How to get rid of anxiety and fear. Don't create unnecessary problems for yourself. How to get rid of anxiety and fear

Today we will talk about how to get rid of fear of a very different nature: fear of death, fear of animals or insects, phobia associated with illness, injury, death as a result of an accident, etc.

In this article, I will talk not only about techniques that will help you overcome fear, but also about how to properly relate to the feeling of fear and how to change your life in such a way that there is less room for anxiety in it.

I myself had to go through a lot of fears, especially during that period of my life when I experienced. I was afraid of dying or going crazy. I was afraid that my health would become completely unusable. I was afraid of dogs. I was afraid of so many things.

Since then, some of my fears have completely disappeared. I learned to control some fears. I learned to live with other fears. I've done a lot of work on myself. I hope my experience, which I will outline in this article, will help you too.

Where does fear come from?

Since ancient times, the mechanism of fear has been protective function. He protected us from danger. Many people are instinctively afraid of snakes because this quality was inherited from their ancestors. After all, those of them who were afraid of these animals and, as a result, avoided them, had a greater chance of not dying from a poisonous bite than those who showed fearlessness in relation to crawling creatures. Fear helped those who experienced it to survive and pass this quality on to their offspring. After all, only living things can reproduce.

Fear causes people to feel an intense desire to flee when they encounter something that their brain perceives as danger. Many people are afraid of heights. But they cannot help but guess about it until they find themselves high for the first time. Their legs will begin to instinctively give way. The brain will feed alarms. The person will passionately want to leave this place.

But fear helps not only to protect yourself from danger when it occurs. It allows a person to avoid even potential danger wherever possible.

Anyone who is mortally afraid of heights will not climb onto the roof again, because he will remember what strong unpleasant emotions he experienced the last time he was there. And thus, perhaps protect yourself from the risk of death as a result of a fall.

Unfortunately, since the time of our distant ancestors, the environment in which we live has changed a lot. AND fear does not always meet our survival goals. And even if it answers, it does not contribute to our happiness and comfort in any way.

People experience many social fears that prevent them from achieving their goals. They are often afraid of things that pose no threat. Or this threat is negligible.

The chance of dying in a passenger plane crash is approximately one in 8 million. However, many people are afraid of traveling by air. There is no threat to getting to know another person, but many men or women experience extreme anxiety when being around other people.

Many quite ordinary fears can become uncontrollable. Natural concern for the safety of your children can turn into acute paranoia. Fear of losing your life or harming yourself sometimes turns into mania and an obsession with safety. Some people spend a lot of their time in seclusion, trying to protect themselves from the dangers that supposedly await them on the street.

We see that the natural mechanism formed by evolution often interferes with us. Many fears do not protect us, but rather make us vulnerable. This means we need to intervene in this process. Next I will tell you how to do this.

Method 1 - Stop being afraid of fear

The first tips will help you understand fear correctly.

You ask me: “I just want to stop being afraid of mice, spiders, open or closed spaces. Are you suggesting we just stop being afraid of fear itself?”

What reactions does fear cause in a person? As we found out earlier this:

The desire to eliminate the object of fear. (If a person is afraid of snakes, will he run away? when he sees them
Reluctance to repeat this feeling (A person will avoid snakes wherever possible, not build a home next to their lair, etc.)

Our instincts tell us these two reactions. A person who fears death in a plane crash will instinctively avoid airplanes. But if he suddenly has to fly somewhere, he will try to do everything so as not to feel a sense of fear. For example, he will get drunk, take sedative pills, and ask someone to calm him down. He will do this because he is afraid of the feeling of fear.

But in the context of fear management, such behavior often makes no sense. After all, the fight against fear is a fight against instincts. And if we want to defeat instincts, we should not be guided by their logic, which is indicated in two points above.

Of course, during an attack of fear, the most logical behavior for us is to run away or try to get rid of the attack of fear. But this logic is whispered to us by our instincts, which we must defeat!

It is precisely because during attacks of fear that people behave as their “guts” tell them, they cannot get rid of these fears. They go to the doctor, sign up for hypnosis and say: “I never want to experience this again! Fear torments me! I want to stop being afraid completely! Get me out of this!” Some methods may help them for a while, but fear can still return to them in one form or another. Because they listened to their instincts, which told them: “Fear fear!” You can only be free when you get rid of him!”

It turns out that many people cannot get rid of fear because they, first of all, strive to get rid of it! Now I will explain this paradox.

Fear is just a program

Imagine that you have invented a robot that washes your floors at home, including your balcony. Using the reflection of radio signals, the robot can estimate the height at which it is located. And to prevent him from falling off the edge of the balcony, you have programmed him in such a way that his brain signals him to stop if he is on the edge of a drop in height.

You left the house and left the robot to clean up. What did you find when you returned? The robot froze on the threshold between your room and the kitchen and could not cross it due to a slight difference in heights! A signal in his brain told him to stop!

If the robot had “mind”, “consciousness”, it would understand that there is no danger at the border of two rooms, since the height is small. And then he could cross it, despite the fact that the brain continues to signal danger! The robot's consciousness simply would not obey the absurd order of its brain.

A person has a consciousness that is also not obliged to follow the commands of his “primitive” brain. And the first thing you must do if you want to get rid of fear is stop trusting fear, stop perceiving it as a guide to action, stop being afraid of it. You need to act a little paradoxically, and not as your gut tells you.

After all, fear is just a feeling. Roughly speaking, this is the same program that the robot in our example executes when it approaches the balcony. This is a program that your brain launches on a chemical level (with the help of adrenaline, for example) after it receives information from your sensory organs.

Fear is simply a stream of chemical signals that are translated into commands for your body.

But your consciousness, despite the work of the program, can itself understand in which cases it is faced with a real danger, and in which situations it is dealing with a failure in the “instinctive program” (approximately the same failure that occurred with the robot when it could not climb over across the threshold).

