Does fear run your life?

Fear.

It's such a simple short little word. Yet it can evoke some pretty scary nightmarish images within our minds. Many people's lives are nearly completely run by their reactions to it. The things they do or avoid doing as part of their daily routine are tailored specifically around the things that they are afraid of. With all the horror movies and Fear Factor type TV shows, it is certainly a topic that we as humans are fascinated with exploring.

Fear is a perfectly healthy, natural response to things that have the potential to be harmful to us.  It is what tells us to run when we are in the wild and encounter a bear. In that case fear is both useful and appropriate. But when the fear reaches a certain level our logical minds shut down and we just start randomly lashing out and reacting in whatever way we have to in order to get away from the object that we fear. Or worse yet it can literally cause both physical and mental paralyzation, complete shutdown.

Neither of these responses is helpful or good. What can be done about this?

To start with we need to realize that fear can be a useful tool in surviving our world. In order for that to be true though, we need to master it. We get to understand that what it is that we fear does not need to be logical or make sense.

A lot of people are afraid of the dark. Some are afraid of open spaces. Others still are afraid of the number 13. No matter how much time you spend attempting to reason with a person, sometimes, logic alone will not conquer fear. There is no logical basis for believing the number 13 is ever going to bring you any harm. Most intelligent people agree with this statement, even quite a few that are triskaidekaphobic.

If reason is out what does that leave us? Experience. Wait isn't experience what got us the fear in the first place? Not exactly. What actually happens is we have an experience and then our reaction to that experience determines whether or not we have a fear response in similar situations from that point on.

For example, take a man who has an irrational fear of all dogs. When he was a child a friendly dog, say a collie, may have jumped up into his stroller while his parents were taking him for a walk. The dog was highly excitable and smothered the infant with kisses. Even though the dog was not in any way hurting the child, he still got overwhelmed by the situation. The dog took up nearly his entire field of view, slobbered all over him, and there was nothing he could do. Panicked, he began screaming. Ironically, this scared the dog who then went away.

This example happened to the child when he was maybe two years old. From that point on he never wanted a dog and avoided all contact with them completely. He never had a dog as a pet while growing up and still fears and dislikes them to this day. If is walking down the road and sees someone coming towards him with their dog, he will cross to the other side of the street to avoid confronting his fear.

But avoidance, just like logic, does nothing to make the fear go away. The next time a dog appears the fear is back full force. It doesn't matter if it's a puppy, a poodle or a bulldog. The fear is the same.

So what kind of experience am I talking about? It's called immersion therapy. The only way to really deal with the fear is to have multiple positive experiences with and around the object of your fear. Now you wouldn't take the man in our example to the Humane Society and surround him with dozens of dogs all at once. Not in the beginning. That would just serve to reinforce the fear.

No, instead, you would put him in a controlled circumstance with one small, relatively docile dog. And to start with you would have it maybe twenty feet away and gradually decrease the distance until it could be close to him, without him freaking out. You get him used to the one small dog just being around over an extended time period. A few days perhaps. Then you would gradually introduce another dog to the equation, maybe  a little bigger.

At first the man would likely be terrified and not want to go through with it. But with each positive experience it gets easier and easier for him to deal with the fear, until eventually he can completely control it and maybe even enjoy having a dog as a pet.

Are there irrational fears that you have that prevent you from enjoying life to the fullest? Wouldn't you like to master them and take back control?