Fear & Anxiety V.S. Danger
“Next Time You Encounter Fear - Consider Yourself Lucky” -Pema Chodron
When you have anxiety, you are no stranger to feeling fear. I get it, I feel fear too - a lot! It’s interesting to know that fear is a universal experience, we all have it all the way down to animals and sea anemones!.
The important thing to recognize is that fear and anxiety are not the same thing as danger. Imagine that you are watching a mildly scary movie and feel a bit scared. You are scared but not in real danger right? Now imagine watching a REALLY scary movie and you are REALLY SCARED. Yet, still not in anymore danger. And this is often how anxiety works. Something triggers us or we simply just start feeling anxious or scared and we react as if its REAL DANGER, but in todays world 99% of the time there isn’t an actual bear chasing us. It just feels like an actual bear is chasing us and we react by running away, avoiding, and protecting ourselves at all cost. We need to recognize that 99% of the time when we feel anxiety it’s Scary, but Not Dangerous. In fact remaining open to fear and recognizing that fear is not a guarantee of anything good nor bad - is often what allows us to break through new barriers and sharpen our resilience!
So When We Feel Fear & Anxiety - We want to ask ourselves:
Is this real danger? Could I get killed, injured etc.
If Yes - RUN!
If no, which is most often the case…Use the DARE Approach
DIFFUSE - Recognize its scary but not dangerous
ALLOW - Allow the scary feelings to be there without resisting them
RUN TOWARDS - Move towards the fear as long its in the direction of your values
ENGAGE - Put your focus back into the present moment on what you are doing
Repeat over and over as you habituate to the idea that You can be scared and anxious and Do it anyways. You can be scared and anxious and still do a great job. You can be scared and anxious and survive.
I know personally how much easier this is to say than to do so try not get down on yourself when you inevitably have a setback. It’s and ongoing process so just come back to it again - over and over.
I hope this helps you as you inevitably encounter fear and anxiety in your life.
With Intention,
Joel
