Fear is a natural and vital emotion, or rather an affective state. Healthy fear provides self-preservation. This is a sign of intelligence and fantasy, a desire to live. Justified fear, such as fear of fire from leaving an electrical appliance on, is helpful. Like pain, it warns us of a possible or emerging problem. But what if fear is out of control and interferes with life? Read on.

Like any phenomenon, fear can be viewed from two sides, positive and negative:

  • The negative power of fear is that, being out of control or turning into anxiety, behavioral disorders, and the like, it spoils the life of the individual.
  • The positive power of fear is that it enables development. From the fear of ignorance, schools have appeared, from the fear of death and injury in road accidents, mechanics are improving cars, the fear of poisoning forces us to handle and store food more carefully.

Differences between fear and anxiety

Fear is an emotion that is closely related to another - anxiety. Sometimes these definitions can be confused. However, there are 3 characteristics that differentiate these concepts:

  1. Fear is more specific, for example, there is a fear of heights. While anxiety is not clear-cut.
  2. Anxiety is a subjectively significant emotion. It is caused by things, values ​​that are significant for a particular individual. Anxiety arises against the background of the threat of the personality itself, its essence, worldview.
  3. Before anxiety, a person is often helpless. For example, if uncertainty during an earthquake causes anxiety, then the person has no power to influence it.
  4. Anxiety is a constant phenomenon, fear is due to a specific situation.

The specifics of fear

You can distinguish real and false fear:

  • The first one we experience in critical situations. For example, when a car gets into a snow drift and is about to roll over.
  • False fear - imaginary experiences about what did not happen (“What if I get into a skid?”). It is with false fears that we must fight.

When we experience fear, there is an increase in sensory attention and motor tension. That is, we are more actively watching and are ready to quickly run (act).

Uncontrolled and unprocessed fears turn into phobias and anxieties, which provokes personality neuroticism.

Signs of fear

Signs of fear include:

  • anxiety;
  • anxiety;
  • jealousy;
  • shyness;
  • other subjective states;
  • uncertainty;
  • physiological changes;
  • avoiding the object of discomfort.

Causes of fear

Among the reasons are:

  • self-doubt and other disorders;
  • children's psychological trauma;
  • constant stress and often repetitive critical situations;
  • the instinct of self-preservation.

The latter reason prompts normative fear.

As V.A.Kostina and O.V. Doronina note, fear can be hereditary. Moreover, women are more inherent in social fears, and men - fear of heights. Fear of heights, darkness, fear of doctors, punishment, loss of loved ones is inherited.

Why fear is dangerous

With fear, a number of physiological changes occur in the body. The work includes the hypothalamus, pituitary gland and adrenal cortex. As a result of the activation of the hypothalamus, corticotropin is produced. It, in turn, includes the nervous system and the pituitary gland. It triggers the adrenal glands and produces prolactin. The adrenal glands secrete cortisol. Together with this, adrenaline and norepinephrine are produced. Externally and internally, all this manifests itself:

  • an increase in pressure;
  • increased heart rate and breathing;
  • opening of the bronchi;
  • Goose bumps;
  • a decrease in blood flow to the organs of the digestive and reproductive systems;
  • dilated pupils;
  • the release of glucose into the blood;
  • fast burning of fats;
  • an increase in acidity in the stomach and a decrease in the production of enzymes;
  • disabling the immune system.

That is, the body gets stressed and goes to a low start.

In case of real danger, this allows you to think faster, see better, hit harder, run faster. But if the fear is imaginary and constant, then the body does not benefit from everything that happens to it at that moment. That is why psychosomatic diseases develop against the background of fear:

  • stool disorders,
  • swelling of the bronchi,
  • dyspnea,
  • chest pain.

Thus, a vicious circle arises. For example, you are afraid of getting sick, but against the background of fear you get sick. In addition, the more often you experience fear (stress), the less you can rationally assess the situation, which translates into chronic phobias.

Just don't say that now you have a fear of fear (that was not my goal). In any case, now we will deal with him. Read on.

Most popular fears: description and solution

One of the most popular fears is the fear of death (your own or loved ones). This is the most controversial phenomenon:

  • On the one hand, it can reach such proportions that a person will close within four walls and will simply unwind the allotted time.
  • But on the other hand, it is a normal fear that makes us look around when we cross the road.

There is only one way to cope with it - to accept. All people are mortal. There is no point in experiencing death several times in your thoughts and overshadowing your whole life with this.

Other popular fears include fear of others, of oneself, of time, of fear.

Fear of others

The basis of fear is criticism, and yours in the first place. To overcome this problem, try not to criticize yourself, but to praise. It is natural for a person to project his shortcomings or problems onto others, that is, in people we notice and scold what we do not accept in ourselves. And, as it were, we are playing ahead of the curve, until we noticed it. That is, we are afraid that our shortcomings will be noticed. This also includes:

  • pickiness;
  • resentment;
  • vindictiveness;
  • unpleasant character traits (conflict, deceit, dishonesty, avoiding problems, indecision).

If you notice this in people and are afraid to experience it yourself, then you probably already experienced it in your face for a long time. On the same basis, the fear arises to seem ridiculous, to fall under the evil mood of someone. Solution to the problem: demonstrate yourself what you want to see in others.

Fear of yourself

We are talking about the fear of their own ailments, imperfection of the body, loss of strength and the like. The solution to such a problem is to achieve harmony of body, brain and soul. This is a very difficult and broad path. To put it simply, this is getting rid of psychosomatics.

Learn to listen to your body and accept the fact that it is a system that is capable of self-regulation if not thwarted by imaginary fears. Have you ever said: “I myself don’t understand how I could do it. Now I won't repeat it on purpose ”? Here is the answer.

Fear of time

Learn the here and now principle. Fear of the passing time is often accompanied by self-flagellation due to postponing something for later or to the will of fate. You need to learn to act and take responsibility for your actions.

