Anxious?
I’ve noticed that recently I’ve done a lot of experiments with clients that included facing their fears. It’s actually not that difficult technically to do it, but emotionally it is quite scary for clients. Many times it is the anticipatory anxiety that is the worst, rather than the actual experience of the feared thing itself. I’m going to write a bit about how to face your fears below for you all so that you can tackle any fears that you may have 
What do people fear? Some people fear certain social situations, have performance anxiety, talking to those in authority, heights, taking public transport, driving, swimming in the ocean, getting injections, storms…people can fear lots of things. You just have to go to sites like www.phobialist.com and you realise that people can be afraid of anything. (NB: I’m talking about anxiety here, not just disliking something.)
Why face fears? Well, you will probably be able to relate to experiences where you avoid something you fear, e.g. if you fear public speaking, you will deliberately avoid it. But you see, by avoiding it, you are not giving yourself the opportunity to learn that it’s not as bad as you expect it’s going to be, and you don’t learn that you can actually cope.
In fact, the more you avoid it, the worse your fear gets. When an opportunity comes up for you to speak in public and you don’t take it, you’re reinforcing your belief that this is something to be feared, and you’re also reinforcing the belief that you cannot cope in that situation.
So, in order to learn about how you will actually respond in a public speaking situation, you actually need to go through it! This is called exposure. By going through it, you can test to see whether your feared outcome will come true (e.g. “I’ll blush”, “I’ll stutter”, “People will think I’m boring”, “People will be frowning”, etc). You never know unless you test these ‘predictions’ out.
The best way of going about facing these fears is in a gradual way, and by splitting it up into manageable steps. So for example, with the public speaking one, you can split it up into say 10 steps — e.g. for a Uni student with some oral assessments coming up in the semester:
- Prepare one thing to say in a small group tutorial discussion.
- Prepare a few things in a small group tutorial discussion.
- Present an idea with another student from where you are sitting.
- Present an idea with another student at the front of the class.
- Prepare to say one thing in a big group tutorial discussion.
- Prepare to say a few things in a big group tutorial discussion.
- Spontaneously contribute to discussion by saying one thing.
- Spontaneously contribute to discussion by saying a few things.
- Give a class presentation independently without opportunity for others to ask questions.
- Give a class presentation independently and allow time for other students to ask questions.
These mini-experiments are aimed at encouraging the person to face their fears in a gradual manner, with each step of the way being increasing anxiety provoking, leading to the goal where the person will face their worse fear. Also you would do each step many times until you feel more comfortable before moving onto the next step. During each of these steps, you can test out your predictions and see whether what you fear actually happens, or even if it does happen, whether it is as bad as you think.
Some people find that the situation is worse than they expect, but they also cope better than expected. Others may learn that they can actually cope with the anxiety better instead of trying to avoid those strong emotions.So have a go! Identify something that provokes some at least moderate anxiety in you and test out your negative predictions about what could happen. You never know until you try, and when you do, you might find yourself surprised
Happy exposing!