A traumatic experience marks us and leads us to live with fear. Although difficult, it is possible to say goodbye to fear.
Last update: 24 September, 2020
When we blame the fear of our inhibitions, our isolation, our phobias, we only increase their power. But the truth is that we feed it completely unconsciously. Today we will try to say goodbye to fear, to exorcise, one by one, the horror films produced by our mind.
The horror films "shot" in our heads are nothing more than the fruit of our imagination. Maybe it all begins with a traumatic experience that we have lived and that has marked us to the point of making us live with the constant fear that it may happen again.
Why do we call them movies? Because essentially they are! It is not unusual for a traumatized person to relive the lived experience in their mind, changing the "actors" or the scenario. Pure fantasy, a real "waking nightmare". How, then, can we say goodbye to fear?
Imagine being robbed and threatened with a knife. Such an event certainly has a very strong impact on our brain, so strong that we are afraid of reliving that unpleasant experience every time we leave the house. This happens because our minds do nothing but mull over that traumatic episode creating real horror movies that make us think it may happen again.
When fears become a limit
We have chosen to use a real life experience as an example. What's happening when to scare us are situations that we have never experienced? It is a phenomenon that occurs much more often than we like to believe and that limits us, making us give up what we really want.
Here is another example: we have decided to start a business, but our mind has already produced a movie where everything falls apart and we are publicly humiliated, the most likely thing is that at that point we decide to stay in our comfort zone. , giving up the idea of ​​setting up our own business. As you can see, there is no need for a precedent for our mind to hold us back.
Too many of us are not living their dreams because they are living their fears.
Today we offer you an exercise to say goodbye to fear and never give up on your dreams and the new experiences you would like to live. You need to grab a pen and paper and answer the following questions.
Exercise to say goodbye to fear
1- What's the worst that could happen?
Unleash the best horror movies your mind is capable of and try to imagine what the worst thing that could happen to you is. Is failure really what scares you so much that you don't allow yourself to take risks? If we assume that it is a negative experience that generates fear, what is the worst thing that could happen? What happens again?
If failure is frightening you, try to figure out how to avoid it. One of its main causes is the lack of training, well, then run to study! If you don't have the necessary resources, remember that the internet offers a huge amount of free material to expand our knowledge at no cost.
What if your fear arose from a negative experience? A theft, for example. In this case, signing up for a self-defense course to feel more confident and face fear might be a good idea. This way you will know that even if they try to attack you again, you will be able to defend yourself. As you can see, there are various alternatives to defeat most of our fears.
2. What are the chances that what I fear will actually happen?
In order for the mind to stop creating catastrophic scenarios, it is essential to make an objective analysis of one's fears. If you are afraid of failure, try to understand how likely this is to happen. If you know you can count on the people around you and you already have a plan B in place, the chances of failure are significantly reduced.
Likewise, if your fears are caused by being stolen, how likely is it to happen again? This has never happened to you before, so why should it happen once to increase the likelihood of it happening again? The perception of the facts is clearly altered by the bad experience, but it is never too late to remedy it and say goodbye to fear.
3- Will my fears take me somewhere? (What do I gain from being afraid?)
This question is very important, you have to ask yourself what you get by letting yourself be paralyzed by fear. It is good to remember that this emotion is still useful for our survival. If we are faced with a danger, it is fear that pushes us to find a solution to get the better of it.
But an unmotivated or exaggerated fear hinders. Let's see some examples:
- If you think about the fact that in the future you will regret the experiences you have not lived, you will realize that fear is useless.
- If fear prevents you from living with serenity and therefore you feel perpetually sad and tend to isolate yourself, it is definitely not working as a stimulus.
- If you realize that fear is holding back your personal growth, it is probably time to face it.
- If you create real horror movies with surreal scenarios, which with no likelihood could occur in reality, you only feed false fantasies.
“There are many things in the world that scare us. But there are many more things in our imagination that scare us. "
-Frederick W. Cropp-
Analyze the pros and cons to say goodbye to fear
Once you have answered (in writing) all the questions listed above, try to take stock of the pros and cons.
Imagine your dream is to write a book. Nonetheless, you cannot get to work. Fear of failure, of being humiliated, of not being up to par, hold you back. So the years go by and terrible scenes follow one another in your mind. Why not analyze the pros and cons with a cool head?
| Pros of writing a book | Cons of writing a book |
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If you look at the two lists, you will notice something curious. The pro list will entice you to take action while that of cons lists all the observations that usually paralyze you and lead you to foresee the worst. What looks best to you? Make predictions or try?
If it is still not entirely clear to you, take a good look at the table and you will notice that the list of pros is much longer than that of the cons. The pros are therefore more relevant, they have a greater weight. And then it is clear that doing what we want is always rewarding, so just put it off! The time has come to say goodbye to fear.
It is likely that in the end many of the false beliefs collapsed in the face of reality. Public speaking is not as scary as we imagined, the same is true for other situations, actions or circumstances. Saying goodbye to fear little by little means understanding that there are no limits. The only limit is ourselves and our mental films, which are just that.
