FEAR FACTOR

In this excerpt from her book, author and psychologist, DR AMY SILVER draws upon her extensive experience to provide a practical step-by-step guide to managing and overcoming fear and creating a more powerful you...

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There are biological, evolutionary, and social reasons why our fear is triggered, we are after all simple animals. Learning how to override our fear is essential in helping us fulfil our potential. If left unchecked, fear can control everything we do. We become a bystander, commanded by the voice of fear as it triggers biochemical reactions that cause us to fight, flight or play dead. I think of fear as a guest at our party, and we are the host.

We are the ones who should get to decide what to do, not fear. Even if fear is the loudest guests commanding our choices and movements, we as the host must elevate into the position of control. To gain control we must first understand more about our current relationship with fear. When does fear get loud for you? When is it difficult to ignore it?

Understanding the way in which our body reacts to our fear voice, what our fear voice says and how it talks to us is crucial. It is easy to be self-critical of our fears, anxieties and worries or critical of ourselves for having them. If we are ashamed of our fear a natural response is to deny or ignore our fears. When we do, we lose touch with some important self-awareness cues and may end up carrying some new hard emotions such as shame and guilt.

If we approach our fear with compassion, we can change the relationship with fear so that we can turn towards it and hear its messages. Fear has wonderful things to give us, it gives us the gift of working harder and warning us of failure or rejection. But we want to learn when to listen to it and when not to. We don't want to be blindly being controlled by it.