If you experience fear, it does not mean that there is any danger. You should not always trust all your feelings, as they often deceive you. Do not run from a non-existent danger, do not try to somehow calm this feeling. Try to just calmly wait until the “siren” (“alarm! save yourself!”) in your head goes silent. Often this will simply be a false alarm.

And it is in this direction that you must move first if you want to get rid of fear. In the direction of allowing your consciousness, and not the “primitive” brain, to make decisions (getting on a plane, approaching a strange girl).

After all, there is nothing wrong with this feeling! There is nothing wrong with fear! It's just chemistry! It's an illusion! There is nothing terrible about experiencing this feeling sometimes.

It's normal to be afraid. There is no need to strive to immediately get rid of fear (or what this fear causes). Because if you are just thinking about how to get rid of him, you follow his lead, you listen to what he tells you, you obey him, do you take him seriously. You think: “I’m afraid to fly on a plane, so I won’t fly” or “I’ll fly on a plane only when I stop being afraid of flying,” “because I believe in fear and I’m afraid of it.” And then you keep feeding your fear! You can stop feeding him if only you stop giving him great importance.

When you think: “I'm afraid to fly on a plane, but I'll fly on it anyway. And I won’t be afraid of an attack of fear, because it’s just a feeling, chemistry, the play of my instincts. Let him come, because there is nothing terrible in fear!” Then you stop obeying fear.

You will get rid of fear only when you stop wanting to get rid of it and live with it!

Breaking the vicious circle

I have already spoken about this example from my life more than once and I will repeat it again here. I took the first step towards getting rid of panic attacks, like sudden attacks of fear, only when I stopped focusing on getting rid of it! I began to think: “let the attacks come. This fear is just an illusion. I can survive these attacks, there’s nothing scary about them.”

And then I stopped being afraid of them, I became ready for them. For four years I followed their lead, thinking: “when will this end, when will the attacks go away, what should I do?” But when I applied tactics in relation to them that were opposite to the logic of my instincts, when I stopped driving away fear, only then did it begin to go away!

Our instincts trap us. Of course, this thoughtless program of the body is aimed at making us obey it (roughly speaking, the instincts “want” us to obey them), so that we are afraid of the appearance of fear, and not accept it. But this only makes the whole situation worse.

When we begin to be afraid of our fears, to take them seriously, we only make them stronger. Fear of fear only increases the total amount of fear and even provokes fear itself. I personally became convinced of the truth of this principle when I suffered from panic attacks. The more afraid I was of new attacks of fear, the more often they happened.

My fear of attacks only fueled the fear that arises during a panic attack. These two fears (fear itself and fear of fear) are connected in a positive way. feedback and reinforce each other.

A person engulfed by them finds himself in a vicious circle. He is afraid of new attacks and thereby causes them, and the attacks, in turn, cause even greater fear of them! We can get out of this vicious circle if we remove the fear of fear, and not the fear itself, as many people want. Since we can influence this type of fear much more than fear in its pure form.

If we talk about fear in its “pure form,” then it often does not have very much weight in the totality of fear. I want to say that if we are not afraid of him, then it is easier for us to survive these discomfort. Fear ceases to be “scary.”

Don't worry if these conclusions don't quite make sense to you, or if you don't quite understand how to achieve this attitude towards your fear. Such understanding will not come immediately. But you will be able to understand it better when you read my following tips and apply the recommendations from them.

Method 2 - Think long term

I gave this advice in my last article. Here I will dwell on this point in more detail.

This advice may not help you cope with every fear, but it will help you cope with some anxieties. The fact is that when we are afraid, we tend to think about the very moment of realization of our fear, and not about what may await us in the future.

Let's say you're afraid of losing your job. She provides for you comfortable conditions labor, and the salary at this place allows you to buy the things you want to have. The thought of losing her fills you with fear. You immediately imagine how you will have to look for another job, which may pay worse than the one you lost. You will no longer be able to spend as much money as you used to spend, and this makes you anxious.

But instead of imagining how bad you'll feel when you lose your job, think about what happens next. Mentally cross the line you are afraid to cross. Let's say you lose your job. Ask yourself what will happen in the future? Imagine your future over an extended period of time with all the nuances.

You will start looking for a new job. It is not at all necessary that you will not find a job with the same salary. There is a chance that you will find an even higher paying position. You cannot know for sure how much you are willing to offer to a specialist of your level in other companies until you go to interviews.

Even if you have to work for less money, so what? You may not be able to frequent expensive restaurants for a while. You will buy cheaper food than you bought before, and prefer a holiday at your own or a friend’s dacha to a holiday abroad. I understand that now this seems scary to you, because you are used to living differently. But a person always gets used to everything. The time will come and you will get used to it, just as you have become accustomed to many things in your life. But it is quite possible that this situation will not last your entire life; you will be able to achieve a promotion in your new job!

When a child's toy is taken away, he stomps his foot and cries, because he cannot realize that in the future (perhaps in a couple of days) he will get used to the absence of this toy and other, more interesting things will appear. Because the child becomes a hostage to his momentary emotions and cannot think in the future!

Don't become that child. Think constructively about the things you fear.

If you are afraid that your husband will betray you and leave you for another woman, think, so what? Millions of couples break up and no one dies from it. You will suffer for a while, but then you will begin to live new life. After all, any human emotions are temporary! Don't be afraid of these emotions. They will come and go.

Imagine the real picture in your head: how you will live, how you will get out of suffering, how you will make new interesting acquaintances, how you will have a chance to correct the mistakes of the past! Think about prospects, not failures! About new happiness, not suffering!

Method 3 - Be Prepared

When I'm nervous on a plane about to land, it doesn't help much to think about plane crash statistics. So what if disasters happen rarely? So what if getting to the airport by car is statistically more life-threatening than flying by plane? These thoughts do not save me in those moments when the plane begins to shake or it continues to circle over the airport. Any person who experiences this fear will understand me.

