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STARVING FEAR

12/30/2015

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"Cave lupum."--"Beware of the wolf." (Latin)

An old Cherokee chief is teaching his grandson about life. "Grandson, there is a terrible battle between two wolves inside us all. One is evil. It is anger, fear, regret, worthlessness, guilt, self-doubt, and hopelessness. The other is good. It is joy, love, hope, humility, compassion, kindness, courage, strength and bravery." The boy thought about it and asked, "Grandfather, which wolf wins?" The grandfather quietly replied, "The one you feed."

One of the things that made the old horror movies so scary was that we never saw the monster. We heard it snorting and growling and tramping through the woods, saw its footprints in the mud. Or the not-too-bright hero climbing the creaking stairs in the haunted house, reaching for the doorknob and we're thinking, "Don't open the door, stupid!" And when he opens the door a bat flies out and our heart nearly stops. Then we laugh and breathe a sign of relief.

What we don't see scares us more than what we do see because our imagination takes over and this is where TheWhatIf Monster jumps in to feed our fear. The anticipation is usually worse than the event or, as we say, "the alarm is greater than the fire."

You want to take an acting class and eventually audition for a part in a play but are afraid you won't be good enough and make a fool of yourself and be too embarrassed to face your friends. So you don't do it. Well, I can't guarantee you'd get the part by taking the lessons and auditioning but what I can guarantee is that if you don't try you won't get it. So you get the same outcome either way.

So here's a tool for facing down our fears and TheWhatIf Monster. It's a simple exercise called "Analyze the Probability of a Feared Event." Here's how it works.
1. Pick a fear. Example: I've always wanted to learn to Tango but am afraid to take lessons. Usually when we identify a fear there's a bigger fear behind it and maybe another one behind that one. Kind of like those Russian dolls with several smaller ones inside. So the fear(s) is: taking lessons, not being able to learn the steps, feeling foolish and a failure, people will laugh at me. You get the idea.
2. On a scale of 1 (very unlikely) to 10 (inevitable), what's the possibility the feared outcome will actually happen?
3. What self-talk messages do you give yourself that feed the fear and make it grow? What are some positive messages you can give yourself that shrink the fear?
4. What are the very real consequences if the feared outcome did occur?
5. What is the worst possible real consequence if your fear actually happened? How bad would it be?
6. How would your life be affected if it actually happened? How would you cope or continue to function? I tease my clients about this one. "So you'd be so humiliated that you'd have to change your identity, have cosmetic surgery, move to another country and go into The Loser Protection Program?" This usually gets a laugh from them.
7. Lastly, what you can you do to control the outcome of the situation you fear?

When we break our fears down like this we usually see that the reality isn't as bad as we thought and maybe even groundless. And when we look at the fear objectively we can start to problem solve how we're going to handle the situation. This puts us in control, not the fear.

Remember that in the old horror movies what we didn't see scared us more than what we did see. And when we finally saw the monster it was just a guy in a rubber suit. See you next time.

Next Time: BACK TO THE FUTURE: USING PAST SUCCESSES AGAIN

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THE GRATEFUL HEAD--MINDFUL GRATITUDE

12/9/2015

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"Grateful people may recover faster from trauma."--Deborah Norville

In a recent post on mindfulness (8/19/15) I talked about how it's effective in managing anxiety. Simply put, it's being present in the moment, focusing on what's going on right now and breaking tasks down into small do-able pieces. And since anxiety is future based, practicing mindfulness keeps us in the present and the WhatIfMonster at bay and under control. It also reduces stress and makes us more efficient.

So now I'm going to add a really interesting wrinkle to mindfulness--gratitude--and explain how combining the two practices can help overcome trauma, depression, and anxiety as well as several other problems. And this is where it gets really interesting, we can reprogram the brain at a neuronal level, creating new brain cells that are positivity-oriented. Sound crazy, like sci-fi? Here's how it works.

Over the last few decades with the development of increasingly sophisticated technology, researchers have been able to study and gain exciting new knowledge of the brain's remarkable ability to adapt and change itself. It's called neuroplasticity. Norman Doidge, MD, in his book The Brain That Changes Itself, describes it as the brain's ability to restructure itself after training or practice; brain neural synapses and pathways are altered as an effect of environmental, behavioral and neural changes. It also allows neurons (nerve cells) in the brain to compensate for injury and disease and to adjust their activities in response to new situations or changes in their environment. His book is fascinating reading and very easy to understand (and of course it's on You-Know-Who's banned book list).

The brain learns from bad experiences better than good experiences. This is a survival mechanism that protects the organism. Stick a paper clip into an electrical outlet and you won't do it again. So the brain overfocuses on bad experiences and has a negativity bias. The brain or mind is shaped by what it repeatedly rests on. Remember what I said in one of my earliest posts, "What we focus on expands." And these harmful experiences are rapidly converted to neuropathways in the brain. Rick Hansen, PhD, who has done pioneering work in neuroplasticity puts it this way: "The brain has Velcro for bad experiences, Teflon for good."

Now at last is how gratitude comes into the picture: by being mindful of an experience, absorbing it in its totality, bodily and emotionally as well as mentally, and expressing gratitude at the same time. Notice the awareness of being all right right now, enrich and absorb it. Here's an example. I'm sitting by my pond listening to the falling water, watching a beautiful Arizona sunset (sunsets here are showstoppers, an incredible array of changing light and color--oh yeah, it's also December and the temperature is 76 degrees) while stroking my dogs. It's an almost meditative state as I absorb the beauty, calm, love and connection with my dogs.
And I'm so grateful to have this experience (and that I'm not in Buffalo, NY).

What's really interesting about this is that we can do the same thing while imagining a positive experience, whether it's a pleasant memory or pure fantasy, and feeling gratitude at the same time. The result is the same.

Remember in an earlier post I said that trauma creates new anxiety and depression-skewed brain cells and that these can be passed down through up to four generations. By practicing mindful gratitude, over time we actually produce more new positive brain cells that will dominate the negative ones and reduce or eliminate the anxiety or depression.

So here's a simple exercise: practice mindful gratitude six times a day for thirty seconds, only thirty seconds. You may be only able to do it for five at first and work up to thirty but that's OK. What we're doing is sensitizing the brain to positivity. So have a good experience, absorb and enrich it in all the senses. But don't take my word on this, try it yourself and see what happens. That's what I'm doing. See you next time.

Next Time: STARVING FEAR

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Welcome to TheFearMonsterSlayer

STARVING FEAR

THE GRATEFUL HEAD--MINDFUL GRATITUDE

Jeff Aronson

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