Why are people worried?
Excitement is an emotion for which the limbic system of the brain is responsible. This part of the brain is virtually uncontrollable, but it plays a major role in human development and survival.
The limbic system works quite complexly. In a dangerous situation, the amygdala stimulates the hypothalamus region of the brain. It, in turn, signals the adrenal glands, which turn on the mechanism for producing stress hormones (adrenaline and cortisol). This triggers the fight-or-flight survival response. It was she who saved our ancestors in life-threatening situations. It turns out that we are the descendants of people who were afraid, worried and anxious, and these emotions are embedded in us at the level of evolution.
Excitement is not anxiety, but a mild form of it. The body of a worried person is alert, and seems to be thinking: “Is there a danger or will it be okay?” If the defensive reaction of “resistance and/or flight” is triggered, then the person begins to have an anxiety disorder.
External factors that cause anxiety are events and circumstances. The internal causes of this condition can be the individual characteristics of a particular person: from the size of the brain to the characteristics of child-parent relationships, upbringing and development.
Do what you're afraid of
Emerson said about this: “Do what you fear, and your fear will come to an end.”
I myself have always been afraid of speaking in public, but I overcame my fear very simply by constantly forcing myself to give speeches. I did what I was afraid of - and my fear soon disappeared.
Once you can state with complete confidence that you have overcome your fear and make a conscious decision accordingly, you will set into motion the healing powers of the subconscious that manifest themselves in accordance with your way of thinking.
Is anxiety normal?
It’s normal to worry, because worry is our defensive reaction, which does not pose a danger to health. People worry when faced with something unfamiliar because the brain at such moments calculates and evaluates the situation in order to adapt to it, hedge its bets and ultimately cope.
But if a person is constantly worried, then stress hormones have a negative effect on the body. Increased heart rate and breathing, increased blood sugar levels, and altered blood circulation in a regular manner can lead to disturbances in the functioning of the heart.
Example. Single mother with a constantly ill child.
The child catches a cold as if from just a breath of wind, but the wait for recovery drags on for many weeks, only to then catch a cold again after a short time. The mother is almost constantly paralyzed by fear for her daughter, for her life. Exhausted, tired, desperate, she is afraid. Afraid of what? Of death. The death of a beloved child.
Ask how, being in your right mind, you can say that THIS is something you can desire? After all, fear is a hidden desire! How can a mother want her own child to die? The answer is yes. But, of course, not consciously. Here I will make a short digression to explain the mechanism.
In what cases should you consult a psychologist?
If, due to anxiety, a person:
- sick;
- cannot perform his/her work efficiently;
- unable to complete necessary daily tasks;
- afraid to appear in society;
- avoids unfamiliar places;
- ceases to control himself;
- feels depressed;
- feels that anxiety is increasing or occurring more often for no apparent reason;
- turns to the “life-saving” effect of alcohol or drugs to relieve anxiety,
then he should think about consulting a psychologist or psychotherapist. The specialist will diagnose the psycho-emotional state, identify the cause of worries and anxieties and offer methods to solve this problem (medicines and psychotherapeutic sessions).
If you wish, you can choose and master a professional retraining course, which will give you the opportunity to study all existing modern psychotherapeutic methods and help yourself and other people in need in the fight against anxiety.
If anxiety has little impact on your quality of life, you can try to cope with it on your own.
How to overcome fear
Fear comes in different forms.
There is a normal, healthy fear, which is an essential means of protecting us from various mistakes and dangers. We should not regret that we are subject to such fear. Only a fool is not afraid.
We need fear as much as we need pain. Pain signals us about disturbances in our body that have already occurred. Fear warns us of various problems that may yet occur. Or they may not happen if we listen to fear.
But, in addition to healthy, natural fear, there is painful fear. This fear is almost constant, chronic. It doesn’t seem to signal anything special, doesn’t warn about anything. He has been torturing us for years to no avail.
What good is such fear? It prevents us from being happy and pleasing others. This means it prevents us from loving. Makes us weaker.
You don't have to put up with this fear. He can and must be defeated. It reduces our quality of life. And that's putting it mildly. After all, fear is always more painful than the most terrible danger that we fear. As they say, “better a terrible ending than endless horror.” But we can put an end to fear without any terrible ends.
Work to overcome fear is carried out in two directions, on two planes.
First. Get out of the way.
If a person suffering from fear observes himself carefully, he will discover his strong attachment to bodily pleasures. To the joy of a healthy body, the pleasure of delicious food, wine, sex, and everything that money brings.
