Why do we feel fear?

Fear is a primal response — meaning, we are pre-programmed to feel it. Its sole purpose is to keep us alive and safe. When our fear-brain assesses a perceived or potential threat, it kicks off this cascade response in our brains that shuts down all executive functioning and activates a fight, flight or freeze response to do what it deems necessary to survive the threat. Why does it turn off the higher functioning part of our brain? Because, while that part is wicked smart and capable of processing a lot of things, it works too slow to effectively protect us in times of danger.

This is super helpful when you think about our ancestors, right? I mean, during times of sabre-toothed tigers, the bubonic plague, or really anything that we could encounter playing the Oregon Trail…we needed fear to help us avoid or actively respond to deadly threats. We didn’t have time to think, we just needed to react.

But as we have progressed and the threats to our survival and safety have gone down, one would assume the fear response would have also decreased as the threats we face now are much less imminent and widespread. Worrying about an uncomfortable work meeting is not the same as seeing a bear running at me at full speed.

However, we have, instead, seen an increase in our fear response. A hyper-vigilance that derives from the increase in possibility, uncertainty and ambiguity on our everyday lives. The constant opportunity for newness has become something our brain fears, forcing it to become more like an over-protective mother that won't let us go out and play because there are too many unknowns.

Why has this happened?

Well, remember me saying that fear shuts down all executive functioning? Fear is housed in the old or reptilian part of our brain, far away from the high functioning part. And even though we have continued to evolve, fear is still running on the MS-Dos operating system…or, for video game lovers, think downgrading FIFA 2019 or NBA 2K19 to the original Pong.

Because of that, it cannot differentiate between active or actual threats (i.e. a bear running at you) from these more manageable fears and discomforts (i.e. an uncomfortable conversation or trying something new). It can only think in black and white, all-or-nothing thinking so there are only two options to how fear assesses anything - safe or unsafe. And in that case, anything that kicks off the same or similar physiological response as one would see in an active threat situation, completely unknown or something similar to an experience you had in the past where you experienced any pain or discomfort gets coded as unsafe.

Effect it has on our lives?

Fear will consume you if left unchecked. Similar to us talking about shame a few weeks back, fear works best in silence and when left untouched because then, it can consume our motivation, excitement, goals, etc and create a zone of “safety” within which you can live. Anyone that has worked with me before knows that I refer to this zone as the zone of “Predictable Shittyness” or the place we exist in that we don’t like but feels like at least we know how to survive it. 

Think about it. Let’s pretend you want to ask for a promotion, maybe considered ending a marriage or long-term relationship or wanted to try something new. The moment you try to walk forward with that idea you get a little sense of hesitation in your body. Your brain starts to question what you are doing and you start a cascade of rationalization as to why “now isn’t the right time” or “I don’t really want ‘x’ anyway”. 

The word “fine” starts to get used a lot - thrown up like a fresh coat of paint on shit-covered walls. “I’m fine staying in this job for a while”…“I’m fine in this relationship I can’t stand and where we haven’t had sex in 6 months”…“I’m fine with the life I have. I have what I need so why try for anything else?” 

Soon, fines become replaced with “should” and “supposed to” and we tell ourselves that we are comfortable. Like sleazy used car salesmen, fear gets us to take the “easy” or “safe” option rather than getting what we really want because the fear we hold on to about “what if” and what I “should” be doing outweighs the dreams, motivations or goals I have. I would rather be safe and know it will be “fine” then try for something riskier only to fail, be made fun of or find out it wasn’t worth it.

Over time, this cycle is what creates our life of “Predictable Shittyness”. We focus all of our energy on the small patch of comfort zone we live within and trick our brain into thinking we are growing and evolving by perfecting and perpetually pruning the lives we lead. We become automated and robotic versions of ourselves, following a mundane but safe existence and even though we feel discontent, we would rather exist in that then have the possibility of things being worse.

Clients say that to me all of the time - “But at least I know how to do this. I don’t know how to live outside of the ‘Predictable Shittyness".” We don’t like it but we feel safe. And that is how fear consumes us. It thinks it is protecting us by creating an existence we cannot stand where we do not strive for anything beyond culturally imposed standards and the “shoulds” and “supposed tos” we have internalized and tricked ourselves into wanting, leaving us shells of the person we truly are.

Types of fear.

Fear shows up in our lives in one of three ways:

• Fear of the Unknown. We fear anything we don’t know the answer to or what the outcome will be. This is the fear scary and suspenseful movies play on, which weirdly, so many of us seem to love. But beyond that, it is what makes us fear death, going to the doctor or dentist when we have a pain or ache, and avoid new things because we don’t know exactly how something will turn out. And without certainty, our brains tend to focus on the worst-case scenario leading us to avoid that experience (or even talking or thinking about it) at all costs.

  
  

• Fear of Failure. It isn’t so much the idea of failure that we fear as much as it is the fear of judgment. Think about it, if you were baking a souffle for the first time, would you rather do it when you had 12 party guests over or when you are doing some baking and catching up on Netflix by yourself? 99.9% of us would pick making it by ourselves. Why? I mean, they both have an equal chance of going poorly. Because it is the fear that others will see our mistake that leads to that avoidance.

  This is one of the biggest contributors to the perfection of the “Predictable Shittyness” bubble — The fear that we would try for something better and fail is unbearable. People would see. Others would know. If I left my relationship of 20 years to find something more fulfilling, everyone would know. If I quit my job to do something that brings me joy, others would hear about it. And then, what if I can’t find anything else? We stay in a cycle we can predict how to exist in so that we don’t have to play the “what if” gamble all of the time.

