Fear – Dr. Gordon Ball PhD

October 11, 2020December 12, 2020

Fear Is Your Friend

We have no direct control over fear, but we can reduce fear by ACTING in a non-fearful way.

How Fear Works

There is a specific primitive part of our brain where we learn to be afraid.
Whenever we have any kind of negative experience, this part of the brain goes to work, and automatically help us to escape.
This escape mechanism is often called the fight or flight response.
All our past escape or avoidances are recorded in this mechanism.
Whenever we run into situations that remind us of our past negative experiences:

This fear mechanism immediately wakes up, and prepares us to escape from this event.
We feel lots of changes in our bodies, such as increased heart rate, chest tension, increased breathing and we interpret this primitive arousal as fear.

We have not direct control over these feelings:

They are automatic.
They help us do what we have done in past situations, which is to protect ourselves.
And repetition of these escape responses make us more and more afraid.

In other words; fear remembers what you did in the past and automatically prepares you to do it again.

Here’s a simple example. If someone has a strong fear of dogs:

I guarantee that they have a history of running away from dogs.
Many can recall a negative experience that started process.
And some have no conscious memory of the event.
But this primitive part of the brain seems to never forget.
So the sight of a dog immediately gets this primitive mechanism aroused, which simply prepares them to do their usual habit of running away.

The Main Point About Fear

The fear of dogs that someone has today is a result of their past escape responses.
As long as they avoid dogs, or run away from dogs, there is no way in which their fear can ever subside.

This leads to a remarkable observation:

If our present fears are controlled by past attempts to escape, the fear is a slave to past behaviors.
As long as we keep running away, the fear is doing its job of preparing us to run.
So fear is NOT the source of your problem. It is the running away that’s the problem.

Stop Running Away

Stop running away and the fear has no choice but to eventually go to sleep.

This is why Graded Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP) is a very effective strategy for treating most of the anxiety disorders such as phobias, panic attacks, obsessive-compulsive disorder and post traumatic stress disorder. It involves gradually facing our fears. Many other contributors to this question have discussed similar ways of learning how to handle fear, which is to face it in some fashion. In general, the method involves:

Deliberately putting yourself in a slightly threatening situation, and then surprising the fear, by acting as if you are not afraid.
In other words, you need to live with the mismatch of feeling the fear, but acting as if you are not afraid.

Fear Is Not Your Enemy

Fear is an early warning system,
Fear is your bodyguard.
Fear is your friend
Fear’s job is to remind you to run away from anything that you have consistently run away from in the past.

So you can indirectly control fear:

Fear is a product of your past defensive behaviors
So if you keep surprising the fear by not running away, the fear which was preparing you to flee has no choice but to change to match the new predicted relaxed behavior.

October 8, 2020July 20, 2025

How to stop ruminating

If someone is chronically anxious about murderers, then it is almost certain that they are also acting in a defensive way, such as checking for possible murderers (under the bed), or avoiding situations where there may be murderers (dark alleys). It is this constant acting as if you are in danger that makes our anxiety worse.

Anxiety is a primitive defense mechanism that does not understand the world, but guesses from our actions whether or not the world is safe.

If you keep acting as if there are murderer around, your anxiety gets stronger to help you do a good job of checking for murderers.
Consequently, if you stop looking for murderers, the anxiety initially will get stronger, just to remind you that you are supposed to be checking.
But if you continue to check less often, (and survive!), the anxiety will eventually get weaker, as you keep acting as if you are relatively safe.
This means living for a while with a mismatch of feeling a little anxious, but acting as if you are safe.
If you work on this approach daily, the anxiety has no choice but to eventually go to sleep, as you act as if the world is not full of murderers.
As most writers suggest, you need to this very gradually, otherwise the anxiety will get too strong, and you will end up checking again.

This technique is called Graded Exposure and Response Prevention, and has been researched by neuroscientists and behavior therapists for the last 60 years. There are many self-help descriptions on the internet of how to do use this technique successfully. This technique is extremely effective in any area where one’s fear is out of line with reality.

A few further points about anxiety:

I am saying that there is nothing wrong your anxiety mechanism.
It is not disordered.
You, through your defense behaviors, have taught it that the world is full of murderers And it believed you!
Now, you have to surprise the anxiety by acting as if the world is safe.
Through your new behaviors, you have to show it that murderers are very few and far between.

With time and gentle persuasion, it will eventually believe your new behaviors. Remember to look at anxiety as your friend.

It is your bodyguard.
It is your early warning system.
Stop making it work overtime!

October 8, 2020October 8, 2020

Most people agree we should face our fears. So why do psychiatrists prescribe medicine to get rid of our fears?

Here’s my guess of why psychiatrists do what they do. Medication is the quickest way to block fear.

