What would you do - whether it concerns life or work - if you were not afraid of anything? Such a simple question awakens countless fantasies, desires and regrets.
If the fear of failure or seeming like a complete idiot has ever held you back from doing what your heart called for, you will need some very important advice from business consultant Sandya Bruegmann. There is no need to fight fear. Just accept it and don’t let your worries slow you down on the path to your dream.
Usually we consider fear as an unpleasant emotion, which we try to avoid with all our might. Fear literally paralyzes, so instincts willy-nilly switch to survival mode. Unfortunately, such behavior can lead to actions that have nothing to do with moving towards our goals.
Sandya Brugmann
business consultant
In other words, if you let fear control you, you may forget about success.
This is especially dangerous for entrepreneurs. Running a business can be a scary and exciting experience in itself: it involves taking on financial responsibilities, dealing with frustrated clients or employees, and realizing that the decisions you make affect not only your well-being, but also the lives of other people.
On the other hand, Brugmann notes, fear is an emotion inherent in humans by nature. You won’t be able to get rid of it once and for all, and you don’t need to.
We are not faced with the task of curbing fear and preventing its occurrence in the future. Our goal is to understand what it is and learn to act based on willpower and without burying our heads in the sand.
Richard Branson phrased the same idea a little differently.
Fear sometimes makes you wet yourself, but courage makes you act even in wet pants.
Richard Branson
entrepreneur, founder of Virgin Group
The metaphor is not the most elegant, but it conveys the essence absolutely correctly: do not give up on your dreams because of fears, just accept them as part of life. Here are some tips to help you stop being afraid and start doing something.
Don't let unnecessary thoughts take over
You will never be able to control everything that happens, but you are free to choose how to react to it. When something bad happens, we tend to look to ourselves for the cause.
For example, you worked for a long time to launch a large-scale project or negotiated with an intractable client, but in the end everything went to pieces. Does this mean that the project or idea was so-so? No. This doesn’t say anything at all about you as a person, so don’t bother yourself with reflection in vain. Think better about what the next step towards achieving your goal will be. And remember: your path to success is never tied to just one specific person or opportunity.
Confession of a coward: how to stop being afraid and love life
Ksenia Wagner has already written about how to become happier right now and what happens to excellent students, and why she stopped striving for perfection.
I thought for a long time whether to write here about psychotherapy, which I have been doing for a year and a half (and continue now). On the one hand, I am far from personal nudity and do not like to broadcast about myself through a megaphone. On the other hand, psychotherapy has changed my life so much, made me freer and happier, opened doors for me on which there were previously heavy locks, that I sincerely want to share this knowledge with others - and, perhaps, be useful to those who are rushing around in a hole of anxiety and misconceptions .
I am very glad that I got out of such a hole - and saw the whole world around me, the whole palette of life’s colors, a string of roads and a myriad of possibilities. But to find a way out, I needed to throw away all the junk I had accumulated over the years. And the biggest trash bag on the way out was my fear. Fear of everything. Since childhood, as long as I can remember, I have been afraid. For myself, for my parents, then for my husband and children, for friends and even subordinates who stayed late in the office. I was afraid of minor troubles and global cataclysms, real and hypothetical conflicts, human rudeness, aggression, meanness, my own imperfection, etc. Anxiety was a common state in which I lived my life. If someone close to me didn’t answer the phone for a long time, my blood pressure would jump. Before important trips, I felt dizzy. I never traveled with private travelers, and the metro during the terrorist attacks was my personal hell. I saw anyone drunk on the street as a maniac, any homeless person as suffering from a fatal disease, naturally contagious, like the flu.
When I had children, all my fears automatically doubled. Any childhood pimple seemed to be a harbinger of something terrible. And I also listened to my own body like a fanatic. In the end it paid off. Because we attract what we think about. I started to get sick. Examinations, tests, pills, hospitals - and again fears. What if that happens? Or that? Of course, something terrible and painful. I began to feel anxiety physically - acutely, almost to the point of fainting, chest pain, chills, etc. She grew like a snowball, and I was somewhere inside this lump, immobilized, weak and unhappy.