In such situations, fear makes us think: “what if I am now on exactly one of the eight million flights that should turn into a disaster?” And no statistics can save you. After all, unlikely does not mean impossible! In this life, everything is possible, so you need to be prepared for anything.
Trying to reassure yourself, like: “everything will be fine, nothing will happen,” usually doesn’t help. Because such exhortations are lies. But the truth is that anything can happen! And we need to accept it.

“Not a very optimistic conclusion for an article about getting rid of fear,” you might think.

In fact, everything is not so bad; willingness helps to overcome fear. And do you know what line of thinking helps me out on such intense flights? I think: “Planes really rarely crash. It is very unlikely that something bad will happen right now. But, nevertheless, it is possible. At worst, I'll die. But I still have to die someday. Death is inevitable in any case. It ends every human life. A catastrophe will simply bring closer what will happen someday anyway with 100% probability.”

As you can see, being prepared does not mean looking at things with a doomed look, thinking: “I’m going to die soon.” This simply means realistically assessing the situation: “it’s not a fact that a disaster will happen. But if it happens, then so be it.”

Of course, this does not eliminate fear completely. I'm still afraid of death, but it helps to be prepared. What's the point of worrying your whole life about something that will definitely happen? It’s better to be at least a little prepared and not think about your death as something that will never happen to us.
I understand that this advice is very difficult to implement in practice. And, moreover, not everyone always wants to think about death.

But people often write to me, tormented by the most absurd fears. Someone, for example, is afraid to go outside because they believe that it is dangerous there, whereas at home it is much safer. This person will have a hard time dealing with his fear if he waits for the fear to pass so he can go outside. But he may feel better if he thinks: “Even though there is danger on the street. But you can’t sit at home all the time! You cannot completely protect yourself, even if you are within four walls. Or I will go outside and expose myself to the danger of death and injury (this danger is negligible). Or I'll stay at home until I die! A death that will happen anyway. If I die now, then I will die. But most likely this will not happen in the near future.”

If people stop focusing so much on their fears, and can at least sometimes look them in the face, realizing that behind them there is nothing hidden except emptiness, then fears will cease to have so much power over us. We can’t be so afraid of losing what we are already going to lose.

Fear and emptiness

An attentive reader will ask me: “But if you take this logic to the limit, it turns out that if there is no point in being afraid of losing those things that we will lose anyway, then there is no point in being afraid of anything at all! After all, nothing lasts forever!

That's right, even though it contradicts ordinary logic. At the end of every fear lies emptiness. We have nothing to fear because all things are temporary.

This thesis may be very difficult to intuitively understand.

But I am not too keen for you to understand it on a theoretical level, but rather to use it in practice. How? I'll explain now.

I myself use this principle regularly. I'm still afraid of many things. But, remembering this principle, I understand that every fear I have is senseless. I shouldn’t “feed” him and get too carried away with him. When I think about this, I find the strength to not give in to fear.

Many people, when they are very afraid of something, subconsciously believe that they “should be afraid”, that there are really scary things. They think that no other reaction other than fear is possible in relation to these things. But if you know that in principle there is nothing to be afraid of in this life, since everything will happen someday, if you realize the meaninglessness, the “emptiness” of fear, if you understand that there are no truly terrible things, but only a subjective reaction to these things, then it will become easier to cope with fear. I will return to this point at the end of the article.

Method 4 - Observe

The following few methods will allow you to deal with fear as it arises.

Instead of giving in to fear, try simply observing it from the outside. Try to localize this fear in your thoughts, to feel it as some kind of energy that is formed in certain parts of the body. Mentally direct your breath to these areas. Try to make your breathing slow and calm.

Don't get caught up in your fear with your thoughts. Just watch how it forms. Sometimes this helps remove fear completely. Even if the fear doesn't go away, it's okay. By becoming a dispassionate observer, you begin to recognize your fear as something external to your “I”, as something that no longer has such power over this “I”.

When you observe, fear is much easier to control. After all, the feeling of fear forms like a snowball. At first you are simply scared, then all sorts of thoughts begin to creep into your head: “what if something bad happens,” “what is that strange sound that appeared when the plane was landing?”, “what if something bad happens to my health?”

And these thoughts fuel fear, it becomes even stronger and causes even more anxious thoughts. We find ourselves again inside a vicious circle!

But by observing the feelings, we try to get rid of any thoughts and interpretations. We do not feed our fear with our thoughts, and then it becomes weaker. Don't let your own mind increase fear. To do this, simply turn off thinking, evaluation and interpretation and go into observation mode. Don't think about the past or the future stay in the present moment with your fear!

Method 5 - Breathe

During attacks of fear, try to breathe deeply, taking longer inhalations and exhalations. Diaphragmatic breathing is very calming nervous system and, according to scientific research, stops the fight-or-flight response, which is directly related to the feeling of fear.

Diaphragmatic breathing means that you breathe from your stomach rather than from your chest. Focus on how you breathe. Count the time of inhalation and exhalation. Try to keep this time equal for inhalation and exhalation and long enough. (4 – 10 seconds.) Just don’t choke. Breathing should be comfortable.

Method 6 - Relax your body

When fear attacks you, try to relax. Calmly move your attention over each muscle in your body and relax it. You can combine this technique with breathing. Mentally direct your breath to different parts of your body, in order, starting with your head and ending with your feet.

Method 7 - Remember how your fear did not come true

This method helps to cope with minor and recurring fears. For example, you are constantly afraid that you might offend someone or make a bad impression on them. But, as a rule, it turns out that your fear was never realized. It turned out that you had not offended anyone, and it was simply your own mind that frightened you.

If this repeats over and over again, then when you again fear that you said the wrong things when communicating, remember how often your fear was not realized. And most likely, you will understand that there is absolutely nothing to be afraid of.

But be prepared for anything! Even if there is a possibility that someone is offended by you, then it’s not a big deal! Make peace! Don't betray of great importance to what has already happened. Most of your own mistakes can be corrected.