  • Get rid of laziness.
  • Understand the principle of "everything in good time", but in the context of your fulfillment of your life plan and creating favorable conditions, and not waiting for the intervention of external forces.
  • Review the situations in your head before doing something in practice (of course, only with a successful outcome).

Fear of fear

First of all, learn to call a spade a spade. Not "I'm nervous," but "I'm afraid of something." Basically we are talking about the fear of the unknown. Read about overcoming it in the paragraph "From fear to freedom" of this article.

  1. Learn to overcome your fears and use them for good. There is no need to be ashamed of fear, but you need to overcome it and resist it. The optimal method in this case is "wedge by wedge". It's important to face your fears face to face. If in alcoholism treatment begins with the acceptance (sounding, acknowledgment) of the problem, then the correction of fears begins with a face-to-face confrontation.
  2. When working with fears, it is important to understand that it will not work the first time. You have to be aware that it will not be easy, but it will be worth it. In case of failure, prepare an alternative plan (people with fears are best at coming up with workarounds), but use it only as a plan B.
  3. Pretend you are not afraid of anything. Imagine you need to play a role on stage. After a while, your brain will believe that you are really not afraid of anything.
  4. Fears about the future are least justified. You are creating your own future, so pay attention to the present. Fears about him are much more justified. Tormenting yourself with something from the future ruins your whole life. You exist, you do not live.
  5. Accept that our lives are made up of white and black stripes, sometimes gray ones. Troubles, difficulties and uncertainties will often appear. The important thing is not to be afraid to face it, but to be sure that you can handle it. To do this, you need to be the master of your life.
  6. Most fears stem from childhood. But, first, a child and an adult perceive the same things differently. Secondly, fear or disagreements with a particular person are often projected onto the subject. For example, you have problems in your relationship with your parents, but you are afraid of the dark (you were once locked in a closet). Then there is only one solution - to let go or discuss the grievances.
  7. Have you noticed that fears are always directed towards the future (even if they are based on the experience of the past), and fears develop due to imagination? So why not redirect your energies, for example, to creativity? Learn to shift attention. Understand that working through future events that most likely will not happen, you are wasting real physical, mental and psychological strength. Aren't you sorry for that?
  8. The fear of the unknown is the most unjustified. You do not yet know the object (phenomenon) itself, so how do you know that you need to be afraid of it? Try it. Didn't you fly by plane? Try it. And then decide whether you will be afraid or not.

I want to make a reservation that you cannot rush into the pool with your head and neglect your safety. That is, living a full life without fear does not mean going to snowboarding, getting crippled and being disabled. Living without fears means making decisions yourself and being responsible for them, understanding all the risks and possible consequences.

The body is able to heal itself. Your task is to bring him out of the state of eternal tension. And for this, relaxation was invented. We are talking about a conscious relaxation of the body, replacing negative emotions with positive ones. But let me remind you once again that you only need to get rid of unhealthy fear.

Healing plan

To overcome fear, you need to consistently solve a number of tasks.

  1. Change faith in bad (this is fear) for faith in good. Here, everyone has their own recipe: someone turns to nature, someone to spirits, God, their own old pleasant memories.
  2. Next, find support in someone and give it yourself.
  3. Learn to listen to your body and trust your intuition.
  4. Find the root cause of false fear.
  5. Make up your recipe for courage. These are detailed aspirations (desires) and ways to achieve them. It is important to describe not only what needs to be done, but also what you can do.
  6. Refocus attention from the result to the process.

You can read about each of these points and how to accomplish them in L. Rankin's book “Healing from Fear”. The work provides practical recommendations for meditation, the search for inner strength, the development of courage. For each element (beliefs, courage, search for reasons, etc.), a whole list of techniques with descriptions is presented. The author has presented so many techniques in one publication that I think you will definitely find there something for yourself.

From fear to freedom

If you are still reading this article, then you are probably in the staunch captivity of your own fears and are looking for a way to freedom. Right? Well, he is. Includes 5 points:

  1. Exit from the unconscious. Avoiding risk takes more energy than the risk itself. A person is driven by the thought "reliability is better than regret." In order to step over this step, ask yourself the question: is the comfort zone really the one for you? Imagine who you could be if it weren't for your fears.
  2. Leaving a perceived comfort zone. At this stage, a person is driven by the belief that uncertainty is the only constant and clear in his life. That is, a person understands that he is infringing upon himself, but remains in the old place. It is important at this stage to stimulate yourself with praise. You are a brave person and will be able to get out of your zone.
  3. At the third stage, a person is not afraid of uncertainty, but he is not looking for it either. Doubt more, be curious.
  4. Search for the uncertain, unknown, new. Learn to see opportunities.
  5. Acceptance of uncertainty as such (in the concept of the world). Realize that anything can happen, but any event has meaning.

The fifth stage is the final one. This is the same freedom without fears that must be enjoyed. However, this is the most unstable stage. Your freedom must be constantly reinforced and maintained with practice. Otherwise it is easy to lose it.

Emergency help

  1. If fear has taken you by surprise, then you can quickly find inner strength by switching attention. Once you realize your fear, direct your attention to your brightest passion, desire. Concentrate on this. Want it enough that there is no room for fear. Even if objects of passion and fear are from different "worlds". Reassure yourself to deal with the scary things quickly and then do what you want.
  2. The second way to quickly overcome fear is to imagine what it takes away from you. Usually people evaluate only one side: from what fear saves them. Imagine how much fear grips your potential, your personality, originality.
  3. Engage in self-hypnosis. Repeat daily in front of the mirror, “I am the master of my life. Everything that happens (both good and bad) is up to me. There is no place for fear, as well as meaning in it. "
  4. If fear is clearly delineated, then thoroughly study all its sides. Look at his face. Find the pros.
  5. The most unconventional and categorical method of struggle is worrying about the consequences of anxiety. This is a dubious way, but it exists. Imagine how the situation will worsen from your worries (after reading this article, you know what your body experiences during a period of fear). Oddly enough, the realization of "playing against yourself" will calm you down. But I'll say right away that the method is not suitable for everyone. You can go into even greater self-torture. Be careful!

