Overcoming Fear with Mindfulness

Deborah Ward

• Publisher: Sheldon Press
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781847092861
• eBook ISBN: 9781847092878
• Topic: Personal Development
• Subtopic: Self Improvement

Fear evolved as a survival technique but can easily take over our lives. Based on the latest neuroscientific research, this book examines why some people are more hardwired than others to experience fear and anxiety, and shows how to use the skills of mindfulness to promote detachment and peace, and to take control of your life in a relaxed way. It also includes coping strategies for the highly sensitive person.

Part 1

About fear

1

Causes of fear and anxiety

What causes fear? And why do some people feel it more than others? The frantic pace of modern life can make anyone feel tense. With constant mobile phone calls and emails, as well as traffic jams, job stress and school fees, it is easy for us all to become classic nail-biters. But some people appear more anxious than others and find it harder to cope. Are they just born worriers? Or is there something else that increases the angst for certain types of people?

A tendency to be fearful is usually determined by genes, personality, the environment in which you grew up or a combination of these. For example, British neuroscientist Philip M. Newton says that people carrying the gene that increases the likelihood of them developing post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) will still have to experience significant stress before the disorder develops. Researchers at Emory University assert that many factors contribute to the development of PTSD. Patients who have both the gene that predisposes them to PTSD as well as a history of child abuse go on to develop PTSD, suggesting an interaction between genes and environment that can predict the development of the disorder. So you can be predisposed to certain conditions because of your genes, but the addition of environmental conditions, such as stress, will often trigger it.

Even if you do not have a genetic predisposition for fear you can, under enough stress, become anxious or fearful. But that doesn’t mean you are destined for a life of struggle. Knowing whether or not you are likely to become fearful under certain conditions will give you the information and awareness you need to take control of the situation and your life.

Genes

We all have a built-in system for coping with danger, which creates symptoms of fear in response. Researchers have discovered a protein called stathmin, present in the amygdala in the brain, which controls the ability to react with appropriate fear to impending danger. Mice without the gene for this protein show abnormally low levels of anx-iety in situations that should inspire fear. So it appears that our brains are hard-wired to react with fear to certain situations. But there are individual differences in how this protein and other brain chemicals operate within us, and the degree to which it affects different people.

Harvard psychologist Jerome Kagan believed that people are born with one of two temperaments: inhibited or uninhibited. According to Kagan, an inhibited individual is shy, timid and fearful and an uninhibited person is bold, sociable and outgoing. These temperaments are not only present in people at birth but also, Kagan theorized, predictive of later behaviour in adulthood. Whether or not inhibited types become anxious adults, however, depends on their experiences in their environment. Inhibited children are born with a lower threshold for arousal of various brain regions, wrote Kagan, particularly the amygdala, the area where fear is formed and the region responsible for the production of cortisol, a hormone that is released under stress. When these regions of the brain were stimulated, the inhibited children exhibited signs of anxiety.

Likewise, a study in the journal Behavioural Neuroscience has found a link between genes and anxious behaviour. Some people carry a certain gene that regulates the neurotransmitter dopamine and consequently have what researchers call an ‘exaggerated startle reflex’. This biochemical condition, say the researchers, explains why some people find it harder to regulate their emotional reaction to arousal. In other words, some people are genetically more sensitive to their environment. This innate sensitivity, when combined with environmental or social factors such as stress or a difficult childhood, can make them more prone to fear and anxiety.

Dr Elaine Aron, author of The Highly Sensitive Person, wrote about people who are genetically sensitive to their environment. She found that about 15–20 per cent of the population are what she terms ‘highly sensitive people’ (HSP), meaning they are very aware of and react intensely to the sensory stimulation around them. The HSP has a sensitive nervous system, a trait that is often inherited. Because of their innate sensitivity, HSPs startle easily and become rattled when they have too much to do. HSPs are very aware of subtleties in their environment and consequently become easily overwhelmed by overstimulation, causing them to respond with symptoms of fear and anxiety. Subtleties in the environment can include any sensory information, such as bright lights, loud noises, strong smells, unusual tastes and coarse fabrics, as well as the feelings and moods of other people. Being around someone who is angry, for example, can move an HSP to tears, as can the honking of a car horn or the flashing of bright lights. Crowds can often become sources of stress for HSPs, not only because of the noise but also the volume of energy generated by large groups of people.

HSPs do not respond to this kind of overstimulation because they are afraid but because they are sensitive to their environment. However, too much stimulation, stress and emotion tends to make HSPs susceptible to feelings of fear and anxiety. They do not fear people or loud noises or crowds, but they can come to fear the feeling of being overwhelmed caused by such stimulation. Additionally, HSPs are often struggling to cope with their own self-doubt, confusion and the need to feel understood and accepted by others, all of which can create an anxious and fearful type of person.