Method 8 - Treat fear as a thrill

Remember when I wrote that fear is just a feeling? If you are afraid of something, it does not mean that there is some danger. This feeling sometimes does not relate to reality, but is only spontaneous chemical reaction in your head. Instead of being afraid of this reaction, treat it as a thrill, as a free ride. You don't have to pay money or put yourself in danger by skydiving to get the adrenaline rush. This adrenaline appears out of the blue. Beauty!

Method 9 - Accept your fear, don't resist

Above, I talked about techniques that will help you quickly cope with your fear at the moment it arises. But you don't need to get attached to these techniques. When people hear about ways to control fear or fear, they sometimes fall into the trap of believing in self-control. They start thinking: “Hurray! It turns out fear can be controlled! And now I know how to do it! Then I’ll definitely get rid of him!”

They begin to rely heavily on these techniques. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don't. And when people fail to cope with fear using these methods, they begin to panic: “I can’t control this! Why? Yesterday it worked, but today it doesn’t! What should I do? I need to deal with this urgently somehow! I have to manage this!”

They begin to worry and thereby only increase their fear. But the truth is that it's far away you can't always control everything. Sometimes these techniques will work, sometimes they won't. Of course, try to breathe, observe the fear, but if it doesn’t go away, there’s nothing terrible about it. No need to panic, no need to look for a new way out of the situation, leave everything as it is, accept your fear. You don't "have to" get rid of it at that moment. The word “should” does not apply here at all. Because you feel the way you feel now. What happens, happens. Accept it and stop resisting.

Method 10 - Don't get attached to things

The following methods will allow you to remove fears from your life

As the Buddha said: “the basis of human suffering (dissatisfaction, inability to achieve final satisfaction) is attachment (desire).” Attachment, in my opinion, is understood more as dependence than love.

If we are strongly attached to something, for example, we strongly need to produce an effect on the opposite sex, to achieve constant victories on the love front, then this will lead us into a state of eternal dissatisfaction, and not happiness and pleasure, as we think . Sexual feeling and self-esteem cannot be completely satisfied. After each new victory, these feelings will demand more and more. New successes on the love front will bring you less and less pleasure over time (“pleasure inflation”), while failures will make us suffer. We will live in constant fear that we will lose our charm and attractiveness (and sooner or later this will happen anyway with the advent of old age) and again we will suffer. At a time when no love affairs occur, we will not feel the joy of life.

Perhaps some people will find it easier to understand attachment using the example of money. While we strive for money, it seems to us that by earning a certain amount of money, we will achieve happiness. But when we achieve this goal, happiness does not come and we want more! Complete satisfaction is unattainable! We are chasing carrots on a fishing rod.

But it would be much easier for you if you weren’t so attached to it and were happy with what we have (you don’t have to stop striving for the best). This is what the Buddha meant when he said that the cause of dissatisfaction is attachment. But attachments not only give rise to dissatisfaction and suffering, they create fear.

After all, we are afraid of losing exactly what we are so attached to!

I'm not saying that you need to go to the mountains, give up your personal life and destroy all attachments. Complete release from attachments is an extreme teaching, suitable for extreme cases. But despite this, modern man can derive some benefit from this principle for himself without going to extremes.

To experience less fear, you don’t need to get too hung up on certain things and make them the basis of your existence. If you think: “I live for my work,” “I live only for my children,” then you may have a strong fear of losing these things. After all, your whole life comes down to them.

That's why try to diversify your life as much as possible, let a lot of new things into it, enjoy many things, and not just one thing. Be happy because you are breathing and living, and not just because you have a lot of money and are attractive to the opposite sex. Although, as I said above, the latter things will not bring you happiness.

(In this sense, attachments are not only the cause of suffering, but its consequence! People who are deeply unhappy inside begin to desperately cling to external things in search of satisfaction: sex, entertainment, alcohol, new experiences. But happy people, as a rule, are more self-sufficient. The basis of their happiness is life itself, and not things. Therefore, they are not so afraid of losing them.)

Affection does not mean absence of love. As I wrote above, this is understood more as addiction than love. For example, I have very high hopes for this site. I love developing it. If something bad suddenly happens to him, it will be a blow for me, but not the end of my whole life! After all, I have many other interesting things to do in my life. But my happiness is formed not only by them, but by the very fact that I live.

Method 11 - Nurture Your Ego

Remember, you are not alone in this world. The whole existence is not limited to just your fears and problems. Stop focusing on yourself. There are other people in the world with their own fears and worries.

Understand that there is an immense world around you with its laws. Everything in nature is subject to birth, death, decay, disease. Everything in this world is finite. And you yourself are part of this universal order, and not the center of it!

If you feel yourself in harmony with this world, without opposing yourself to it, and realize your existence as an integral part of the natural order, you will understand that you are not alone, that you, together with all living beings, are moving in the same direction. And this has always happened, forever and ever.

With this consciousness your fears will disappear. How to achieve such consciousness? It must come with the development of personality. One way to achieve this state is to practice meditation.

Method 12 - Meditate

In this article I talked about the fact that you cannot identify yourself with your fear, that it is just a feeling, that you need to be prepared for anything, that you cannot put your own ego at the center of all existence.

This is easy to understand on a theoretical level, but not always easy to apply in practice. It is not enough just to read about it, it needs to be practiced, day after day, applying it in real life. Not all things in this world are accessible to “intellectual” knowledge.

The attitude towards fears that I spoke about at the beginning needs to be cultivated in oneself. The way to come to these conclusions in practice, to realize that fear is just an illusion, is meditation.

Meditation makes it possible to “reprogram” yourself to be happier and freer. Nature is a wonderful “constructor”, but her creations are not ideal; biological mechanisms (the mechanism of fear) that worked in the Stone Age do not always work in the modern world.

Meditation will allow you to partially correct the imperfections of nature, change your standard emotional reactions to many things, move away from fear to calmness, come to a clearer understanding of the illusory nature of fear, understand that fear is not part of your personality and free yourself from it!