Childhood fears

Despite the individual nature of fears (although, as we remember, they are not so subjective, unlike anxiety), they are based on the actual need of age. Therefore, you can generally classify fears by age:

  1. Up to six months - fear of sharp and loud sounds and movements, loss of support.
  2. From six months to a year - fear of dressing up, changing the familiar, unfamiliar people, height.
  3. From one to two years - fear of doctors, injury, separation from parents.
  4. From two to three years - fear of the dark, parental rejection, animals, loneliness, nightmares.
  5. From three to seven years - fear of insects, water, heights, fairy-tale characters, misfortunes, disasters, fires, schools.
  6. School period - fear of harsh sounds, death, physical violence, loss of loved ones. Together with this, social fears arise, which persist in the future (fear of being late, not coping with the task, being punished). If you do not work out these fears, then there will be a fear of not living up to expectations, looking stupid; relationship problems.

Age-related fears are normative if the child does not fall out of life (sociable, open). They will pass by themselves. But if the child avoids communication, is constantly scared and worried, then professional correction is needed.

Childhood fears can be imitative or personal. In the first case - copying someone's behavior, in the second - your emotions under the influence of difficult situations.

In addition, fears can be short-term (up to 20 minutes), fast-passing (go away after the conversation), protracted (up to 2 months, even with corrective work).

Children's fears: what to do?

You can fight childhood fears with the help of fairy tale therapy. As part of this, I recommend that you familiarize yourself with the book by R. M. Tkach "Fairy Tale Therapy of Children's Problems." In the work you can find not only a description of the method, but also the material (plots) of the fairy tales themselves.

  1. Do not shame your child for fears, but ask about them. For example, what he saw, and how it looked, what it came for.
  2. Accept the child's fear and tell a real or fictional story about personal fear and how to overcome it.
  3. Do not close the child in a dark room for the sake of punishment, do not frighten Baba Yaga or an "evil uncle" who will take him away. This is a direct path to neuroses and fears.
  4. Ask what the child is watching or reading. Discuss this together.
  5. Use fairy tale therapy or ridicule fears to overcome specific fears.

Ridicule involves visualizing fear (on a piece of paper) and then adding funny (for a child) elements to it.

I also recommend the book by S. V. Bedredinova and A. I. Tashcheva "Prevention and correction of fears: a tutorial." It presents many practical options for therapy with children to overcome fears. I think it makes no sense to list the techniques here. The manual describes puppet therapy, art therapy, a correction program, and much more (with indications and contraindications for each method, features of the conduct). The phenomenon of children's fears themselves is also described.

Results and literature on the topic

Fear is the echo of the animal in man, the primitive. Previously, this emotion was justified even being constant. But in the modern world, this prevents a person from living. The situation is aggravated even more when fear is intertwined with anxiety, shame, guilt, and other emotions.

The danger of fear is not far-fetched. It not only creates psychological discomfort, but also physically destroys the body. In part, the phrase "Who is afraid of what will happen to him" is true. And we are not talking about the supreme forces, attracting misfortunes and ailments. We are talking about the fact that, experiencing fear, our body radically changes its work: there is an excess of hormones (with prolonged excessive influence provoke imbalance and intoxication, destruction of organs), the digestive and reproductive systems fade into the background, the activity of the cardiovascular system is gaining momentum ... A person can really get sick.

It is necessary to get rid of fear (remember, false fear). But only childhood fears can pass themselves. Adults will have to deliberately break themselves, rebuild their belief system, throw themselves constant challenges, draw up a plan of action.

I recommend reading one more book: DT Mangan "The Secret of an Easy Life: How to Live Without Problems." The author reveals his own concept, according to which we are a complex mechanism, which requires flogging to enable or disable systems. The book provides practical advice on restructuring your thinking, including for getting rid of fears. To solve each problem, Mangan suggests using a unique password. These are the words to be spoken in difficult situations. And from them, the situation will supposedly turn in your favor. I myself have not tried this approach, so I can't say anything good or bad. But in my opinion, the very idea of ​​the concept is interesting.

In the fight against fears, as in any business, the main thing is the beginning! You yourself will not notice how it will become easier to fight. Gradually it will no longer be a struggle. Well, the result in the form of complete mental freedom is the highest reward. I wish you success in the fight against your inner demons!

When a person experiences an unjustified, irrational fear, the right hemisphere of the brain is activated. Therefore, to restore peace of mind, you should use the left hemisphere, which is responsible for logic and rationalism.

Rational therapy is the treatment of fear by persuasion through logic and reason. In the fight against fear, it is important to cool down emotions and turn on the mind.

The basic principles in overcoming fear are as follows:

  • Give up worrying about fear. Don't be alarmed.
  • Identify the subject of fear and try to understand how ridiculous and unreasonable it is.
  • Try to identify the flaws in yourself that provoke fear and, through self-education, overcome them.
For example, resentment and fear of looking stupid is the result of painful pride. Fear of illness is treated with the belief that, from a medical point of view, health indicators are normal and there is no reason to be afraid.

When a person is not able to accept logical arguments, the most productive methods are suggestion, self-hypnosis, autogenic training and neurolinguistic programming, when working together with a psychotherapist.

How to overcome fear? It is important to assess the chances that the worst will happen and understand that they are always negligible. For example, in plane crashes, according to statistics, 1 person per 1,000,000 killed by the air fleet, which is only 0.0001%. This is significantly lower than the risk of dying from a heart attack or a car accident. Therefore, when experiencing fear, it is important to analyze the magnitude of the risk.