And our attitude towards people is very physical - we are more often afraid that they may go bankrupt, get sick, die, and not that they may become evil people or not become kind, happy and loving. This attitude is not love, but rather dependence. This attitude towards people also makes us susceptible to fear.
We have one more quality that makes us cowards. This is vanity, that is, exaggerating the importance of the opinions of others about us. We often do not realize this, but often when we are afraid, we are not afraid of the difficult situation itself, or even of our failure in this situation, we are afraid of what people will think of us after our failure. For example, a boy at school is afraid that other guys will beat him. But he is afraid not so much of pain as of how the other guys and especially the girls will look at him later. Exactly the same thing happens in adulthood.
It's quite simple. Our fear rests on the fear that we may lose these values - material wealth and the attitude of others - which are everything to us (cowards). These values determine the meaning and quality of our lives. Life without pleasure scares us. What is life like in a hospital bed or in prison? We are also frightened by the fact that our loved ones may lose such pleasures. It seems to us that for them, the quality of life is determined mainly by material factors.
Indeed, this fear is deeply justified. At any moment we can lose our health, beauty, money, housing, the affection of others, we can lose loved ones and life itself. Our loved ones may also suffer.
This means that in order to get out from under the fire of this fear, we need to move to where we will be inaccessible to it.
The fear of losing material things cannot reach us in the spiritual sphere.
Man is a complex being; he contains both material and spiritual. The spiritual is the highest life of our soul. This is kindness (only genuine), love and communication with God.
As a person begins to pay attention to this forgotten side of himself, fear recedes. After all, our soul cannot be stolen or taken away from us. The soul cannot be killed. The soul is the only thing that truly belongs to us. And when we begin to take care of our soul, as we used to take care of our body, not only does it become more joyful for us to live (after all, joy is a spiritual substance), but our life becomes calmer and more reliable.
The false criterion of self-esteem - the attitude of others - is replaced by the true criterion - the voice of God in our conscience. And we stop suffering because someone doesn’t like us. It becomes more important for us not to offend anyone. This is how we get out from under the blows of vanity.
Of course, the human condition is changeable. In one day it changes many times, it can be more spiritual and less. In a more physical state, fear can come to a spiritual person. But for such a person it is enough to simply remember who he is, or even better, to pray, and the fear will recede. It's like in science fiction films, when, when attacked by enemies, the hero suddenly moves to another dimension. So it is here. By returning our gaze to the spiritual perception of the world, we move into a space where we are inaccessible to our enemy - fear.
The spiritual state is not some kind of artificial state or device. The spiritual state is the most sober and realistic perception of the world, in which we see things as they are and make the most correct decisions. It is precisely the two-dimensional perception of lovers of primitive pleasures that we are accustomed to that is false. To stop considering ourselves to be flat cardboard people - that’s all, by and large, that we need to stop being afraid.
Second. Get used to winning.
Our life is not just about our attitude. Life is not meditation or a drug addict's high. Life requires us to constantly act, be strong, courageous and decisive. Therefore, it is not enough to lose fear. You need to gain courage.
To do this you need to get used to winning. Learn that we can win, learn how to do it, and develop the habit of winning.
The secret is to learn to win in the little things. You can learn to win only through victory over those very bodily addictions that we mentioned above. This has a simple name - discipline, limiting one's bodily life to strict limits.
Fear and discipline are incompatible things. A disciplined person is a courageous person. A disciplined person is a person who has overcome his weaknesses and forced himself to do what he needs to do. Therefore, in any dangerous situation, he overcomes his weaknesses and acts as needed.
Any victory comes with hard work. Don't think that becoming disciplined is easy. It is in the little things that it can be difficult to conquer yourself. Force yourself to get up on time, go to bed on time, abstain from sweets at night, from any mistakes, and follow the rules that you have set for yourself. You will have to be persistent and use the tips from the chapter “Habit Makes Habit”, which I often refer to - it is indeed a very important chapter.
Why is it difficult to conquer yourself in small things? Firstly, because, as we have already said, cowards are often vain and are accustomed to doing something good solely for show, for the opinions of other people. And here, perhaps, no one sees us, no one will applaud the fact that we did not watch TV and went to bed on time. Perhaps someone will even criticize us: “Why are you torturing yourself so much! Pamper yourself, eat some chocolate!”
Secondly, because we have to overcome the very bodily addictions with which we are literally shackled, like runaway slaves after being captured. This is where we will see how low we have fallen, what empty and stupid habits we are enslaved to.