With practice, you can find the source of happiness within yourself and not have strong attachments to different things. You will learn to accept your emotions and fears rather than resist them. Meditation will teach you to observe your fear from the outside without getting involved in it.

Meditation will not only help you come to some important understanding of yourself and life. The practice has been scientifically proven to calm the sympathetic nervous system, which is responsible for feelings of stress. It will make you calmer and less stressed. She will teach you to relax deeply and get rid of fatigue and tension. And this is very important for people who experience fear.

You can listen to my short lecture on this by following the link.

Method 13 - Don't let fear dictate you

Many of us are accustomed to the fact that everyone around us just talks about how scary life is, what terrible diseases exist, they gasp and groan. And this perception is transferred to us. We start to think that there are really scary things that we “should” be afraid of, since everyone else is afraid of them!

Fear, surprisingly, can be a consequence of stereotypes. It is natural to be afraid of death, and almost all people are afraid of it. But when we see the constant lamentations of other people about the death of loved ones, when we watch how our elderly friend cannot come to terms with the death of her son, who died 30 years ago, then we begin to think that this is not just scary, but terrible! That there is no chance to perceive it any other way.

In fact, these things become so terrible only in our perception. And there is always the possibility of treating them differently. When Einstein died, he accepted death completely calmly, he treated it as an unchangeable order of things. If you ask some spiritually developed person, perhaps a religious ascetic, a convinced Christian or a Buddhist, how he feels about death, he will probably be calm about this. And this is not necessarily connected only with the fact that the first believes in an immortal soul, posthumous existence, and the second, although he does not believe in the soul, believes in reincarnation. This is due to the fact that they are spiritually developed and have tamed their ego. No, I’m not saying that we need to seek salvation in religion, I’m trying to prove that a different attitude towards those things that we consider terrible is possible, and it can be achieved along with spiritual development!

Don't listen to those who talk about how scary everything is. These people are wrong. In fact, there are almost no things in this world to be afraid of. Or not at all.

And watch less TV.

Method 14 - Do not avoid situations in which fear arises (!!!)

I highlighted this point with three exclamation marks because it is one of the most important advice in this article. I briefly touched on this issue in the first paragraphs, but here I will dwell on it in more detail.

I have already said that the instinctive tactics of behavior during fear (run away, be afraid, avoid some situations) are the wrong tactics in the context of the task of getting rid of fear. If you are afraid to leave the house, then you will never cope with this fear if you stay at home.

So what should we do? Go outside! Forget about your fear! Let him appear, don’t be afraid of him, let him in and don’t resist. However, do not take it seriously, because it is just a feeling. You can get rid of your fear only when you begin to ignore the very fact of its occurrence and live as if there is no fear!

To overcome the fear of flying on airplanes, you need to fly on airplanes as often as possible.
To overcome the fear of the need for self-defense, you need to enroll in the martial arts section.
To overcome the fear of meeting girls, you need to meet girls!

You must do what you are afraid to do! There is no easy way. Forget about “should”, get rid of fear as soon as possible. Just take action.

Method 15 - Strengthen your nervous system

The extent to which you are susceptible to fear very much depends on the state of your health in general and the health of your nervous system in particular. Therefore, improve your work, learn to cope with stress, do yoga, quit. I have discussed these points in my other articles, so I will not write about it here. Strengthening your body is a very important thing in the fight against depression, fears and bad mood. Please don't neglect this and don't limit yourself to just "emotional work." A healthy mind in a healthy body.

Conclusion

This article does not encourage you to immerse yourself in a world of sweet dreams and hide from fear. In this article, I tried to tell you how important it is to learn to face your fears, accept them, live with them, and not hide from them.

This path may not be the easiest, but it is the right one. All your fears will disappear only when you stop being afraid of the very feeling of fear. When you're done trusting him. When you don’t allow him to tell you what kind of transport to get to your vacation spot, how often to go outside, what people to communicate with. When you start living as if there is no fear.

Only then will he leave. Or he won't leave. But this will no longer matter much to you, since fear will become only a minor obstacle for you. Why give importance to little things?

How to get rid of fear is a question that concerns many who feel the influence of all kinds of phobias and negative mental states associated with them. The article describes the methods, techniques and techniques that help to overcome fears.

When dwelling on the peculiarities of the psychology of phobias, it is necessary to focus on the factors that distinguish them from fears as ordinary emotional manifestations of a person:

intensity: in phobias it is significant in magnitude (from increased emotional agitation to all-consuming horror) and is tied to specific thoughts, circumstances and objects;
sustainability: phobias are permanent and do not go away spontaneously;
unreasonableness: phobias are characterized by groundless, groundless experiences and anxieties at the level of expectations;
life restrictions: fear is surmountable and a person can do without everyday restrictions; with phobias, an individual necessarily has a tendency not to be a participant in certain events and situations.

Phobias have a pronounced biopsychosocial nature. It is the joint causes, from the point of view of biological, psychological and social foundations, that determine the emergence and existence of phobias.

Influence and role

When describing the experiences of a phobia, it should be said that it is not the individual who controls his condition (fear), but on the contrary - fear controls the person’s personality.

All behavioral manifestations, every action or decision of a person become dependent on the phobia:

An individual suffers from obsessive thoughts that traumatize his mental state. When encountering an object of fear, emotions with extremely negative manifestations are experienced, including thoughts of death or a feeling of loss of the ability to think rationally.
The instinct of self-preservation takes on hypertrophied forms - danger is seen where there really is none, as a result, a person even tends to fall into a stupor - a special physical and mental state of the body when external stimuli do not produce the desired response.
The harmful effect of fear on a person is that it can transform - fear changes its form, but retains its general image. It's like a well-recognized melody - we identify it, even if we hear it performed out of tune. So is a phobia - even small details, which are associated with it, are capable of knocking a person out of the usual flow of life.

How to get rid of fear

Methods, techniques and technologies that help reduce the paralyzing and discouraging effect of phobias help to get rid of fear and anxiety.