When a psychiatrist first meets a new patient suffering from acute stress, fear or anxiety, he or she is quite likely to prescribe fast-acting medications, such as Xanax or Klonopin. For most psychiatrists, this is the first line of defense for helping distressed people begin to gain some control over their emotional problems . They prescribe it because it works. The distressful feelings magically melt away, at least temporarily.

(It is recommended that these types of medications should be discontinued after two months, as longer use can result in chronic addiction).

At this point, the psychiatrist, if following protocol, will slowly taper the patient off the benzodiazepines, and probably switch to alternate medications such as a long -lasting antidepressant with less addictive qualities. If the second type of medication works, all well and good. Some patients can live comfortably on this second class of drugs for years. Many fail on the second medication, and so a third is tried, and so a fourth……

The problem with this approach is that medicines do not cure the uncomfortable emotion. They simply block it. If the medication is stopped, especially too quickly, there is emotional chaos, with most people experiencing more fear than they felt before they started the medication regimen. It is extremely important that you very gradually come off these medications, as any self-respecting psychiatrist is likely to emphasize. The slower the taper, the better.

So medications work well for about one-third of the people who try them. They are the lucky ones, as long as they never need to come off the medications, and as long as the medications continue to work.

October 6, 2020December 12, 2020

Overcoming Fear of Abandonment

I also remember my younger days when the thought of losing my girlfriend was incredibly painful, and it made no sense, because she seemed very faithful and devoted. But that did not stop me from feeling intense fear and loneliness when I thought that she might get tired of me. No matter how much I tried to convince myself I had nothing to worry about, the fear would keep cropping up.

With time, I lost my girlfriend, and eventually found other girlfriends who I equally adored. But the fear of being abandoned followed me from girlfriend and girlfriend. Knowing that I could survive the loss of a special person somehow had no effect on the fear I had about losing my present girlfriend.

It wasn’t until much later in life that learnt how to control this terror that would gnaw in the pit of my stomach. I still hate losing special people, but I no longer live with the terrible dread. I have taught the fear to go to sleep, and know how to keep it asleep. When I lose people, I know I will be sad. But it’s a sort of a peaceful sadness, and that’s OK.

If you are interested you might try following this simple suggestion:

The strategy I use, and have taught to many people, is very similar to some of the other answers to this question, such as facing your fear, passive acceptance, or learning how to move on. This following exercise take about 20 minutes a day for a couple of weeks. It requires a bit of discipline, but not too much.

The technique is often called Imaginal Flooding, and it is very useful in taking the power from any kind of uncomfortable obsession. Learn how to do it here.

October 5, 2020October 8, 2020

How do I stop worrying about death?

I used to worry about dying when I was quite young. All I know is that my worrying about death has decreased over the years, even though I am obviously closer to death now than earlier. Many people don’t seem to be unduly worried about death, while others are absolutely terrified about it. There is a way of learning how to not to be so worried about it.

You can stop worrying about death once you understand how the “worry mechanism” works.

Let me explain.

Worry is part of our survival mechanism found in all people. Worry, anxiety, fear and panic are all tied together in a primitive part of the brain.
This mechanism is constantly on guard, watching what you do, and it becomes very active when you perceive danger in your world.
It helps you escape from danger, and remembers all your past defensive responses. so that it can prepare you to defend yourself in similar future dangerous situations.
Worry is quite useful for helping to make rational decisions about long term goals, such as looking for a good paying job, trying to choose the right partner to live with, choosing the right vacation, and hundreds of other things where we have to plan for the future.
However, worry gets us in serious trouble if you give it an unsolvable task, such as finding out what happens when you die.
Your worry mechanism will not stop looking for an answer, as long as you demand an answer.

If you want to stop the worrying, you have to stop demanding an answer!

The only way to stop demanding an answer is by practicing facing the fear that you will never know the answer.
Eventually, you can get peace by accepting the uncertainty of life and death.

How do you tell this “worry mechanism” to stop looking for an answer?

First, need to look at how this primitive worry mechanism works.
This mechanism is so simplistic that it can’t tell the difference between a thought and reality.
It simply watches what your do, and if it sees you trying to escape from a thought, it will activate all sorts of escape mechanisms to help you to literally run away.
But you can’t run away from a thought!
The panic mechanism eventually gets exhausted, and subsides.
But the next time you get the thought, the survival mechanism remembers what you did the last time, and repeats the whole process.
Repeat this process enough times , and before long you are suffering from a phobia.

So how do you stop this vicious cycle?

Remember, the worry remembers what you did in the past, and helps you to try to escape again.
So if you begin to act as if you are not in immediate danger, (which you are not), your worry mechanism will fight you initially.
But if you DO survive, ( which you will), the worry mechanism is surprised and a bit confused.
If you keep letting the thought be there and NOT escaping, the worry will learn that a thought is not dangerous, and give up trying to protect you.

This technique is called Imaginal Flooding, the most powerful technique for getting rid of phobic thoughts.

If you can work with someone well-versed in the technique, I would strongly recommend it. But if you are left to your own devices, here are the basic steps.