1. Compare your fear to your stronger one.

Sometimes it may seem to a person that the whole world is against him. Material well-being, career and relationships with loved ones are at risk. It seems that the situation is so desperate and nothing can save. How to defeat fear in this case? Do not exaggerate and dramatize your situation! Compare your situation with real tragedies, and you will realize that you are still very lucky!

People who were able to survive truly terrible moments, being one step away from death, say that they no longer know how to worry about trifles and value every day they live.

2. Imagine that all that you fear has already happened.

In the most critical and dead-end situation, let go of fear and assess the current situation calmly. Imagine the worst that could happen. Now try to come to terms with it. Now you need to relax, let go of unnecessary tension and collect all the energy to try to correct the worst situation that you imagined.

By doing this, you stop wasting all the reserves of your body on inappropriate experiences and free your mind for useful activities - looking for ways out of this situation. Believe me, once you calm down, there is a way out of the impasse very quickly.

3. Load yourself as much work as possible.

The danger that awaits us is terrible only until the moment is unknown. As soon as it becomes clear, all forces go to fight it, and there is no time to worry.


How to overcome fear even in the most dangerous situation? Don't give yourself a minute of free time. When activity fills completely consciousness, it supplants fear. Intense activity is one of the most effective ways to overcome anxiety, worry, and fear.

As D. Carnegie wrote: “A person suffering from anxiety should completely forget about work. Otherwise, he will dry up with despair. Roll up your sleeves and get down to business. Blood will begin to circulate, the brain will become more active and very soon the vitality will increase, which will allow you to forget about anxiety. Keep busy. This is the cheapest cure for fear - and the most effective! "

4. Remember: you are not alone in your fear.

It seems to every person who comes to a psychologist's session that his problem is the most difficult and unique. It seems to him that only he has problems with communication, sex life, insomnia, courage, while others have nothing like this.

In this case, group therapy is a very effective cure for fear. When people meet, get to know each other and jointly discuss common problems, the acuteness of the experience is significantly reduced.

5. Act as if the fear is gone.

Human physiological and emotional responses are interrelated. Even if you do not feel the way you want at this moment, you can pretend, and this will gradually align your inner feelings.

The best conscious way to be awake is to sit awake and speak and act as if you are overwhelmed. To feel bold, act like you're inspired by boldness. If you exert all your will, the attack of fear will be replaced by a surge of courage.

6. Live in the here and now.

This advice applies more to those who are worried about an uncertain future. As the English philosopher Thomas Carlyle said: "Our main task is not to look into the foggy future, but to act now, in the direction that is visible.".

Scaring yourself with a scary future is one of the stupidest things to do, and yet many are happy to waste their time on it. The burden of the past, and the burden of the future, which a person takes on himself, turns out to be so heavy that it makes even the strongest stumble.

How to deal with the fear of the future? The best thing is to live in the present, enjoy the present, and hope for a better future. Even if it does not turn out to be like that, in any case, you cannot reproach yourself for having spoiled the present, too, with your painful experiences.

For "here and now" psychologists advise taking not just a minute and a second, but the current day. As Carnegie wrote: « Any of us can live with hope in the soul, tenderness and patience, with love for others until the sun goes down ».

How to get rid of fear is a question that worries every person from time to time.

After all, it's no secret to anyone that everyone has their own phobias, and this is quite natural.

But what if fear turns into an obsession and does not allow a normal existence?

Before finding an answer to a troubling problem, it is worthwhile to understand the reasons for the appearance of an overwhelming panic feeling.

Fears: reasons

Among the many causes of panic attacks, there are four main ones:

Attachment to things and people;

Self-doubt;

Childhood mental trauma;

Diseases.

A person who has deep affection for a loved one may be prone to fears about the loss of a loved one. Therefore, jealousy is nothing more than the fear of loss. In this case, the person is not able to identify himself with the individual, since he is completely in psychological dependence on another person.

Often the individual falls under the "power" of material things: money, an expensive car, property. A person begins to be haunted by obsessive phobias that he can lose all this at any moment. It is common for all people to sometimes feel fear about the loss of a loved one or a very expensive thing. Sometimes it is very difficult to determine when the edge of reasonable fear ends and the disease begins. If an individual is constantly haunted by obsessive, panicky thoughts, then the help of a psychologist may be needed. The specialist will help you understand yourself, identify the main source of the phobia and select individual methods that will help get rid of the fear.

Uncertainty, like dependence on people and circumstances, is a person's worst enemy. Lack of faith in oneself, a feeling of inner failure, inability to change anything for the better in one's life gives rise to the most destructive phobia.

Fear paralyzes, inhibits, destroys from within. The individual falls into a vicious circle from which, as it seems to him, it is impossible to escape. This reason must and can be fought, but only if there is a passionate desire to get rid of fears.

Self-doubt has its roots in childhood. A child deprived of the attention of loved ones and love, most often, grows up timid, downtrodden and unsure of his own strength. In adulthood, such an individual is regularly haunted by panic attacks. He is deprived of the inner energy that his peers subscribed to, surrounded by care and warmth.

Childhood mental trauma has the same etiology as uncertainty, therefore it is closely associated with it. A child who was regularly yelled at in childhood, physically punished, grows up as an improperly formed personality with many complexes.

Another reason that gives rise to fear in a person and is not associated with childhood experiences is illness. It is not uncommon for people with chronic illnesses to feel anxious about their lives. They begin to get overwhelmed by panic attacks about the fact that at any moment they may lose their lives. Such fear can and should be treated, since in most cases it is unfounded.

How to get rid of fear: what types of fear you can overcome on your own

There is no one universal remedy or specific answer to the question of how to get rid of fear. Everything is purely individual and largely depends on the person himself: is he ready to face his phobias and start a fight with them.