Experts in the field of overcoming phobias insist that a person who has been “taught” to be afraid (due to social influence, psychological trauma in childhood and later life) must also systematically and persistently “learn not to be afraid.”

Methods

The most common methods of releasing fears are as follows:

Overcoming Fear constant actions , single and sequential steps. We are talking about gradually working on the phobia, which contributes to “getting used to” the fear. If a person has a fear of heights and is terrified at the mere thought of air travel, it is necessary to adapt to the height: any minimal step will help - go up to the 6th floor and carefully look out the window (following safety rules, of course!). By gradually increasing this “load”, the individual will be able to change his reaction to height.
Reducing the “value” of the object of fear. In the mind of a person with a phobia, there is an excessive significance of the object of anxiety and worry. This state of affairs forces us to spend a lot of moral energy where it should not be done. A thorough, detailed (in detail) analysis of the subject of fear and an attempt to simplify your attitude towards it as much as possible will help you gain confidence.
Spontaneity in actions, decisions and deeds. A person’s uncertainty is facilitated by preliminary experiences: the situation has not yet arrived, but the individual has already experienced a range of negative feelings about the negative development of events, expectations of experiencing fear again. You should not first replay upcoming actions in your head - this only arouses anxiety and fear; it is more important to have an outline of thoughts, but not to succumb to thoughts of “how scary it will be,” but to act arbitrarily and instinctively, only reacting to the situation here and now.
A striking example from life- the best guide to getting rid of fear. The example of behavior of a confident and experienced person in similar exciting circumstances helps to overcome your inner fear, anxiety and fear. Here the internal limitation (the barrier of the unknown) – the motivator of fear – is removed. It turns out that in such situations you can behave easily, naturally and confidently, without any fear. Here the overcoming of formed complexes, patterns and stereotypes of behavior of a person with a phobia occurs.
Relaxation– both physical and mental. The feeling of panic, characteristic of many phobias, concerns not only mental properties, but also relates to physiology. Muscle tightness causes a person to shrink mentally. When the body relaxes, the mind also relaxes. This dependence also applies in reverse side. The best option– avoid tension in the body, remain relatively relaxed. Then a person’s mental capabilities will also allow him to fight fears.
Method of understanding. It assumes the ability to analyze and realize one’s own pros and cons that exist within each person when assessing a situation or life in general. We are talking about the actual fear of acting if there is no deep confidence that the individual really needs it. It is important to understand what motivates or displeases a person more - the fear of experiencing fear again or the fear of not being able to cope with it if you resist. Weighing the positives and negatives will allow you to make informed decisions.
Method of knowing yourself. By studying one's own capabilities and limitations, a person finds support in himself. Such objectivity allows one to overcome suspiciousness and unreasonable self-esteem and makes it possible to resist groundless fears.

Technicians

Fear that arises outside the instinct of self-preservation is considered far-fetched and pathological, giving rise to depression and stress.

Several technical techniques will allow you to avoid such far-fetchedness:

turning off negative thinking– involves overcoming a fixation on the negative: the “switch” technique – mentally imagining obsessive fear in the form of a switch and abruptly turning it off with a jerk downwards (once it’s gone, the main thing is to imagine it clearly and in detail);
an easy way to avoid fear– breathing: “inhale courage and exhale fear”, the technique is based on the dependence of the physiological manifestations of fear (rapid heartbeat, intermittent breathing, sweating) on rationally organized calming breathing (inhale – light hold – exhale, twice the inhalation time);

action in response to anxiety and excitement: in the case when a person undertakes to do something that he is afraid of, a special energy force arises - drive, it is under its influence that a person can realize himself on the path of overcoming fear (an individual is afraid of an audience - he must undertake to speak in front of it at every opportunity);
we drive out like like: fear can be frightened by oneself - the technique is based on the fact that a person independently causes physiological reactions accompanying fear (rapid breathing, increased heartbeat), thereby causing destruction complete image fear reactions, emotions are more conscious and controlled;
play a role: a person’s subconscious attitudes regarding fear can be overcome by role-playing confident person– the shoulders straighten, the “emperor’s posture” is assumed, the chin rises high, a smile appears on the lips; If you hold this physiological state in yourself for a few seconds, the brain will respond to the actions of the body and the fear will go away.

Consolidating success

It is possible to overcome fear quickly and forever only if permanent job over yourself and your personality. It is important to constantly work on your own self-esteem:

Every single victory is recorded – even small and seemingly insignificant ones.
The causes of failures are analyzed and, based on the results of the analysis, a scenario for achieving success is drawn up.
The creation of self-support will significantly affect the situation in the fight against phobias. This may be faith in science and explanations of all its phenomena. Or faith in higher powers that will not leave you and will always help you. The main thing is confidence in a positive outcome and hope for a favorable result while making the most of your own capabilities.
Focus on positive emotions. Love for to a loved one– a lot is overcome for her sake. Smiling from the heart and complimenting others will also allow you to feel positive in return.

Video: 3 ways to get rid of fear

Every person experiences anxiety or is afraid of something from time to time. This is a normal phenomenon, but only if fear and anxiety do not occur too often and for any reason. In this case, a person cannot lead a normal life, since negative emotions do not allow him to live in peace. Let's figure out what needs to be done to get rid of fear and anxiety, and what psychologists say about this.

Anxiety and fear are natural emotions that nature has endowed humans with. IN difficult situation they help him by mobilizing physical and mental resources, and in a moment of danger they can even save a life.

But in some people these negative states appear as if for no reason. In fact, there is a reason, it’s just hidden deep in the subconscious. For example, people who have experienced serious difficulties or severe shocks begin to fear that a similar situation may happen again in the future.

Pessimists are also often worried and afraid. A negative outlook on life makes a person expect a bad outcome from almost any event. And if this really happens, the pessimist becomes even more convinced of the correctness of his way of thinking, thereby strengthening his tendency to negative experiences.

