Working On Me

Have you ever tried to convey to a friend or family member your deepest fears in life? Sometimes the reaction you’ll get won’t be the one you’re looking for. Instead of a sympathetic shoulder, you often get rolled eyes and a response like, “Just forget about it,” or “You have to get over it.”

It isn’t always as easy as turning off your fears like you would a faucet. Fears are embedded in our conscious and subconscious mind. They become ingrained as a formal belief system that we hold.

Getting past a fear doesn’t necessarily mean it will ever be completely erased from your mind, but you can find ways of relieving the panic and anxiety you feel when confronted by your fears.

Facing fears is often the most difficult thing we can do. It’s our instinct to avoid those things that worry us or that we fear will do us harm in some way, whether it’s physical or emotional turmoil.

The first thing you have to do is examine the fear to see if it’s credible or irrational. It doesn’t matter if it is irrational, you’ll still need to find a way to deal with it. But giving it a realistic examination will help you find a solution to your anxieties.

For instance, you might fear that your ex boyfriend or girlfriend is going to harm you. When examining the evidence, you see there are has been previous abuse or veiled threats. This is a valid fear that would require you to take action in the form of a restraining order.

An irrational fear might be having a panic attack every time you go out in public because you’re afraid you might contract the Bird Flu. When examining this fear, you find that the Bird Flu hasn’t entered your part of the world and in fact hasn’t yet morphed into a human-to-human transmission.

Either way, you’ll need to take the next step, which is dealing with your fear responsibly. For irrational fears, you’ll need to learn how to remove the bulk of the stress you feel by calming yourself down before you allow panic to ensue.

You might do this by using breathing techniques, self-hypnosis, or even (in some rare cases when you can’t control your fears), through prescribed anti-anxiety medications.

Don’t ever let yourself become prisoner to your fears. Whether you have a close support system or not, you have the power to take control and diminish the effect they have over you and your life.