I don’t know how my husband didn’t run away from me during this period and my loved ones didn’t turn away. I was a dark shadow, a bare nerve, a complete depressive vibration. But people - and especially men - do not like darkness. Nothing grows in darkness, including relationships. To live, you need light - external and internal.
At some point, fear reached its peak. I lost the ability to feel everything else. The snowball stopped on the edge of the abyss. And then something happened. I realized that I either had to get out of the coma, or I would fall down.
I still don’t know how exactly I made the mental movement that destroyed the lump. But on one particularly difficult day, poisoned by fear, I suddenly realized: what will happen cannot be avoided. All my life I have been in awe of this phrase. To accept it is to accept death. Accept the possibility that everything could end at any moment. But in reality it is true. It is impossible to control everything in the world - there are things that do not depend on us. Everyone has their own hour and their own path, and only we ourselves choose how to go through it. You can waste precious years in fear, poisoning yourself and your loved ones, making your own existence meaningless and slowly going crazy. Or you can go with the flow, steering your ship forward in any weather. Catch the wind of change, believing in the best. Enjoy today, which will never be repeated - and strive to fill it with all the joy available to you.
There is even such a technique in psychotherapy: every 60 minutes ask yourself the question “where is my joy of this hour?” It could be a cup of coffee or a text message to a friend, something very small and quick, but no less valuable and pleasant. Filling every day with meaning and happiness.
In psychotherapy, the constant fear that something bad will happen to you is called a basic distrust of the world. It is formed in childhood, usually under unfavorable circumstances or due to the fact that one of the parents is too anxious. From an early age, a child copies parental models - and if mom or dad is always afraid of something, then the child does the same. This knowledge also helped me cut the shackles of fear. I am already a mother of two little people - and I don’t want them to live in captivity of missed opportunities. Because fear not only deprives us of the ability to be happy, but also slows us down on the path to achievement. When I told my therapist that I had “surrendered to fate,” she replied, “Fatalism is an integral part of being a mature person.” This does not mean that you have to walk on the edge or throw yourself into the pool headlong. But this means - at a minimum - not to be afraid in advance of what did not happen.
Do I want my children to become mature individuals over time? Of course I want. Only a mother, blinded by selfishness, under the guise of pseudo-care, dreams of tying her children to her until they are very old (fear, by the way, is an excellent tool for this). I want them to grow up independent, free and happy. Therefore, against the basic mistrust in our family, the mantra now adopted is “the world is worth trusting.” I say this phrase every time fear tries to remind itself - and it works. Together with the second, life’s fee for the role of a coward is too low.
How to become happier right now
Be happy! 5 anti-stress techniques from Ksenia Wagner
Learn to hear your fear
Try to recognize the signs of fear as early as possible and understand how it affects you. Yes, it's not that simple. Sandya Brugmann believes that clarifying who we really are is one of the most difficult tasks. The biggest lie, the truth of which we ourselves believe and force others to believe, is the idea of ourselves as a whole and unchanging person.
In fact, we consist of many subpersonalities. Our task is to thoroughly study each of them, finding positive features and those that are worth adjusting. There is no place for judgment here. This is just the path to growth, change, the ability to curb fear and make informed choices based on your inner strength.
What are the different types of anxiety disorders?
In 2021, the American Psychiatric Association stated that one in three adults have some form of anxiety disorder. According to other studies, from 21 to 50% of the population aged 18 to 65 experience such mental disorders. In 2021, due to the coronavirus pandemic, the number of people seeking help from specialists due to constant anxiety has increased sharply. In Russia alone it increased by 40%.
The prevalence of anxiety disorders and their diversity can confuse not only their carriers, but also specialists. The International Classification of Diseases (ICD-10) contains a whole list of alarming mental disorders. Among them are panic anxiety disorder (unpredictable panic attacks), generalized anxiety disorder (constant severe anxiety to the point of trembling, sweating, weakness, headache) and a number of others. These also include anxiety-depressive disorder, which Margarita lives with.