But when we start winning, we will suddenly see how pleasant and interesting a physically and spiritually healthy life can be. We will begin to feel empowered. This is fortitude, will. It will come, like the muscles of a person who trains his body every day. Only a body, even a trained one, can collapse in an instant. And a strengthened soul cannot be destroyed by any external influence.
And when a dangerous situation comes, big or small, we may not be able to cope with it on a bodily level, but having conquered fear, we will behave with dignity. Which means we will win again.
Third. Condescension towards people.
Let us look especially at the fear of individuals or groups of people. For example, hooligans, people of a certain nationality, noisy teenage groups, representatives of some school group. Victims of violence experience fear when they see others who resemble the abuser they suffered. Thus, women who have experienced sexual violence may be afraid of all men in general.
Fear of people and groups of people is inextricably linked with our condemnation of them, with our aggression towards them. Psychologists say that in this connection there is fear-aggression, fear is primary, it is the source of the problem. I don’t know whether the psychologists are right, but I know from experience that by reducing your judgment and aggression, you can reduce your fear.
I will say right away that violence is a special case. Here, especially the first time after the episode of violence itself, it is not only possible, but necessary to cultivate, express, show one’s aggression and contempt towards the rapist in almost all possible ways. Shout, scold, call names, etc. (his presence is not required for this). This is necessary in order to reduce trauma to our mental and physical health. But then, when a month passes, another task arises - the task of normalizing relationships with people and fine-tuning one’s mental state...
So how do you get rid of this kind of fear?
First of all, let's listen to ourselves and discover the hostility, condemnation, aggression that is present in us towards these people. If we find this in ourselves, then we are on the right track and we have the key to solving the problem. Because it is quite difficult to directly influence fear, but we can easily overcome condemnation and hostility in ourselves, and with them both aggression and fear will go away.
The first thing you need to do is learn more about these people, understand them better. What we eventually learn about them is always the same. It turns out that they are people. Ordinary people. They are not fairy-tale heroes, and they can be defeated. They are not materialized demons, and there is something good in them. That is, even if this is indeed a rather destructive and socially dangerous group of people, they are still not fundamentally different from people - they have both good and bad. Understanding their weaknesses takes away our mystical horror of them, and understanding their good qualities gives us the opportunity to treat them kindly, as we should treat all people.
So, for example, having learned more about the peoples of the North Caucasus, we will discover that, it turns out, their men are very prone to boasting and bragging. It's funny. Having learned some real examples from the life of these arrogant mountaineers and laughed at them, we will treat them more simply, understanding how often these are exaggerated figures who for some reason really want to seem like successful businessmen, warriors and heroes, although in order to To be real heroes, they usually lack a lot, first of all, in their heads. At the same time, having learned how they honor their ancestors, elders, customs, we will begin to respect them for this. At the same time, we will see that their customs are also their problem when they try to establish their cruel customs among the originally good-natured Russian people, their cunning among the straightforward.
In this way, we will “separate the flies from the cutlets” and begin to see the object of our fear and aggression in all its complexity and ambiguity. It is very valuable to find out what is good about the best representatives of the human group that interests us.
Further. Let's develop a position of leniency.
Condescension is not weakness or connivance. This is not tolerance. Forbearance is the acceptance of all people with their weaknesses, based on our understanding of our own weaknesses combined with self-acceptance. That is, we understand that we are weak, and at the same time we do not hate or destroy ourselves. And we accept other people, because we understand that they cannot cope with their vices, as we can with ours (which often coincide with their vices). Any weakness, any evil is a punishment primarily for the person who carries it within himself. Everyone sooner or later pays for their evil in full. The healthiest attitude towards other people is to consider them approximately equal to yourself, not much worse, not much better.
Accordingly, we need, firstly, self-acceptance, and secondly, knowledge of our weaknesses. Both require considerable effort, but the effort is worth it. And how exactly to work is discussed a lot in our other materials. Each of these two topics is worth a separate detailed discussion.
Self-knowledge and self-acceptance is a long process. An instant weapon is a prayer for this person or people at the moment when fear came: “Lord, bless him (them)!”
The further we move in this direction, the less fear and aggression we will have towards a given person or group of people, and the more calmly and effectively we will be able to counteract him, if necessary, on a physical or verbal level.
This third direction of working on oneself is not an alternative to the first two, but a complement to them. If we do not develop a spiritual outlook on things and willpower, then we will not be able to get rid of the fear of people who can really deprive us of something on the material level. The best results will come from working on yourself in all the areas listed in this material.