Overcoming anxiety is a large-scale, hard work on oneself. If an individual does not find the strength to cope with his own fears on his own, no specialist will help him. Success depends on 99% of your own efforts and only 1% of the treating psychologist, who will help you understand and direct your thoughts in the right direction.

Therefore, you can cope with many types of fear on your own. It so happens that a person does not want to seek medical help, but is determined to get rid of his own phobias. In this he can be helped by our mini-guide and many videos on this topic, which the Internet abounds in.

How to get rid of fear: what types of fear are treated only by specialists

Unfortunately, it is not always possible for a person to cope with panic attacks on their own. First of all, this applies to those phobias that are associated with deep psychological trauma from childhood.

In this case, you may need not only psychological help, but also hypnotherapy. The result will largely depend on the qualifications of the specialist and his total experience in this area. Only an experienced psychologist is able to "reach out" to the patient and give multifaceted answers to the question of how to get rid of fear.

Another of the most serious types of fear is social phobia, which can often only be dealt with with the help of a psychologist. Sociophobes are easy to spot in a crowd. Since childhood, they prefer to keep apart. You won't find them in the backyard sandboxes playing with the rest of the kids. As adults, such people prefer to avoid public places and choose to work from home.

Noticing the first symptoms of social phobia in yourself or in your child, you should immediately solve the problem, since in the future this will lead to serious consequences: the inability to communicate normally with people and fully coexist in society.

How to get rid of fear: step-by-step instructions

1. Visualization... Before you start fighting an invisible enemy, you need to recognize him by sight. Answer your questions honestly: What are you most afraid of? “Knowledge is power” is an undeniable paradigm. Once you've identified your main phobias, be alone with them and imagine the worst that could happen.

Continue imagining until you begin to feel numb from your own imaginary phobias. Visualization is often the best way to get rid of fear.

2. Arithmations... Mental attitudes can be a good method of getting rid of fear. Throughout the day, week, months, a person repeats arithmations to himself, aimed at cleansing from internal anxieties. A simple example of internal attitudes can be such phrases: “I accept my fears and learn to manage them”; “I let go of my fear,” etc. Our subconscious mind is capable of performing miracles. Even if initially the consciousness resists believing your words, over time, the subconscious mind takes your affirmations for granted and starts the process of "recovery". It is very important to take this very seriously, as arithmations are endowed with tremendous power. It is also important to draw them up correctly. Your settings should not contain phrases with a "NOT" particle. For example, by regularly repeating to yourself such a combination as "I am NOT afraid", you thereby attract even more panic and anxiety to yourself. The fact is that our subconscious mind is not able to recognize this particle. Thus, your inner voice hears the opposite: "I'm afraid!" Therefore, incorrectly composed arithmations, instead of positive results, can be harmful.

3. Action... You can talk for a long time about how to get rid of fear, and not move a single step towards overcoming it. Courageous people are not people who are not afraid of anything. These are individuals who were able to face their fear and were able to overcome it. Remember, only action conquers fear. Do what you fear most. People who adequately perceive their fear and manage to rationally coexist with it become the most successful.

How to get rid of fear in a child

Sometimes parents do not want to admit for themselves that they are the main reason for the development of phobias in a child.

Children who have not received parental warmth, hearing eternal reproaches about wrong behavior, acquire a bunch of complexes that are reborn into fears.

But often the reason for the appearance of fear in a child can be excessive custody on the part of loved ones. Babies are born without any kind of phobias. And only with time do adults "impose" their fears on the child. Instead of allowing their child to explore the world around them, parents warn him at every step.

The child grows up, and deeply ingrained words: “don't go there”, “don't touch it”, “can't” take root in the subconscious of the individual. A person becomes indecisive and incapable of great accomplishments. How to get rid of his own fears, it is difficult for him to understand.

In order to prevent this, there must be a golden mean in the upbringing of a child.

Hug your baby more often and say you love him. It will not be superfluous even in adolescence. Love and care of others helps children to cope with inner fears better than any words.

Parents who do not want their child to grow up deeply insecure should not set too many restrictions and punish harshly for wrongdoing.

Experts call the method of play an effective way to get rid of fears in children. With the help of games, the child is given the opportunity to experience a frightening situation in a fictional reality. This approach helps the baby to emotionally clear his phobias.

It is very important that games aimed at overcoming fears contain both real and fictional models with a positive bias.

These games should inspire and stimulate action. Spending time with your child in a playful and fun, relaxed form of communication will definitely give its positive results.

In addition to love, care and spending time together, the child is in dire need of approval from adults. That is why you should not forget to praise your child as often as possible. This will help him grow into a full-fledged person.

The biggest obstacle to achieving your goal in life is fear. Find out how to get rid of fear and start living life to the fullest!

What is the danger of fear?

We experience fear in different situations, when the husband is away from work for a long time, when the children are on vacation, when there is an important meeting, etc.

However, fear not only causes unpleasant sensations and negative emotions, but also contributes to the fact that our experiences are embodied in reality¹.

Fears and experiences break through the protective shell - the aura², and we become susceptible to negative influences from others.

Below you will find an exercise shared by our reader Anna. It allows you to cope with any fears and ensure your own safety.

Before moving on to practice, a person needs to imagine some place where he will be comfortable and calm.

How to get rid of fear? From personal experience ...

“I made a turret for myself with an open door. 10 steps down - this is in order to have time to relax. When I go down, I count the steps from the 1st to the 10th. A closed door is in front of me. I open it and immediately see a huge mirror.

Quickly, for a moment, I reproduce the negative in the mirror, then the mirror explodes into small pieces, and I draw in my imagination a positive picture - what I need. I look at her for a while, leave, close the door and go up the stairs, counting the steps. 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 ”.

