How I overcome my fear instantly

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How I overcome my fear instantly

I had a job interview today. I went to the office and was greeted by the boss. He asked me to wait at the meeting room while he sorted something out. I sat at the meeting room and prepared for the interview. I noticed something was wrong with my body. It got tensed and prepared for some disaster or something unpleasant. I was experiencing fear.

Logically, there was nothing to fear about. The boss won’t eat me and the worst case scenario would be a polite rejection and I can move on with life. Somehow my fear operates at subconscious level and it fired me up to fight or flight mode, preparing for the worst to survive a catastrophic event.

Fear is a conditional response. It needs a stimulus to trigger it. A stimulus can be something dangerous or threatening, such as a poisonous snake or a cookie monster with a machine gun. Once the stimulus is sensed, the brain responds by triggering fight or flight response, where around 30 different hormones are released into blood stream to cause fear experience.

The main reason we experience fear is to allow our body to get into red alert mode so that we can escape or overcome danger and have greater chance of survival. Our pupil enlarged, our muscle tensed, and our senses sharpened up, getting ready to respond to danger. Without fear, we might walk directly toward a grizzly bear while singing lala songs, and get killed by it instantly.

Although it’s healthy to have fear at the right time to save our asses when shit hits fan, triggering fear for petty reasons at the wrong time is bad for the mind and body and should be avoided. That includes fear during an interview. How can we overcome fear when it arises inappropriately?

The first thing to do when we experience fear is to be aware that we are having fear. Without identifying fear, we cannot fix it. Some people with big ego might deny having fear. It’s not a good idea to do so. Stress, increased heart rate and blood pressure, and a sudden “chill” are signs of fear.

Next, we need to identify the stimulus that triggers the fear mechanism. Fear is a learned conditioned response. When we had horrible experience with certain thing, we might react to it with fear when we come into contact with it again. People who got bitten by dogs might experience fear when dogs come near them. The dogs are the fear stimulus in this case. And for me, my fear stimulus is the unknown outcome of my interview – will I secure a stable source of income to survive? But of course my fear happens at subconscious level, making me react to the stimulus automatically.

Although fear can be born from learned conditioning, it can be unlearned, fortunately. The creation of a conditioned response that counters the conditioned fear response is known as fear extinction. One simple way to overwrite fear with fear extinction is via exposure to the fear stimulus in a safe condition. The person having fear slowly approaches the stimulus and learns that nothing bad happens. He then spends more time exposing to the fear stimulus until the fear declines. The new memory, which tells the brain that the stimulus is no longer scary, can overwrite the original fear. It’s interesting to learn that learning itself can overcome fear.

Sometimes we don’t have to expose to the real stimulus to unlearn fear. We can use vivid imagination to trick our brains to overcome it. That’s because to the mind, imagination is as real as the reality. Our body respond to imagination. Try to imagine vividly that you are eating something very tasty, and feel your mouth getting wet with saliva. NLP and hypnosis are examples of fear treatment that use imagination to overwrite fear. So create the imaginational stimulus in a non-threatening and cute way to unlearn the fear associated to it.

Now back to the interview. I was experiencing fear, and I was aware of it. I identified the fear stimulus, and I should overwrite the fear by creating new memory that counters it. Instead of worrying about the unknown outcome of the interview, I visualize clearly that my boss is my good friend and he always treat me well. To make my “unlearning experience” more effective, I imagined my “friendship” with the boss in a concrete way, where I saw us drinking coffee together while chatting away happily. It’s like the good old days.

After I finished going through such imagination, I noticed that I became calmer and the physical signs of fear were loosening up. I worried less and stressed no more. The fear stimulus was tamed with the newly formed memory and my body was responding positively. I managed to overcome my fear instantly. I hope you can do the same with your fear.

Tagged as: advice, emotion, fear, life, problem, psychology, tips