  
  

• Fear of Success. Which is basically the “Fear of Failure” in disguise. The worry here is if we reach that “goal” or “endpoint” and then we can’t maintain it or keep growing. Or worse, we get it and then we realize we don’t actually want it. This plays at odds to the fear of failure piece and is the opposing end of the barrier that perpetuates the “Predictable Shittyness”. Again, it’s about knowing how to live in the mundane but fearing anything that could happen outside of it — too many possibilities. Too much uncertainty.

We have all felt all of these in our lives, whether conscious or not. And these fears have dictated many decisions we have made including putting off looking at our finances, going to the doctor, talking to a loved one about something difficult, asking for a raise…and the list goes on. Each of these 3 categories can have dire effects on our lives if we let them and it is instead about learning more about the way our fear-brain works and how we can work with it that we can better work through and manage our fears without always enacting that fight, flight or freeze cascade.

Okay, so how do I conquer my fears?

You don’t. Remember all of that good stuff we said fear does for you? Well, conquering fear would not only mean taking away not only some of the negative consequences but all of the positive consequences it has on our lives. Do you really want to have to think twice if you see a bear running after you? What about that feeling in your gut when you can tell something is not safe? Or when you don’t eat something that was sitting out for too long because fear tells you it may be bad for you?

Fear is also a sign we are doing something new and exciting. Without that physiological reaction, we would not be excited about a new opportunity or invest as much into delivering high-quality outcomes because we wouldn’t care as much about the outcome.

No, it is not about conquering something that can work for you. It is about building a better relationship with it and creating a better understanding of how to leverage it to create the life you want to live.

Okay, fine. So how do I build my relationship with fear?

As you can imagine, this is a topic that cannot be worked through in one sitting or in the contents of one email. So, let’s focus on 3 tips you can do to start building momentum and get started working on building a better relationship with fear.

1. Acknowledge fear’s presence. Remember, fear is not going anywhere — and we don’t really want it to. We just want it to be okay sitting in the back seat sometimes. But too many of us let fear exist in silence and without calling it out, naming it or acknowledging what it is doing in our lives, we inadvertently give it free rein. So instead, we need to work on identifying and acknowledging when we feel fear and get curious about where it is coming from and what anticipatory threats (real or perceived) it is seeing.

   Many of you know how much I enjoy Elizabeth Gilbert (seriously, I think we could be great friends) and one of the things she talked about in an interview for her book, Big Magic, was that she has to learn how to see her fear almost as an entity separate from her and to really focus on communicating with it. She would see it show up when she was sitting down to write or giving an interview and would say, “Thank you for showing up; I know you want to protect me. Right now, I am just sitting down to write — your services are not needed right now.”

   And I LOVE this way of thinking about it. Externalizing the problem is something we do in therapy all of the time. Name it. Create a separate entity for it and then talk to it. I named my fear Charlie — I don’t know why (my anxiety’s name is Henrietta in case you wondered about that one too). And whenever Charlie shows up, I tell him, “Thank you for caring enough about me to make sure to keep me safe. Right now, I am just writing a blog post/giving a speech/talking to a friend — your services are not needed right now. I am safe.”

   
   

2. Stop mind-reading and fortune-telling. We cannot predict the future nor do we know what others are thinking. Projecting insecurities in this way only leads us to assume a negative outcome or assessment and colludes with our fear. Instead, ask yourself what evidence you have to support these thoughts. How do you know? Are there other possibilities? Practice flexible thinking.

   And then start to move from a pre-determined outcome to the idea of “what is the worst that would happen?” and then go down, as I like to call it, the rabbit hole of “and then what?”’s which allows you to walk through what would happen and what you would do. This helps to train your brain to see that 1) it is highly unlikely the worst-case scenario will happen and 2) that you are much more prepared to deal with negative outcomes than fear wants you to believe.

   
   

3. Redefine “success”. This was huge for me. So much of my fear comes down to the fear of judgment. As a recovering perfectionist, I existed in the shadows of shame for a long time. I believed my worth and value were determined based on the assessment or response from others and without that reinforcement or response, I would dismiss my worth or the worth of the product, service, act, etc I shared with the world. Speaking engagements ended up only being successful if I had “X” number of people in attendance or “X” rating on my feedback slips. Art shows were successful if I sold “X” amount or if “X number of people commented on my work. My business was only successful if I made “X” amount of money or worked “X” hours. And social media definitely allowed this to expand. The number of likes or comments on a post determined whether or not what I was doing and if who I was, was enough.

   Sure, I can sit here now and say how fucked up that is but when we are in a cycle-dependent on the external feedback and validation from others, it simply becomes our norm and we don’t think twice about our rating system. How many of you have deleted a post because not enough likes or comments were made on it? How many of you were excited about something and then if someone else shot it down or did not react the way we wanted or hoped they would, you let the idea or dream go?

   This is not to shame any of us. This is just to point out how hard it is to exist in a world build on external validation and cultural pressures without defining success in those same ways. But, the more we do that, the more each of those 3 types of fears is enacted - we fear the “what if” or “what could happen”, we fear judgment, we worry about being successful and as such, being seen or having to exist in that pressure…it is all-consuming.

   So instead, it is time to change your definition to something that fits you. Now, I see speaking events as successful if I can show up authentically in the room. I see success in allowing myself to connect with people rather than focusing on perfection. I see art shows as a success if I meet and talk to 3 new people. I see my business as a success simply because I had the balls to start it and enjoy the work I do. And I see my life as a success simply by showing up fully and enjoying the moment. I focus less on the reactions from others and focus on how I feel and the moments of complete presence and flow I can exist within. What definition of success have you been living in? How was fear using that to its advantage? What changes can you make to this definition so it better aligns with the you that you want to be?