FACING FEAR

AND

PHOBIAS

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WHAT DO YOU FEAR?

We need to redirect reconstruct reorganize our thinking!

Do some research on what you fear - knowledge builds confidence.

The more you know about what you fear, the less you fear it.

Find the true cause of your fear, and solve it.

Once you understand why you're afraid, you can deal with the problem rather than suffer from the fear.

Cognitive behavior therapy can help a phobic confront the situation

Deal with frightening thoughts -write down frightening thoughts along with rational thoughts.

BALANCE THE NEGATIVE WITH THE POSITIVE.

 

Use your Worksheets!

 

Ask yourself these questions:

1)   What did I learn from this situation?

2)   How can I grow as a person from this experience?

3)   What are three positive things about this situation?

When you first attempt to list three positive things about the “What you fear”, your mind may be very resistant. but if you stick with the exercise, before you know it, you will see a new opportunity that can come out of this.

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Patterns of Problematic Thinking

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These patterns often become automatic, habitual thoughts that cause us to engage in ‘self-defeating behaviors’ such as:

•  Jumping to conclusions or predicting the future, exaggerating or minimizing, oversimplifying, good/bad, right/wrong, ignore or avoid important parts

• Over-generalizing (a negative seen as never-ending)

• Mind reading, what you assume others are or will think

• Emotional reasoning, “I Feel, therefore It Must Be”…

• Challenging Thoughts / questions/ maladaptive or problematic beliefs / stuck points

Answer the following questions to assess your thought:

•  Is there substantial evidence for my thought?

•  Are you including all information?

•  Are you ignoring important parts?

•  Are you focused on just one piece or part of the story? How, in what way?

•  Are you attempting to interpret this situation without all the evidence?

•  Is there evidence contrary to my thought?

• Where did this thought come from? Is it a dependable source of information?

•  Is it Based on feelings or facts?

•  is it of Emotional reasoning?

•  Is it Habit or fact?

• Does this include all-or-none terms? (i.e., always, forever, never, need, should, must, can’t, and every time) Underline them.

• Are you Confusing possible with likely?

• Are all thoughts related to the story?  Focused on unrelated parts?

• Are you Jumping to conclusions?

• Are you Exaggerating or minimizing: Over-generalizing? 

• Over simplifying?

•    What would a friend think about this situation?

• If I look at the situation positively, how is it different?

•  Will this matter a year from now? How about five years from now?

• Elf worksheet

 

WE ALL FEAR THE UNKNOWN

What is in the dark, What we can’t see

QUESTION IS - Do We Fight? Take Flight? Or Freeze?

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Are fears and phobias one and the same?

The answer, according to experts, is NO.

The main difference lies in the intensity and severity of the emotions experienced in fear and phobia.

Fear is an emotion. It is generally induced when the subject perceives a threat.

Phobia can be defined as the “excessive or unreasonable fear of an object, place or situation".

There are several different types of phobias, some are arguably worse than others.

• Is your phobia interfering with your normal life?  

• Are you avoiding situations which matter, experiencing extreme anxiety, sweating or trembling etc.?

 

There are several counseling approaches that can help you recognize influences that feed fear and cause us to ignore higher risks.

• Our old brain prepares us to fear yesterday’s risk - what you have been taught

•  What is most readily available memory - what you had experienced

• What is immediate - what are you doing nowWhat we can not control - weather conditions, accidents

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Fear of failure

You can't succeed without failing first.  In order to do something big,

you have to overcome something big.  Accept that failure will happen.  We tend to think that failure is a bad thing, but that's simply not true.  Rather than turn and run from failure, run towards it. You're not running towards disaster, you're running towards success. 

   Conquer The Fear. Reframe Your Goals.  Reframe failure by shifting your goals. Instead of having a very specific goal, expand your goal to include learning something new and you will never technically “fail” because there is always something to be learned. You cannot “fail” because regardless of the outcome, you are bound to learn something of value.

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Agoraphobia

Agoraphobia is classified separate from panic disorder.  It is an anxiety disorder characterized by anxiety in situations where the sufferer perceives the environment to be dangerous, uncomfortable, or unsafe. These situations can include wide-open spaces, uncontrollable social situations, unfamiliar places and involves the fear of incurring a panic attack in these environments. Sufferers may go to great lengths to avoid these situations and in severe cases become unable to leave their homes or safe havens.

If you have agoraphobia, exposure to the situations you fear and avoid is also included in treatment. As in exposure therapy for specific phobias, you face the feared situation until the panic begins to go away. Through this experience, you learn that the situation isn’t harmful and that you have control over your emotions.