Temperament

After years of collecting data from people with anxiety, anxiety coach Charles Linden revealed that ‘our data shows us that anxiety sufferers all share a superior level of creative intellect’.

Sensitive people need to be creative as a way of releasing the energy they have absorbed, which would otherwise turn into depression, anxiety or crippling fear. As Pulitzer Prize and Nobel Prize winner Pearl S. Buck wrote:

The truly creative mind in any field is no more than this: A human creature born abnormally, inhumanly sensitive. To him, a touch is a blow, a sound is a noise, a misfortune is a tragedy, a joy is an ecstasy, a friend is a lover, a lover is a god, and failure is death. Add to this cruelly delicate organism the overpowering necessity to create, create, create, – so that without the creating of music or poetry or books or buildings or something of meaning, his very breath is cut off from him. He must create, must pour out creation. By some strange, unknown, inward urgency he is not really alive unless he is creating.

Many sensitive or gifted individuals have high standards, as well as a low tolerance for mediocrity and frustration. They have an acute awareness of complexities and consequences and a strong need for self-determination, among other characteristics. And while these qualities can give people the drive, organization and focus to help them achieve their goals, they can also create feelings of worry, anxiety and depression, as well as fear, such as the fear of failure or the fear of not living up to others’ expectations.

This fear of other people’s opinions is one of the common reasons that people feel fear, whether you are sensitive and creative or not. People are often afraid to let anyone else know how they are really feeling. But the efforts involved in keeping your own negative feelings a secret, as well as the isolation it can cause, only exacerbates the situation.

In a recent study in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, people were shown to judge themselves as more anxious, inhibited and shy than other people. We think that it is only ourselves who have the problem, which in turn makes us feel bad about ourselves and more anxious to hide our fears. We often come to this conclusion because most people are hiding their true feelings, so it only appears as though everyone else is calm and confident. The truth is that most of us feel fearful at least some of the time. We just don’t like to show it. We believe that we must keep our feelings to ourselves because we are afraid of what other people are going to think of us. We are afraid of what they will say or do and that they will judge us harshly. Deep down, we are afraid that if other people knew how scared or worried we truly are, they would think we are weak or incompetent and, ultimately, unlovable.

It is this fear of not being loved that keeps the anxiety fires burning within us. While anxiety is triggered by stress, it is rooted in negative beliefs, such as the fear of being unlovable. We become anxious because we are afraid that whatever we fear will actually happen. To others, these fears may seem highly unlikely or even irrational, but for ourselves, the fears are real because they are based on ideas we believe to be true.

Difficult life events may be unavoidable, but we still have a choice about how to deal with those events. And developing personal traits such as strength and resilience, integrity, self-discipline, gratitude and compassion can help us to cope more effectively with life’s trials. Facing life’s challenges and struggling to overcome them can build these qualities over time, both consciously and unconsciously.

Past experiences

In their book, Schema Therapy, Eshkol Rafaeli, David P. Bernstein and Jeffrey Young describe psychological health as the ability to get one’s needs met in an adaptive manner. Schemas are ‘broad, pervasive themes regarding oneself and one’s relationship with others, developed during childhood and elaborated throughout one’s lifetime, and dysfunctional to a significant degree’. Schemas develop in childhood under the influence of a child’s temperament and the child’s damaging experiences with parents, siblings or peers.

Because they begin early in life, schemas become familiar and therefore comfortable, and so we try to hold on to them, even when they make us feel worse. We distort our view of the events and people in our lives in order to maintain the validity of our beliefs, focusing on the information that is consistent with our schema and ignoring that which is inconsistent. In other words, we interpret our lives not according to what is actually happening in the moment or who a person really is, but by what we believe subconsciously. Consequently, our interpretations often serve to reinforce these negative beliefs.

But these beliefs about ourselves and others and the ways we learn to cope with them can trigger feelings of anxiety and fear even in the most harmless situations. Here are just a few common but untrue beliefs we have about ourselves:

• I’m not good enough.
• I have to do for others, to be loved.
• I’m inadequate.
• I’m ugly.
• I’ll never amount to anything.
• There’s something wrong with me.
• I’m not worthy of love.
• Asking for help is a sign of weakness.
• I don’t deserve to be happy.
• My thoughts and feelings don’t matter.
• I have to make my parents proud of me.