The technique of getting rid of fear

So, to get rid of fear, a person needs:

1. Sit down, close your eyes, relax.

2. Then you need to mentally go down the steps and see a mirror.

3. The negative should be quickly projected in the mirror, and then the mirror should be broken.

4. After that, you should imagine a favorable situation, and mentally observe it for some time.

5. Then you need to climb the steps, counting them in the opposite direction.

This technique can be done anywhere. After training, it only takes a few minutes. With a certain skill, if an urgent need to get rid of fear, the technique can be performed in the presence of other people and performed with open eyes.

This powerful technique quickly helps you calm down and tune in to positive events.

Anna Khakimova

Notes and feature articles for a deeper understanding of the material

¹ You can learn more about how our fears materialize in the article.

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'll share not only techniques to help you overcome fear, but also how to deal with fear and how to change your life so that there is less room for anxiety.

I myself had to go through many fears, especially during that period of my life when I experienced. I was afraid to die or go 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 have 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 for the emergence of fear has performed a protective function. He shielded us from danger. Many people are instinctively afraid of snakes, because this quality was passed on to them by inheritance from their ancestors. After all, those of them who were afraid of these animals and, as a result, avoided them, had more chances not to die from a poisonous bite than those who showed fearlessness towards crawling creatures. Fear helped those who experienced it to survive and pass this quality on to their offspring. After all, only the living can reproduce.

Fear causes people to have a strong urge to flee when faced with something that their brain regards as danger. Many people are afraid of heights. But they can't help but guess about it, until they find themselves high for the first time. Their legs will instinctively begin to give way. The brain will give alarming signals. The person will be eager to leave this place.

But fear helps not only to protect yourself from danger during its occurrence. It allows a person to avoid even potential danger wherever possible.

Anyone who is mortally afraid of heights will no longer climb onto the roof, since he will remember what strong unpleasant emotions he experienced when he was there last time. And thus, possibly save himself 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 is not always in line with our survival goals. And even if he 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 the threat is dismissively small.

The odds of dying in a passenger plane crash are roughly one in 8 million. However, many people are afraid to travel by air. Getting to know another person is not a threat, but many men or women experience great anxiety about being around other people.

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

We see that the natural mechanism formed by evolution often gets in our way. Many fears do not protect us, but rather make us vulnerable. So you need to intervene in this process. I will tell you how to do this further.

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 that we simply stop being afraid of fear itself? "

What reactions does the feeling of fear evoke in a person? As we found out earlier this:

  1. Desire to eliminate the object of fear. (If a person is afraid of snakes, will he run away? When he sees them
  2. Unwillingness to repeat this feeling (A person will avoid snakes wherever possible, not build a dwelling next to their den, etc.)

These two reactions tell us our instincts. A person who is afraid of dying 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 fear. For example, he gets drunk, takes sedatives, asks for 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, this behavior often makes no sense. After all, the fight against fear is a fight against instincts. And if we want to conquer instincts, we should not be guided by their logic, which is indicated in the two points above.

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

It is due to the fact that during attacks of fear people behave the way their gut tells 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 altogether! Deliver me from this! " Some methods can help them for a while, but still fear can return to them in one form or another. Because they listened to their instincts, which told them: “be afraid of fear! You can only be free when you get rid of him! "

It turns out that many people cannot get rid of fear, because, first of all, they seek 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 the floors of your house, including the balcony. The robot can use the reflection of radio signals to estimate the height at which it is. And so that he does not fall off the edge of the balcony, you programmed him in such a way that his brain signals him to stop if he finds himself on the edge of the height difference.

You left the house and left the robot to clean. What did you find when you returned? The robot froze on the doorstep between your room and the kitchen and was unable to cross it due to the slight height difference! A signal in his brain told him to stop!

If the robot had "intelligence", "consciousness", he 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 send a signal of danger! The robot's mind would simply not obey the absurd command 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 should do if you want to get rid of fear is stop trusting fear, stop taking it as a guide to action, stop being afraid of it. You need to act a little paradoxically, and not as your instinct tells you.

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

Fear is simply a stream of chemical signals that are converted into a command for your body.

But your consciousness, in spite of the work of the program, can itself understand in what cases it encountered a real danger, and in what situations it deals with a failure in the "instinctive program" (approximately the same failure that occurred with the robot when it could not climb through the threshold).

If you are experiencing fear, this does not mean that there is any danger. You shouldn't always trust all your senses, as they often deceive you. Do not run away from a non-existent danger, do not seek to calm this feeling somehow. Try to just calmly wait until the "siren" ("alarm! Save yourself!") In your head is silent. This will often be just 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, not a "primitive" brain, to make decisions (boarding a plane, approaching a stranger).

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

Afraid is normal. There is no need to strive to immediately get rid of fear (or from what this fear causes). Because if you only think about how to get rid of him, you follow his lead, you listen to what he tells you, you obey him, you take it seriously... You think: "I am afraid to fly on an airplane, therefore I will not fly" or "I will fly on an airplane only when I stop being afraid of flying", "because I believe, I am afraid and am 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 an airplane, but I’ll still fly on it. And I will not be afraid of a fit of fear, because it’s just a feeling, chemistry, a game 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 as sudden attacks of fear only when I stopped fixating on getting rid of it! I began to think: “Let the attacks come. This fear is just an illusion. I will be able to survive these attacks, there is nothing terrible in 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 a tactic to them that was opposite to the logic of my instincts, when I stopped driving away fear, only then did it start 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 start to fear our fears, to take them seriously, we only make them stronger. The fear of fear only increases the total amount of fear and even provokes the fear itself. I was personally convinced of the truth of this principle when I suffered from panic attacks. The more I was afraid of new attacks of fear, the more often they happened.

