and anxiety. The effects of fear, stress and anxiety can be debilitating, such as high blood pressure and heart attacks.
But not all actions will result in disaster. I’m not saying that actions don’t have consequences, just that we make it seem more catastrophic than it actually merits.
3. Quell your imagination
When you are afraid, your imagination is overactive and will think of a million different ways that things can go wrong. You want to be prepared and the best way to do that is to familiarize yourself with all the worst possibilities that can happen. You forget that out of all these possibilities, only one or two has a small percentage of happening.
If fear is irrational, it will make up the missing reasons to stop you from doing something dangerous, filling in the gaps like your brain automatically does a blindspot so that the illogical jumps from point A to point B make more sense.
You start to believe this voice because it’s only looking out for you. It tries its best to dissuade you from seeing reality as it is. It will do whatever to keep you safe.
So to overcome that fear, quell your imagination. Don’t let it control your life. Remind yourself that your imagination is just trying to protect you from hidden dangers, but that these dangers would probably never materialize.
4. Defeat that irrational fear
Fear tests your abilities to cope at the pivotal moment where you either sink or learn how to swim.
Yes, fear is oftentimes irrational. People are scared of failure and this is where the practice of building resiliency is useful. I recall several moments in my own life where instead of trying, I quit before I even started. And these are the moments that I regret the most.
Now, I have realized that some fears are illogical. One of the ways that you try to make sense of fear is to find reasons to validate that fear. But now I have stopped looking for reasons to support that fear, and two of the ways that have helped are listed below.
One of the easiest ways to do that is to write down everything that makes you afraid. Keep a “fear journal” and make a bullet-point list of your greatest fears. Getting it in writing is like unburdening yourself of your fear. It no longer lives in your mind, unresolved and undealt with.
A second way is to re-condition that fear. Place yourself right in front of your fear and look it in the eye until you realize that nothing bad has happened. When you are no longer naive to that fear, it becomes second nature to face it and not run away from it.
Eliminate excuses. Make a list of all the excuses you have to avoid doing something.
Facing that fear makes you learn how to swim. You can be treading water for a long time, but at least you’re not stuck on shore watching life pass you by.
Get familiar with that monster. Once you know that it’s not as scary as it seems, it’d be easier to defeat it.