Symptoms of anxiety and fear

When a person begins to worry or fear something, he experiences not only negative emotions, but also certain physiological reactions. His muscles tense, his heartbeat and pulse quicken, he feels chills and lack of air in his chest. Hands begin to tremble, sweating increases. At the same time, obsessive thoughts swarm in your head, your imagination draws all sorts of unpleasant pictures, increasing the feeling of anxiety.

It is often difficult for a person to determine exactly what emotions he is experiencing. Anxiety is characterized by an unpleasant painful sensation in the chest, in the heart area, and the expectation of trouble. Fear puts you into a state of panic, in which a person switches off rational thinking. He cannot calmly sit down and analyze the situation, he is simply afraid and panics.

If the experiences do not leave a person for a long time, his appetite worsens or completely disappears, his sleep becomes superficial and intermittent, he wakes up at night and cannot fall asleep for a long time. For some people, on the contrary, their appetite increases, and they try to “eat up” their negative emotions.

A state of chronic stress takes away strength, so a person feels exhausted and tired. All this cannot but affect his life. If you do not get rid of the feelings of fear and anxiety in a timely manner, there is a danger that they will develop into a real mental disorder. Therefore, psychologists advise learning to cope with negative experiences on your own.

Methods for dealing with fears and anxiety

Almost every person is capable of overcoming fears and anxiety, negative emotions and experiences. It's not as difficult as it might seem at first glance. You just need to set a goal and follow the advice of psychologists. So let's look at the most effective recommendations specialists that can be used at home.

Find out the reason for your worries. If you want to get rid of anxiety and worry, be sure to find the cause. Think about what kind of situation scares you. Maybe you are afraid of heights, crowds, communication with strangers or speaking in front of an audience. Remember when your fear first appeared, in what situation it happened.
Don't hide from your fear, don't deny it. If you honestly acknowledge its presence in your life, it will become easier to deal with it.
Learn to relax. Anxious states cause you to be in constant voltage, take away energy and strength. Therefore, it is very important to learn to relax. To do this, you can use any method: a warm bath, a walk in the park, an evening jog. fresh air, yoga or meditation, breathing exercises, listening to pleasant, soothing music. Try to distract yourself from the experiences that torment you and devote yourself to your chosen activity.
Discuss your fears with a loved one. There is nothing better than sharing your worries with someone you trust. This could be a close relative or friend to whom you can open your soul. Tell us what worries and concerns you and listen to your interlocutor’s opinion. Very often, after such a conversation, a person begins to treat his problem more calmly, and his feelings lose their severity.
Put your thoughts on paper. If you don't have someone you can trust, don't despair. Keep a diary and write down all negative experiences there. This will make it easier for you to understand yourself and understand what exactly worries you and in what situations fear manifests itself most strongly.
Laugh and smile more often. Bring more humor into your life. Watch comedies or comedy shows, read jokes, look for various funny jokes on the Internet. It's good to do this in the company of friends. This way you can have a good laugh, relieve stress and forget about your worries for a while.
Don't sit idle. When a person is not busy with anything, negative experiences begin to attack him, and gloomy thoughts swirl in his head and do not allow him to relax. The best thing to do in such a situation is to get down to business. Do whatever you want: clean the apartment, cook a delicious dinner, pay attention to your husband or wife, play with your child, go to the store.
Give some time to fears and anxiety. Most likely, you will not be able to constantly keep your feelings under control. There is no need to do this. Set aside 20-30 minutes for them every day. At this time, let your imagination draw the most terrible pictures. Give free rein to your anxiety, give in to it completely. Don't analyze your emotions, just experience them. When the allotted time is up, return to your normal activities. If anxiety begins to overcome you during the day, simply write down the thoughts that are bothering you on paper, and you can worry about it in the allotted time.
Don't dwell on the past. If you have had unpleasant situations in the past that caused internal fear or anxiety, your thoughts may often return to these events. Don't let them do this. The past has already passed and it is not at all a fact that the negative scenario will happen again. Relax, calm your nerves and live in the present moment.
Do some visualization. As soon as your imagination begins to paint you terrible pictures of possible events, immediately, through an effort of will, switch it in a positive direction. Visualize clearly and in detail the most favorable outcome of the situation that worries you. Visualize until you feel that the anxiety has left you or at least significantly decreased. Psychologists and esotericists claim that regular positive visualization can influence life circumstances, turning them in the desired direction.
Don't plan your actions in advance. Usually, before an important event, people think through their every step, rehearse their actions and words. If you are very anxious, then let your actions be spontaneous. Very often they turn out to be much more effective than planned. Trust the situation and act according to the circumstances.
Don't feed your fears. If you have a tendency to worry excessively, try to avoid reading or watching news, crime reports, and other information on TV as little as possible, which will only aggravate existing fears and create fertile ground for the emergence of new ones.
Change your eating habits. Some foods we eat tend to aggravate anxiety. This includes tea, coffee, alcohol. Reduce the amount of these foods in your diet or eliminate them altogether. By the way, excessive indulgence in sweets also increases anxiety, because when blood sugar rises, a person develops an unreasonable feeling of anxiety.
Talk to people. If you feel anxious, don't sit alone. Go to a crowded place - a cinema, theater, concert or exhibition. Meet with friends more often. Give preference to live communication, but if this is not possible, do not neglect conversations on the phone, Skype, or correspondence on the Internet.
Use affirmations, mantras, mudras. In esoteric literature one can find a lot effective means to combat negative experiences. One of the most popular are Sytin’s sentiments. You can use ready-made texts or create your own based on them.

Help from a psychologist in dealing with fears

If you've tried all of the above methods for dealing with anxiety but haven't gotten anywhere, don't worry. It is better to seek help from a psychologist or psychotherapist.

Often the roots of increased anxiety lie so deep in the subconscious that a person cannot find them on his own. The task of a psychologist is to help a person understand the causes of fear, remove them from the subconscious and teach him to overcome anxiety.

Some people are embarrassed to seek help from a psychologist. You don't need to do this. You are not embarrassed by a therapist or a dentist, but a psychologist is the same specialist, only in the field of mental, rather than physical, problems. He will help you deal with your fears and give useful recommendations.