With my fear of attacks, I only drove the fear that arises during a panic attack. These two fears (fear itself and the fear of fear) are linked by positive feedback and reinforce each other.

A person caught up in them falls into a vicious circle. He is afraid of new seizures and thereby causes them, and seizures, 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 strongly than fear in its pure form.

If we talk about fear in its "pure form", then it often does not have a very large weight in the total aggregate of fear. I want to say that if we are not afraid of him, then it is easier for us to get through these unpleasant sensations. Fear ceases to be "scary".

Don't worry if you don't quite understand these conclusions, or if you don't really understand how to achieve this attitude towards your fear. This understanding will not come immediately. But you can understand this better when you read my following tips and apply the guidelines from them.

Method 2 - Think Prospects

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

Perhaps this advice will not help you to cope with every fear, but it will help you to cope with some anxieties. The fact is that when we are afraid, we, as a rule, 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. It provides you with comfortable working conditions, and the salary at this place allows you to buy the things that you want to have. At the thought that you will be deprived of it, fear grips you. You immediately imagine how you will have to look for another job that 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 causes you anxiety.

But instead of imagining how bad it will be for you when you lose your job, think about what will happen next. Cross mentally the line that you are afraid to cross. Let's say you lose your job. Ask yourself what will happen in the future? Imagine your future over a long 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 job. You may not know for sure how much other companies are ready to offer to a specialist of your level until you go to interviews.

Even if you have to work for less money, which one? You may not be able to frequent expensive restaurants for a while. You will buy cheaper food than you bought before, prefer to rest abroad in the country at home or with a friend. I understand that now it 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 are used to a lot of things in your life. But, it is quite possible that this situation will not last your whole life, you will be able to achieve a promotion in a 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 he will have other, more interesting things. Because a child becomes a hostage of his momentary emotions and cannot think in the future!

Don't turn into this child. Think constructively about your fears.

If you are afraid that your husband will betray you and leave 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 start living a new life. After all, any human emotions are temporary! Don't be afraid of these emotions. They will come and go.

Imagine a 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 prospects, not failures! About new happiness, not suffering!

Method 3 - Be Prepared

When I’m nervous on a plane that’s coming in for a landing, thinking about the statistics of plane crashes doesn’t help me much. So what if disasters are rare? So what if it is statistically more dangerous to get to the airport by car than flying by plane? These thoughts do not save me in those moments when the plane starts to shake or it continues to circle over the airport. Anyone who experiences this fear will understand me.

In such situations, fear makes us think: "What if I am now in exactly one of the eight million flights, which should turn into a disaster?" And no statistics can help. After all, unlikely does not mean impossible! In this life, everything is possible, so you need to be ready for everything.
Attempts to calm yourself down, such as: "Everything will be fine, nothing will happen" usually does not help. Because such admonitions are lies. And the truth is that what happens, can do anything! And you need to accept it.

"Not a very optimistic conclusion for an article on getting rid of fear" - you think.

In fact, everything is not so bad, willingness helps to overcome fear. And do you know what train of thought helps me out on such intense flights? I think: “Airplanes rarely crash. It is very unlikely that something bad will happen right now. But, nevertheless, it is possible. In the worst case, I will die. But I still have to die someday. Death is inevitable anyway. Every human life ends with it. The catastrophe will simply bring closer what will ever happen with 100% probability. "

As you can see, being ready does not mean looking at things with a doomed gaze, thinking: "I will die soon." This means simply realistically assessing the situation: “it is not a fact that a catastrophe will occur. But if that happens, then so be it. "

Of course, this does not completely remove the fear. I'm still afraid of death, but it helps to be prepared. What is the point of worrying all your life about the fact that it will inevitably happen? It is better to be at least a little ready 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. Moreover, not everyone always wants to think about death.

But people who are tormented by the most absurd fears often write to me. Someone, for example, is afraid to go outside, because they believe that it is dangerous there, while at home it is much safer. It will be difficult for this person to deal with their fear if they wait for this fear to pass so that they can go outside. But he may feel better if he thinks: “Let there be danger on the street. But you can't sit at home all the time! You cannot completely protect yourself, even when you are within four walls. Or I will go outside and put myself in danger of dying and injury (this danger is negligible). Or I will stay at home until my death! 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 dwelling on their fears so much, and can at least sometimes look them in the face, realizing that behind them there is nothing but emptiness, then fears will cease to have so much power over us. We should not be so much afraid of losing what we already lose.

Fear and emptiness

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

Exactly so, although this is contrary to everyday logic. At the end of all fear, there is emptiness. We have nothing to fear, because all things are temporary.

This thesis can be very difficult to understand intuitively.

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

I myself use this principle regularly. I am still afraid of many things. But remembering this principle, I understand that every fear I have is meaningless. I shouldn't "feed" him and get too carried away by him. When I think about it, I find the strength to defy fear.

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

Method 4 - Observe

The next few methods will help you deal with the fear as it arises.

Instead of giving in to fear, try just observing it from the outside. Try to localize this fear in your thoughts, 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 it helps to remove fear altogether. Even if the fear persists, it's okay. Becoming an impassive observer, you begin to realize your fear as something external to your “I”, as something that no longer has such power over this “I”.

When you watch, 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 happens?"

And these thoughts feed the fear, it becomes even stronger and causes even more disturbing 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 amplify fear. To do this, simply turn off thinking, evaluating and interpreting and go into observation mode. Don't think about the past or the future. stay in the moment with your fear!

Method 5 - Breathe

During anxiety attacks, try to breathe deeply, taking longer breaths in and out. Diaphragmatic breathing is good at calming the 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 breathing through your belly, not your chest. Focus on how you breathe. Count the time for inhalation and exhalation. Try to keep this time equal for inhalation and exhalation and long enough. (4 - 10 seconds.) Just don't suffocate. Breathing should be comfortable.

