Free Yourself from Fears (3 page)

You cross the road.

So does he.

Then you run.

That is a real situation in the present moment. Nothing has happened, but the situation is potentially dangerous. The fear makes you run, you weigh up the evidence and decide to take action. Better to look stupid than to get hurt. This fear is genuine, it happens in the present moment: there may not be real danger but you don’t wait to find out. The fear is a mixture of the stimulus and your imaginings about it. If the stranger attacked you, then the fear would be strong, immediate, and authentic.

How do you decide if a situation is truly dangerous? Are you running from a real danger, or from a fantasy of what might happen? You may never know, and it is often safer that way. In this example the fear is useful: it makes you take action to get away from a potentially dangerous situation.

The parachute jump

Now a third circumstance. You decide to do a sponsored parachute jump to raise money for charity. You take the training, learn how to fall, discover how to operate the parachute (safely on the ground), and are excited about the whole idea. You and your companions feel a bond of friendship; you are all willing to put yourselves in danger to raise money for charity.

The fateful day approaches. You do not sleep so well the night before and wake up excited. Your apprehension grows as you travel to the airfield: maybe part of you hopes the car will break down or the plane will not be able to fly because of bad weather. You get on the airplane and watch the ground recede. If in the past you have been afraid of flying, this day you are not—now you are afraid of leaving the safety of the airplane. Of course, you laugh and joke and do not let people know what you are feeling.

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WHAT IS FEAR?

At 7,000 feet up you get ready to jump, it’s your turn. You are terrified. Why? Because your imagination has constructed all sorts of scenarios ranging from falling to the ground like a stone if your parachute does not open, to breaking a leg when you land awkwardly, or drifting out to sea. You have never jumped out of an airplane before and now it seems like a crazy thing to do. However, you trust your training. You trust your instructor. You feel confident that you know what to do. You believe that parachutes work and that the odds against yours not working are very, very small. It is important to make the jump because you have been sponsored by many friends and relatives for a large amount of money. And of course your sense of pride won’t let you back out now. So you take a deep breath, commend your soul to your God, and jump…

The parachute opens, of course.

A few minutes later, you are safely on the ground feeling wonderful, all fears forgotten.

In this example, most of your fear comes before the jump, because of your imaginings of what might happen. Your fear is not about what is happening, but what might happen. It comes mostly from your imagination.

The jump could be dangerous. Parachuting is a dangerous sport and people are hurt and occasionally killed, so your fears are not groundless. However, you have the resources and the training and you believe it is possible to jump safely. Your values (raising money for charity and your pride) support you in going ahead. So while there is a small risk of danger, you believe you can handle it and you will be safe. The fear comes from your imagining of worst-case scenarios.

As you jump, the feeling is an adrenaline rush of excitement that is sometimes difficult to separate from fear. (If you pulled the release cord as you fell and the parachute did not open, then you would experience strong, authentic fear in that moment!)
The pay raise

A fourth example: A junior manager has been with his company a year and decides he needs a raise in salary. His work has been good.

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His wife is pregnant. They need extra money for their child. He must ask his boss for an increase. His boss is demanding, sarcastic, and not easy to talk to. He is also known to be unsympathetic to requests for a higher salary and he can be very unpleasant if he does not like you.

Our junior manager knows this and is frightened: frightened of rejection, frightened of being shouted at, frightened that he will not get the raise. None of these things has happened—yet—but his imagination makes them real. They are all imaginary scenarios, constructed in his mind as he tosses and turns in bed the night before, trying to get a good night’s sleep to be ready for the day of the fateful meeting.

This is an example of unreal fear. The manager fears a future that exists only in his mind, like the parachutist in the last example, but in this case the danger is not to his life or health (his boss is not going to attack him), but to his values, self-esteem, and pride. His fear is about what might happen, not what has happened. He does not know what will happen, but the result is important to him—and his imagination rises up to fill the void.

He will feel afraid immediately before and during the meeting, and this may make him less effective at persuading his boss to give him the raise. So his fear may bring about his worst imagining. All he can do is prepare as best he can with all the facts and persuasive arguments that he can muster. He also needs to make sure he is in a good emotional state. If he did not care about getting the raise, then he would not be frightened. He cares about the raise because he cares about his family. There is an important value behind this fear.

Fear of snakes

A fifth and final example: A man with a phobia of snakes goes to watch the film
Raiders of the Lost Ark
. He is enjoying it immensely (except the scene when Indiana Jones has a snake as an unwelcome flying companion at the beginning of the film), until Indy is trapped in a pit of poisonous snakes. Then, he feels ill. He can’t look. The screen is full of snakes. His mind is slithering. He can’t stand it and he gets up hurriedly, pushes along the row of seats, and leaves the cinema as quickly as possible.

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WHAT IS FEAR?

This is an example of unreal fear. This man is in no real and present danger. There are no snakes in the cinema. But the images are real and terrifying and have tremendous meaning for him. The environment has supplied a trigger for a fear that already existed and was probably built in his childhood. Perhaps he had a very frightening experience with a snake when he was young and has never forgotten it.

These examples show how two elements combine to create fear.

Sometimes the fear comes completely from the stimulus in the present moment. Sometimes it comes completely from our imagination about what might happen. Most fear is a mixture of the two.

What these examples have in common is fear of loss: loss of life, loss of health, loss of something you value, loss of wellbeing, loss of self-esteem. Loss is a fundamental driver of fear.

The third law of fear:

Behind all fear is a fear of losing something we value.

The NLP approach to fear

NLP is about how we create our experiences and how we represent them in our minds, in our bodies, and in words.