Anxious personality disorder (APD) is identified separately by experts and is associated with qualitative changes in the very structure of the human psyche.
incessant anxiety becomes the basis of its bearer’s character
Lena has been diagnosed with this disorder. ICD-10 classifies it as a so-called specific personality disorder. Anxiety, gloomy forebodings, a feeling of insecurity, which do not have a clear starting point in a person’s personal history, are its main symptoms.
Between 10 and 50% of people with panic disorder and between 20 and 40% of social phobias also live with SPD. It is also characteristic of 45% of carriers of generalized anxiety disorder.
Terror that flies on the wings of the night
It is more difficult to deal with irrational fears. Well, why, pray tell, sitting in a cozy city apartment, shake with fear, imagining that several snakes or poisonous spiders are hiding under the sofa. Since the nature of such fears defies ordinary logic, it is difficult for an ordinary person to overcome them. Here, as a rule, you cannot do without the help of a specialist psychologist.
Among such fears, or, in other words, phobias, there are such seemingly inexplicable ones as auroraphobia (fear of the northern lights), gravidophobia (fear of meeting a pregnant woman), pediophobia (fear of dolls) and even philophobia (fear of falling in love). Such fears, as a rule, make life very difficult, and in childhood and adolescence, causing ridicule from peers, can lead to a tragic outcome, so in no case should they be ignored and allowed to bloom in full bloom.
And in conclusion, advice from an authoritative researcher of fears, the ancient Roman philosopher Seneca the Younger: “If you want not to be afraid of anything, remember that you can be afraid of absolutely everything.”
– I am afraid that my children may someday decide to live somewhere far from Moscow, and then I will see them very rarely. With my schedule, time spent with them is already worth its weight in gold.
— Zhanna Epple
I'm afraid, but I'm acting!
Let's imagine what will happen if our fears are fully justified and we were not afraid in vain. For example, the exam on which receipt of a diploma depends was not passed, a bag with a month’s salary was still stolen, and the husband actually cheated on him with his girlfriend.
Article on the topic
Tips for parents: how to deal with childhood fears and nightmares It’s stupid to say that all this is sheer nonsense. Nevertheless, these “horrors” look rather pale in comparison with incurable diseases, the death of a loved one, wars and global disasters. This leads to two simple rules for dealing with fear. First, mentally bring the situation to its logical conclusion: what will happen if your fears actually come true?
Will you be sent to prison, tortured and deprived of your life, or will you just spend the summer cramming, take out an unplanned loan that you are quite capable of paying off, and finally get rid of your dishonest spouse? That is, nothing truly terrible will happen! Well, secondly, the old truth “everything is known by comparison” still works perfectly.
A significant part of our fears have at least a minimal rational basis, that is, their occurrence is due to some real factors. It is much easier to fight such fears than irrational ones, that is, those that arise out of nowhere.
Rational fears have their advantages, for example, they help a person assess the threat and take measures for a quick and adequate response. For example, you are forced to return home late: the steps behind you seem suspicious and frighten you. Fear will help you mobilize your strength and make the right decision - call for help, run towards a crowded, illuminated street, and hold the pepper spray in your hand in combat readiness.
Or another situation. It seems to you that sooner or later you will be overtaken by a serious cancer disease, especially since you have a predisposition to such a diagnosis in your family. It is likely that it is fear that will force you to undergo examinations in order to detect the disease at an early stage and successfully recover from it.
Which specialist should I contact first?
The most severe depressive episode “turned off” Margarita for three months.
“And I went to a psychiatrist,” says the girl. “We selected a successful combination of drugs, and now I feel human. The doctor suggested that I see a psychotherapist. The first attempt was unsuccessful, but on the second I managed to find a specialist with whom I feel comfortable.”
Elena went the same way. Both girls claim that the combination of drug treatment and psychotherapy helped them reduce anxiety, understand themselves better, and also be less afraid of contacts with other people.