Method 6 - Relax your body

When fear attacks you, try to relax. Calmly run your attention through every 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 was not fulfilled

This technique can help you deal with minor and repetitive fears. For example, you are constantly afraid that you might offend the person or make a bad impression on him. But it usually turns out that your fear never materialized. It turned out that you did not offend anyone, and it was just your own mind that scared you.

If this is repeated from time to time, then when again you are afraid that you said something wrong when communicating, remember how often your fear did not come true. And most likely, you will understand 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 there is little trouble! Make peace! Don't give too much 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 any danger. This feeling sometimes does not relate to reality, but is just a spontaneous chemical reaction in your head. Instead of being afraid of this reaction, treat it like a thrill, like a free ride. You don't have to pay money and put yourself in danger by skydiving for adrenaline rush. This adrenaline appears out of the blue. The beauty!

Method 9 - Accept Your Fear, Don't Resist

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

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

They begin to worry and thus only increase their fear. But the truth is that far away not always everything can be controlled... Sometimes these techniques will work, sometimes they won't. Of course, try to breathe, observe the fear, but if it does not pass, there is 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 the same time. The word "must" does not apply here at all. Because you are now feeling the way you are feeling. What happens is happening. Accept this 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, the inability to come to ultimate 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 badly need to produce an effect on the opposite sex, to achieve permanent victories on the love front, then this will lead us into a state of eternal dissatisfaction, and not happiness and pleasure, as it seems to us ... The sexual feeling, the conceit, cannot be fully saturated. 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 still happen with the advent of old age) and again we will suffer. At a time when there will be no love affairs, we will not feel the joy of life.

Perhaps some people will find it easier to understand attachment through the example of money. As long as we strive for money, it seems to us that by earning some 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 were not so attached to this and rejoiced at what we have (it is not necessary to stop striving for the best). This is what Buddha meant when he said that attachment is the cause of dissatisfaction. But attachments not only create dissatisfaction and suffering, they create fear.

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

I am not saying that you need to go to the mountains, give up your personal life and destroy all attachments. Getting rid of attachments completely is an extreme teaching suitable for extreme cases. But, despite this, a modern person can derive some benefit from this principle for himself, without going to extremes.

To feel less fear, you do not need to get too hung up on some things and put them at the core of your existence. If you think: “I live for the sake of work,” “I live only for the sake of my children,” then you may have a strong fear of losing these things. After all, your whole life boils down to them.

therefore try to diversify your life as much as possible, to let in a lot of new things, to enjoy many things, and not just from one thing. Be happy because you breathe and live, not just because you have a lot of money and attractiveness to the opposite sex. Although, as I said above, the last things will not bring you happiness.

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

Affection does not mean lack of love. As I wrote above, this is more understood as addiction than love. For example, I have very high hopes for this site. I love to develop it. If something bad 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 shaped not only by them, but by the very fact that I live.

Method 11 - Cultivate Your Ego

Remember, you are not alone in this world. The whole existence is not limited only to your fears and problems. Stop obsessing about yourself. There are other people in the world with their own fears and concerns.

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, not the center of it!

If you feel yourself in harmony with this world, without opposing yourself to it, 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 been the case, forever and ever.

With this consciousness, your fears will disappear. How can such a consciousness be achieved? It must come along with the development of the 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 this is just a feeling that you need to be ready for everything, that you cannot put your own ego at the center of all existence.

This is easy to understand theoretically, 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, applied in real life. Not all things in this world are available for "intellectual" cognition.

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

Meditation provides an opportunity to "reprogram" yourself so that you are happier and more free. 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 imperfection 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 get rid of it!

Through practice, you can find the source of happiness in yourself and not have strong attachments to different things. You will learn to accept your emotions and fears, not resist them. Meditation will teach you to watch 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. It will teach you how to deeply relax and get rid of fatigue and tension. And this is very important for people who are afraid.

You can listen to my short lecture on how to follow the link.

Method 13 - Don't let fear be imposed on you

Many of us are used to the fact that everyone around us is just talking about how scary it is to live, what terrible diseases exist, gasp and groan. And this perception is transferred to us. We begin to think that there are really scary things that we "should" be afraid of, since everyone is afraid of them!

Fear, surprisingly, can be the result of stereotypes. They are naturally 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 observe 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 of taking it any differently.

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 quite calmly, he treated it as an unchanging order of things. If you ask some spiritually developed person, perhaps a religious ascetic, a convinced Christian or Buddhist, how he relates to death, he will surely be calm about this. And this is not necessarily connected only with the fact that the former believes in an immortal soul, a posthumous existence, while the latter, although he does not believe in a soul, believes in reincarnation. This is due to the fact that they are spiritually evolved and have tamed their egos. No, I am not saying that you need to seek salvation in religion, I am trying to prove that a different attitude to those things that we consider terrible, perhaps, and it can be achieved along with spiritual development!

Do not listen to those who say 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 have highlighted this point with three exclamation marks, because this is one of the most important tips in this article. I touched on this issue in passing in the first paragraphs, here I will dwell on it in more detail.

I have already said that the instinctive tactics of behavior during fear (to run away, to be afraid, to avoid some situations) is 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 just stay at home.

What can you do? Go outside! Forget your fear! Let him appear, do not be afraid of him, let him in and do not resist. However, do not take it seriously, because it is just a feeling. You can get rid of your fear only when you start to ignore the very fact of its appearance and live as if there is no fear!

  • To defeat your fear of flying, you need to fly as often as possible.
  • To overcome the fear of the need for self-defense, one must enroll in the martial arts section.
  • To defeat your fear of dating 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 go for it.

Method 15 - Strengthen the Nervous System

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

Conclusion

This article does not call 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 only it is correct. 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 will not let him tell you what transport to get to the resting place, how often to go out, what people you should communicate with. When you start living as if there is no fear.

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