Dmitry Semenik, psychologist
From the site Pobedish.ru
Take our online course “Getting rid of anxieties, fears and panic attacks.”
He fired himself
A good friend of mine, a trustee of one large enterprise, told me how at one time he lived for about three years in a state of fear that he might be fired. No matter what he did, he always thought about possible failures. His fears were completely unfounded and were only the result of a sick imagination. However, his unusually vivid fantasy dramatized the situation for so long until he, afraid of losing his place, became nervous and unsure of himself. In the end, he was actually asked to resign from his position.
But, in fact, he fired himself. His long-term negative ideas and self-hypnosis caused a corresponding reaction from the subconscious. It was on this basis that he really began to make mistakes and make wrong decisions, which ultimately made his work as a trustee impossible. He would never have lost his place if he had immediately concentrated his thoughts on the desired pictures, contrasting with the pictures caused by fear.
They conspired against him
During a short trip around the world where I gave lectures, I had a conversation with a high-ranking government official. He radiated calm peace and cordiality. He told me that all the attacks from the newspapers and the slander of his political opponents could never unsettle him. He used to spend a quarter of an hour every morning in internal contemplation, especially important for him was the idea that his heart harbored a whole ocean of peace and tranquility. From this thought he drew endless strength to overcome all difficulties, fears and anxieties.
Not long ago, a colleague called him in the middle of the night to warn him of a conspiracy against him. My friend responded to this like this: “Now I will sleep peacefully and calmly. You can discuss this issue with me tomorrow morning at 10 o’clock.” He continued: “I know that not a single negative thought will come true unless I give free rein to strong feelings and accept this thought in my mind as a fact. I don’t allow anyone to make me feel afraid, so nothing bad can happen to me.”
And how calm, calm, confident and peaceful this man was! It would never have occurred to him to allow himself to be worried, to tear out his hair, or to wring his hands in despair. At the very center of his being was a deep, ocean-deep, quiet source of strength from which he drew his unshakable peace.
Fear of failure
From time to time, students from our university come to see me and suffer from so-called suggestive amnesia (memory loss caused by fear) during an exam. I listen to the eternal complaint (teachers are also familiar with this problem): “As soon as the exam is over, the answer immediately comes to mind. During the exam, I can’t remember anything.” In all my patients, I established a fear of failing the exam. Fear is the immediate cause of temporary memory loss. For example, I knew one medical student who was considered the most gifted in his course, and yet in oral and written examinations he was not able to answer even the simplest questions. I explained to him the immediate cause of his failures. Long before the exam, he was preoccupied with this; his expectation of bad things, caused by fear, each time developed into a long-term state of downright irresistible fear.
And every thought that gives rise to such a strong feeling is carried out by the subconscious. The young man's subconscious apparently took his panic fear before the exam as a requirement to cause failure - and that's exactly what it did. Therefore, on the day of the exam, the student was in a state that psychologists call suggestive amnesia.
Results
Techniques of meditation with the subconscious, overcoming rhinestones cannot work without concentration, theory and practice, but it is this that will allow you to set the psychological mood and energy of thought, the power that brings results.
Each of us is accustomed to living in harmony with our beloved, but here’s how to achieve this by attracting her into your life - practice meditation to control the subconscious and overcome your fears. For a beginner, mastering this practice, like other meditation techniques, can be difficult.
And in this case, the experience and help of an experienced practitioner is invaluable. Just go to the website https://www.metapower.tv/ and get acquainted with the materials presented on it. By taking meditation training courses from Sergei Ratner, you can make your life better and more prosperous.
Art therapy
A method that has become popular in recent years. With its help, you can really release accumulated emotions and unload emotionally. Feelings do not need to be kept locked up, you need to talk about them and constantly reflect on what is happening. Art therapy is an opportunity to look at the situation from the outside. By the way, it is perfect for correcting children's behavior. The fact is that a child aged 4-5 years is most susceptible to the influence of fear. Children are often afraid of big dogs, the dark, and various fairy-tale characters such as Baba Yaga. Such “scares” are quite natural, but they must be dealt with correctly. You can remove fear from a child through regular art therapy sessions. The child has the opportunity to draw his own individual “monster”, which can influence him for a long time. Sometimes it is enough to conduct several sessions for the problem to be completely resolved. When there is nothing left to disturb from the inside, external manifestations will disappear. In special situations, complex therapy is required. Series of classes are very effective when the fear is quite stable.