According to Jerome Kagan, children who endured abuse or trauma or witnessed traumatic events are at higher risk of developing an anxiety disorder at some point in life. Whatever your genes or temperament, parenting practices will have a profound influence on whether you will ultimately become fearful and anxious later in life. Likewise, psych-iatrist Michael Liebowitz asserts that there is a connection between panic disorders and overprotective parenting. Trying to protect a sensitive child from harm might seem helpful, but it actually prevents the child from developing a natural and appropriate response to fear on his own. Consequently, these overexcitable children will tend towards anxiety as adults.

Some of the maladaptive methods people adopt to cope with their negative beliefs, difficult experiences and the painful feelings they create include surrender, overcompensation, defensiveness, dependence, entitlement, self-sacrifice and avoidance. In what Young terms the ‘detached protector’ mode, a person appears calm and in control, but it is an attempt to numb feelings and emotional needs and to distance himself from fear, vulnerability and rejection.

However, these coping methods only create what psychologists call ‘negative reinforcement’, in which avoiding a feared situation only strengthens the behaviour. Avoidance provides temporary relief from unpleasant feelings, but this relief serves to reward the avoidant behaviour, reinforcing both the behaviour and the feelings of fear and anxiety associated with it.

We are often not even aware that we believe such things about ourselves or that we are coping in a negatively reinforcing way. As adults, these negative beliefs disguise themselves as thoughts or daydreams and show up in our lives as actions and reactions.

Penny is someone who knows what it’s like to cope with fears. Whenever she had to make a presentation at work she would stop outside the meeting room and find her hands sweating and her mouth go dry and she’d begin to shake – all symptoms of anxiety. As she tried to calm herself down she would become increasingly nervous as she heard her own thoughts say, ‘You’re going to mess this up. Don’t even bother. You never do anything right.’ And then she grew even more nervous, so that when she did her presentation she did exactly what she believed about herself and she messed it up, thereby reinforcing the negative belief that she never does anything right and increasing her fear of presentations as well as her anxiety.

By becoming aware of her own negative beliefs, however, Penny came to realize that her anxiety about presentations was not due to her incompetence, but to her beliefs. One of them was that she never does anything right. The other was that if she fails, she will be rejected. So her anxiety was based on her fear of being rejected by people she admired, a belief that developed after disappointing her parents as a child.

While it is natural to want to do a good job and gain the respect of others, feeling like a failure and believing that you are not good enough if you don’t get their respect is not healthy. The worst part about believing these kinds of negative ideas is the toll it takes on your self-esteem. The anxiety you feel is an unpleasant symptom. The belief that you will only be loved if you perform a certain way will crush your feelings of self-worth and your ability to live a happy life.

Unfortunately, we often grow up continuing to hang on to these beliefs because we are convinced that they are true. If your mother always told you that you were stupid or your father believed that you were a coward, it is difficult to think that there are any other ways of seeing yourself. You see yourself as your family saw you, because you trust them. In many cases, parents are trying to cope with their own negative beliefs about themselves, and the way they were treated when they were growing up, so they may not even be aware of the effect their words and actions have on their children or the negative beliefs they are creating.

Once Penny became aware of her fear of rejection she started to change the thoughts in her mind before presentations. Now, whenever she feels her hands begin to shake and her mouth go dry, she recognizes it as anxiety, caused by her fear of rejection. And then, instead of listening to the voice in her head that tells her she’s going to mess it up, she pushes those thoughts aside and tells herself something else – she tells herself the truth. ‘You are an intelligent, capable person who has worked hard and prepared well for this presentation. You will do a good job. And if anything goes wrong, it will be all right. You will not be rejected. You are not a failure. You can learn from your mistakes.’ Armed with this new-found confidence and belief in herself as a person deserving of respect, Penny makes presentations that she is proud of. She still gets nervous sometimes, but she is learning to face her fears and not let the anxiety get the better of her.

Knowing that your parents are often struggling with their own faults and failings, and their own desires to be loved, without intending to hurt you, can help you to forgive them and to start taking responsibility for your own happiness. One of the most important things to remember about negative beliefs is that although you have held them for a long time, and you were probably told them by someone you trusted, they are not true. They were told to you by someone who did not know or see the real you. It isn’t that person’s fault and it isn’t yours. But with some effort and awareness, and a mindful approach, you can begin to see yourself and treat yourself as you really are – a smart, strong, capable adult deserving of love. To learn what your own negative beliefs are, listen to your thoughts and your words. This will pull your be...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Author information
• Overcoming Common Problems Series
• Title page
• Imprint
• Table of contents
• Praise for This Book
• Introduction
• Part 1: About fear
• Part 2: The mindful way
• References
• Further reading
• Search items