Lie down and get relaxed for about 5 minutes.
Now bring to mind one of less scary thoughts about death.
Keep the thought in mind as vividly as possible, feeling the fear.
But stay completely relaxed and breathe very gently as you feel the fear. It is extremely important that you show as little physical reaction as possible.
( If you can’t stay still, try the process again with a less scary thought.)
Now keep the thought in mind for 10 minutes.
Take a break for 5 minutes.
Now repeat steps 2, 3, and 4 for another 10 minutes.

Chances are you scared yourself each time, but you gave a message to the worry center that you no longer run away from this type of thought. That is the major point of this exercise.

Now, each day:

Repeat the above procedure, but simply do everything in one 20 minute session, staying completely relaxed through the whole time while trying to scare yourself by making the thought as vivid as possible.

You will find that the thought gets less and less scary each day. As it becomes less scary, try to introduce other more scary thoughts, scaring yourself as much as possible, while staying relaxed.

In a couple of weeks, you will begin to find is more and more difficult to scare yourself. And with further exposure, you will begin to get bored with the whole process.

It is living with the mismatch of feeling scared, but refusing to run away from the thought, that teaches the worry mechanism that these thoughts are not dangerous.

October 5, 2020October 8, 2020

How can I stop worrying and being constantly afraid of things in general?

We can’t completely stop being afraid if we want to survive in this world. If we had no fear, we would be as careless as a two year old playing with a loaded gun.

Without this primitive defensive mechanism, we would not last very long. We use it automatically every time we cross the street, when we avoid dark alleys late at night, when we startle to a loud noise, or when we accidentally fall.

Fear is our most powerful emotion:

It takes dominance over hunger, thirst , sex, and anger.
It is our tireless bodyguard who is constantly on the alert, except when we happen to fall asleep.
Even then, it is likely to arouse us if some unexpected noise occurs.
There is no way we can just turn off fear the way we can turn off the water from a dripping faucet.
It is not under our direct voluntary control.

Fear is all about staying alive.

This fear mechanism has been around for ever, and it is found in the simplest of animals. All animals have some sort of fight or flight mechanism deep inside their brains.
In human beings, it is fully developed even before we are born!
It remembers from the beginning all these little insults to our comfort, so that the next time we are in similar situations, it remembers what we did in the past, and it tries to escape before the insult happens again.
Well before we have anything that vaguely looks like intellegence, this primitive system has developed an enormous catalogue of what to approach, and especially what to avoid.
This system is absolutely wonderful for surviving in a world of anarchy and chaos. And most animals still live in such a world. Most of the world is still a very brutal place, where many animals need to kill other animals in order to survive. Developing good escape and avoidance skills is absolutely essential.

This modern world is fortunately not as dangerous as complete anarchy.

In this modern world, and with the addition of a very sophisticated cerebral cortex which takes the first 20 years life to fully develop, we have partly left that chaotic world of being a small fish, who is spending most of its time trying not to be eaten by a bigger fish.
Using our verbal and non-verbal communication skills, we have learned how to get things that we want in life without having to kill our neighbor in the process.
We do not need such a constantly active fear mechanism. And the fear can get in the way of interacting with the world in a more carefree way.
Our fear get out of hand especially in social situations. It was never meant to handle situations where we are afraid of being stupid, or avoiding taking important exams, or being worried about our finances in the future. It was designed to literally run away from physical danger.
So when we literally start avoiding social situations, the fear assumes there must be something life-threatening about that situation. It thinks it’s doing a good job of saving us from certain death. It is too primitive to know any better.

Retraining our Fear Mechanism

So how can we train this fear mechanism to stay alert for some situations, such as crossing streets, but not to be so active in situations where we feel we may appear stupid?

Graded Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP) is the most efficient way to teach this fear mechanism what we need to avoid, and what risky situations we need to approach in order to survive in this modern world,
Using ERP, we learn to put in new behaviors that are incompatible with what the fear is preparing us to do, which is to run away!
We have to gradually practice walking towards the situations that we really desire to do, and which we know are not life-threatening.
Initially, the fear mechanism will automatically try very hard to get us to run away. That is because we have trained it to run away in the past, and it simply remembers our old instructions.
But if we hold our ground, the fear will be very surprised at the result, (Hey, we are still alive!), and will gradually learn through further trials that the situation is not life-threatening.

It is essential that we start of with easy confrontations. If we try to face too much fear at any one time, the fear will win, we will run way, and we have made our fear little stronger.

The main point to remember is that fear is a slave to our past escape responses.
As you stop escaping from non-life threatening tasks, the fear has no choice but to change to match our new non-defensive behaviors.
But we have to be prepared to face the mismatch of living with increased fear for a while, before the fear gets the message that social situations are not life threatening.
And the more often you take these risks, and occasionally feel embarrassed, the sooner the fear will begin to go to sleep.