The
neuro
of neuro-linguistic programming is about the mind, how we think. We use our senses to experience the external world and then we use our senses on the inside to think about it. In NLP terms, thinking is using our five senses internally. We see mental pictures, hear sounds and voices in our minds, create feelings, and imagine smells and tastes. These may be remembered or imagined.

NLP explores the meaning we make of the fear stimulus. It is not what we think, but how we think it that creates fear. How else can we explain why some people are afraid of heights or dogs or lifts and other people are not?

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For example, one man may be afraid of dogs because when he thinks of dogs, the picture that comes to mind is a huge, slavering, growling, “Hound of the Baskervilles”-type mastiff. He may not be conscious of this image, but he knows that he is afraid of dogs. The mental picture itself may have been formed when he was a child, when he encountered a big, fierce dog, and he has never forgotten it.

The good news is that with NLP, he does not have to go back to the initial traumatic event and relive it, or even remember it. With NLP

he can learn to make another representation of a dog and so feel more comfortable.

We can apply the same principle to dealing with any fear with NLP. NLP suggests that we learn our fears—from experiences, from our parents and friends, and from wrong information—and helps us to unlearn them. NLP proposes that we use mental strategies; that is, how we sequence our thoughts. Unreal fear, worry, and anxiety are created by the way we think, not what we think about. This book contains many techniques from NLP to unlearn our fear strategies and to learn new ones that do not create fear.

Anchors

In common with most other psychological models, NLP also proposes that our past influences our feelings in the present. It uses the concept of “anchors.” An anchor is a picture, sound, feeling, taste, or smell that automatically links to an emotional state. These anchors can be in the outside world (real sights, sounds, smells, and tastes) or in our imagination. They are formed from either unique traumatic experiences or repetition of the same experience.

Anchors are the basis of habits. They can trigger good or bad feelings. Here we are concerned with the anchors that trigger fear. With NLP we can first of all be aware of the anchors and then learn to react differently to them.

Language and physiology

The
linguistic
part of NLP deals with language. How we talk about something influences how we feel about it. Changing the language 16

WHAT IS FEAR?

you use will change how you feel, especially as you can self-talk your self into feeling afraid.

The
programming
part of NLP is about physiology. We are all familiar with the physical feeling of fear: the tightness in our chest, the sinking feeling in the pit of the stomach. There are many ways to influence these feelings, not just to control the feeling of fear in the moment, but also to weaken the response in similar future situations—to become a calmer and less stressed person. NLP supplies ways not only to overcome fear in the moment, but also to unlearn the thinking that gave rise to fear in the first place.

The physiology of fear

Whatever the cause of fear, it always expresses itself through the body.

We cannot be intellectually afraid. Fear puts us in touch with our body.

How do we create the feeling of fear? What happens? The neuro-physiology of fear has been very well mapped in the last decade.

Imagine for a moment that you see a fleeting shadow outside the window and hear a suspicious sound as you sit alone watching the television one night. It could be a threat, so your neural circuits, built up over thousands of years of evolution, leap into action, much more quickly than any rational analysis.

The stimulus goes from the ear and the eye to the brain stem and then to the thalamus. From there, the nerve impulse branches. One branch leads to the temporal lobe where the visual and auditory signals will eventually be analyzed and understood. The other branch goes to the amygdala and the hippocampus. The amygdala is an almond-shaped cluster of nerve fibers just above the brain stem. The hippocampus is part of the innermost fold of the temporal lobe and is the key storage site for memories. It also analyzes the signal to compare it with other memories to determine if it is threatening or not.

If you can reassure yourself that the stimulus means nothing, then the signals stop there. If you are unsure, your brain goes to level two 17

FREE YOURSELF FROM FEARS

alert. The signal reverberates between the hippocampus, temporal lobe, and amygdala; you become more alarmed and more alert.

The amygdala is the most crucial part of this process. It is the brain’s headquarters for fear. Remove the amygdala and you would not feel fear and would not be able to recognize the signs of fear in other people. The amygdala is always on the alert, sorting through your sensory impressions to see if there is anything alarming. When it is triggered, it orchestrates all the other fear reactions and feelings.

It links to the hypothalamus, the part of the brain that controls movement, and to the autonomic nervous system. It signals other parts of your brain to put a frightened expression on your face and to freeze what you are doing in order to pay attention to the possible danger.

Fight or flight

The result is a “fight or flight” response that happens more quickly than conscious thought. The hypothalamus triggers the pituitary gland in the brain to produce chemicals that trigger the two adrenal glands, just above your kidneys. The adrenal glands release several hormones, primarily adrenaline, noradrenaline, and cortisol. The adrenaline produces the familiar surge in the pit of the stomach, but other changes are happening too.

The hypothalamus triggers the release of beta-endorphins, which act as painkillers so we can withstand pain and discomfort. They make us more alert. The pupils of our eyes dilate, so we see more. Our body hair stands more erect so we are more sensitive to touch, vibration, or air currents. Our hearing becomes more sensitive. The vocal chords are tightened, making our voice higher pitched. Blood flows to the large muscles where the blood vessels dilate, and away from the routine body processes like digestion. Our pulse rate and blood pressure go up. Our breathing becomes quicker and deeper to take in more oxygen to the blood for the muscles to react more strongly and quickly. We are ready for action in an instant.

When the danger is over we start to calm down, but it takes much longer for us to return to our resting state. We will be much more alert for the next few minutes. The physiology of fear and anxiety is the 18

WHAT IS FEAR?

same as the physiology of anger; the same chemical substances are released. This explains why often people are aggressive even if the danger is averted.

For example, a mother is walking with her children, and one runs into the middle of the road in front of a car. The car stops in time and the child is safe. The mother will hug the child, but probably shout at it too. The sudden fear reaction has wired her to fight or flight and when those are blocked, this energy still needs to go somewhere.