If you can't cope with your anxiety, ask a therapist to prescribe anti-anxiety medications. You can also use folk remedies. Drink decoctions from medicinal herbs having a sedative effect. These include mint, lemon balm, valerian root, motherwort, and chamomile.

Overcoming fears and anxiety is a step towards victory

If you are tormented by anxiety or fear, don't be shy about it. Many people are afraid of something, but most of them try to overcome and remove their fears and, as a rule, they manage to win. Try it too.

Remember that negative emotions such as anxiety and fear can be turned into a positive direction by making them work for yourself. Many famous people achieved success in life precisely thanks to their fear, which mobilized them, forcing them to work and go to new heights.

Doctors, scientists, athletes, poets, writers, artists and representatives of many other professions were afraid of being unrecognized, afraid of defeat and ridicule from other people, and these experiences helped them overcome difficulties and go towards their goal, making every effort to achieve it.

As you can see, anxiety and fear can be turned from enemies into your allies. Work on yourself, and you will definitely cope with your negative experiences.

Fear is one of the negative human emotions that affects certain areas of life. How to get rid of fear and anxiety? Psychology shows that negative emotions arise as a result of an imaginary or real danger to a person’s life. Psychologists attribute fear to emotions that we have from birth, having genetic and physiological elements. Negative emotion causes defensive reaction body to external influences.

How to get rid of fear within yourself, question 1

Every day a person faces dangerous situations that result in a feeling of fear. Fear is a negative emotion that has a long-term or short-term effect that appears after a false or existing danger to life. This condition is marked by unpleasant sensations, warning the body about the necessary protection, since its main goal is to preserve own life.

Causes of manifestation Negative emotions in a person are:

Explicit;
Hidden.

As a rule, the individual does not remember the obvious reasons, but the hidden ones come from childhood and arise subsequently from excessive guardianship, conflict, and psychological trauma. Phobia is a necessary reflex that performs a protective function.

How to get rid of fears and phobias yourself, question 2

Phobias there are three types:

Biological, these include fear for one’s own life.
Social, these include fear of situations that can humiliate a person in the eyes of other people.
Existential, associated with fear of death, old age, time.

In addition to all that has been said, it is worth noting the existence of intermediate phobias that are located on the border of any two groups. For example, the fear of getting sick refers to both biological and social factors. There is fear for one’s own life and fear of being cut off from the team. Fear of fire is a biological factor, fear of people is a social factor, and fear of death is an existential factor. For each person, a phobia manifests itself differently: it paralyzes some, while it activates others. This emotion is purely individual and reproduces all genetic characteristics, such as character, upbringing, culture of communication.

Highlight two types of fear:

external;
internal.

Subsequently, due to its numerous manifestations, fear is considered a negative emotion, since it adversely affects general condition human health in general. The power of a negative emotion is that a person, out of fear, avoids situations that cause negative feelings. Severe fear can provoke various kinds of diseases. Neurotic fear is observed in virtually any person, however, if a negative feeling flows into a state of passion, then the individual develops panic, aggressiveness, and a desire to escape. Fear is necessary for further survival, but there is also a reverse reaction, which is pathological in nature and where the intervention of doctors cannot be avoided. Each human fear plays a specific role and manifests itself for a reason. For example, fear of heights protects a person from falling from the roof of a house or a cliff, fear of fire forces a person not to walk near it and as a result protects from injury.

How to get rid of panic fear, question 3

A weakened psyche very quickly manifests its attitude to stimuli and therefore restless thoughts interfere with a person’s normal life.

A panic attack occurs as a result of a number of factors:

depression;
stress;
anxiety;
apathy;
neurosis;
schizophrenia.

Anxiety and similar conditions form a neurosis that progresses to the stage of a panic attack. This condition cannot be predicted; it can appear absolutely anywhere: at work, on the street, at home. A panic attack is characterized by the following symptoms: suffocation, tachycardia, migraine. In rare cases, nausea or chills may occur. The duration of the negative state is from 1 to 2 hours, several times a week. This disorder can manifest itself against the background of overwork, in people with an unstable psyche. Women most often fall into this category, as they are more vulnerable and react sharply to stress.

Delayed depression can occur in men after a divorce, especially if they have lived in a marriage for 5 years or more.

However, men are also susceptible to panic attacks, but few of them admit it. This type of fear does not disappear on its own; a state of panic will haunt the patient almost always. Treatment is carried out strictly under the supervision of experienced specialists, and relieving conditions with alcohol will only aggravate the situation, as a result of which panic will manifest itself not only during periods of stress, but also for no reason at all.

How to get rid of the fear of pain, question 4

Having once experienced a painful sensation, a person tries to avoid a repetition of the unpleasant feeling and fear acts as a protective mechanism that prevents dangerous situations. A phobia is not only useful, but also harmful to a person. An individual, not understanding how to get rid of a negative feeling for a long time, may not visit the dental office, trying to avoid serious operations. In this case, fear is fraught with a destructive function that must be dealt with promptly. Currently, medicine uses a wide variety of anesthesia methods, and therefore the phobia is exclusively psychological in nature. Fear of pain rarely appears from previous experience; most likely, this is a protective function.

How to get rid of anxiety and fear at home, solution

Exists large number different methods in the fight against this disease. Any individual can independently overcome their fears, otherwise it will be difficult to achieve their goals, it will be difficult to realize themselves in life, and to gain recognition. You need to instill in yourself the habit of moving forward no matter what, no matter what dangers appear along the way. Fear is a simple reaction of the body that occurs as a result of trying to do something new. A negative emotion can be strong or weak. An individual is not born immediately successful.
The main cure for fear is accept your fear, come to terms and move forward.

In order to overcome negative emotions you need increase your self-esteem.
How you love yourself more, the less phobias you have.
Any positive emotion helps overcome your fear.
How you perceive life's moments easier, the less your worry.