Overcoming fear: 4 psychological tips

Our detector of dangerous situations doesn't always work well. What do we do to fix it?

Knowing how to overcome fear can be what makes the difference between living a life confined to the comfort zone or moving towards the goals that can really make us happier. No change for the better comes without effort, and part of it must be aimed at overcoming those thresholds of uncertainty and doubt that impose so much.

In this article we will review some simple guidelines that will help us to overcome fear and that, although they will not eliminate it completely, they will cushion its effects.

How to overcome fear on a daily basis

Fear is one of the basic emotions of the human being, and its importance is due to the fact that, in many situations, it is useful to us. However unpleasant it may be when experienced first-hand, this psychological phenomenon is what leads us to avoid many situations that involve real risk, either because they carry a high possibility of physical harm, or because they may harm us in some other way.

Of course, fear does not necessarily have to be a mechanism that allows us to perfectly guess which situations will really harm us, but this is unavoidable. That is not the problem. The bad thing comes when we unconsciously use fear as an excuse not to leave our comfort zone, or when, because of certain learned dynamics, we internalize the idea that we should be afraid of certain things that we do not want to fear. fear certain things that do not carry such a high risk..

What to do in these situations? These tips will help you.

1. Learn the logic of emotional memory

Much of the fear we feel is explained through emotional memory. This is an information storage system that has to do exclusively with emotionsand not with concepts that can be easily explained with words. It is known that emotions are processed differently than, for example, our memories of what we had for dinner yesterday, and this means that they are sometimes associated with new experiences even though we have "memorized" them in totally different contexts.

Therefore, be clear that you are not to blame for feeling fear. This is part of a brain mechanics that is unconscious that is unconscious and that we cannot directly control.. Our efforts should be directed towards creating the possibilities for fear to cease to be associated with certain situations that are not really dangerous, or are not dangerous to the extent that we perceive them to be.

2. Come closer to what you fear little by little

This is the the logic followed in the psychological treatments applied to phobias, but it also works for non-pathological fears.but it also works for non-pathological fears. To know how to control fear, you must be clear that you will have to suffer a little, but only just enough.

This means that you will have to make progressive approaches to those situations that you fear, to gradually move towards situations that are more difficult for you. At the beginning, get a little closer to those environments or to those actions, then go a little bit furtherThe difficulty curve must always be ascending, but each time you will have more and more preparation.

It is good that beforehand you establish a gradation, ordering those situations from those that cause less fear to those that generate more fear, and that you establish deadlines in which you must achieve each of these objectives.

3. Let yourself be helped

As we have seen, fear is nothing to be ashamed of, so there is no reason to avoid getting help. Given the irrational nature of these fears, it never hurts to be reassured by the presence of others. the reassurance you can get from the presence of others, and their assistance or intervention in cases of fear.and their assistance or intervention in specific cases.

Think that although this emotion is powerful, you have the power to modify your environment to achieve your goals even in the moments when you think you are losing control. Establishing the necessary alliances for others to help makes us help ourselves indirectly, creating tools to solve problems in the moment when our ability to think clearly fails us.

This is one of those tricks for overcoming fear that many ovbianbecause they believe that psychological issues are dealt with through individual work or introspection: nothing could be further from the truth.

4. Learn to recognize if you need therapy

The line that separates pathological fear from that which is not is not always clear, but you should be clear that if the fear you feel is very extreme, you may need professional help to make progress. Fortunately, these types of psychological problems are relatively easy to treat if you go through psychotherapy, and results can be seen in a matter of a few weeks.

Of course, the fear will never go away completely, but it will no longer paralyze us or prevent us from approaching our goals. Although this is, in part, even positive. Doing something that feels in part like a challenge makes us feel better about going through it having overcome it.

Bibliographical references:

• American Psychiatric Association (1994). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders: DSM-IV. Washington, DC.
• Bracha, H. (2006). "Human brain evolution and the "Neuroevolutionary Time-depth Principle:" Implications for the Reclassification of fear-circuitry-related traits in DSM-V and for studying resilience to warzone-related posttraumatic stress disorder" (PDF). Progress in Neuro-Psychopharmacology and Biological Psychiatry.
• Olsson, A.; Nearing, K.I.; Phelps, E.A. (2006). "Learning fears by observing others: The neural systems of social fear transmission". Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience.