As I embarked on the mission of controlling my mind, I came across hundreds of methods of controlling fear. Some work, some don’t. I think the basic thing, the one that connects them all, is the idea of exposure. If you are afraid of something you expose yourself to it again and again until the fear subsides. I call this the “just do it” mindset after the Nike slogan. This mindset is fantastic if you can indeed just do it. But what if you can’t bring yourself to make the leap? Then you encounter an entirely different problem that is less about fear and more about control and lack of control.
Why can’t a shy person just force themselves to walk up to an attractive stranger and ask them out? Why can’t a person with agoraphobia just force themselves to walk outside and hop a train downtown? If they could make themselves do these things, they would indeed conquer their fear more quickly. We see this in the story of psychologist Albert Ellis, who, fearing to speak to women, decided to conquer this issue by approaching and getting rejected by 100 women in the botanic gardens near his office. People love stories like this because the challenge seems daring and heroic and a little bit mad. The problem is that most people with anxiety will never be able to replicate this. If you had told me two years ago that to treat my social anxiety, I would have to approach several women in a bar and ask for their number, I would have given up. Most people do. The basics of exposure are common knowledge. You don’t need a psychology course to know that you can get over fears by facing them. Yet, the task can seem insurmountable if you attempt to tackle it all at once.
The problem with exposure is that it is hard and that when you try to go too fast it can be overwhelming, leaving you feeling more depleted and scared than when you started out. This is why working with a therapist can be great because it allows you to talk about the inevitable stream of doubt and bullshit thinking that likes to assault you when you lean into discomfort. If you try to do it all at once you may be able to talk yourself into approaching an attractive stranger or facing a disgruntled colleague or stepping outside of your home—whatever it is you are afraid of— but inevitably you will give into fear at some point and if your goal is set too high this will lead to feelings of failure and shame. I did this quite often before reading about social anxiety. I set a date in the future for when I would cold call a company or go to a bar and ask a woman for her number and then I would make every excuse in the world for why I couldn’t do it. “It’s not the right time. I don’t really need to date anyway. Companies don’t like it when you cold call,” etc. etc. etc. I knew my excuses were bullshit, and the experience always left me feeling miserable and weak. I made little progress and felt incapable of change.
The answer to this problem is one that I think a lot of people miss. I certainly did. Many people with social anxiety will read crap dating books and books on body language and manipulation. They read about the methods of making people do what they want and they do this to avoid having to face fear. Again, some of these books are good and some are bad but they circumnavigate the real problem. You are afraid. Despite all your knowledge of body language, group dynamics, sales techniques, pick-up lines etc., you will never be able to use any of it if you can’t put yourself out there in the real world, face-to-face with another person. This goes beyond the fear of people too. I remember reading an article on how to start a freelance writing business and the writer brought up that a lot of people kept coming back months later asking again and again how to get started. They read a lot about the process, but they never actually went for it. They were too afraid of messing up. Too afraid of failing. All their reading and preparation was an excuse to avoid the work.
How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.
The first step is accepting that the problem is your fear. The next step is embarking on the long journey of solving that problem. Some people will move quickly and others will take more time. But if you skip the steps and try to do it all at once you risk becoming demotivated and feeling burnt out. Better to move slowly and make progress than to move too fast and overreach. Only you can decide the pace that is right for you. I recommend creating a fear hierarchy. Some people make these very formal, using Excel sheets and equations to monitor their progress. I made one, looked at it twice, and promptly forgot about it. Once I understood what I was afraid of I didn’t need it anymore.I still found it a useful exercise to understand what I was truly afraid of. Fear hierarchies are easy to create. You make a list of your fears and label them 1 through 10 for severity. You want a few that are in the high range, level 8 to 10, then a few in the high-to-mid-range, level 5 to 7, a few in the low-to-mid-range… you get it. The idea is to work on the ones in the lower range first.
What does this do for you? First off, tackling the smaller fears first eases you into the practice of feeling your anxiety, of turning towards it rather than running away from it. It also allows you to accomplish something. By breaking your fear down into smaller steps you have goals that you can actually achieve and this is extremely important for your motivation. With each goal you reach, you experience a release of endorphins—you feel accomplished, and it makes you want to do more. You couple the fear response with the feeling of success and triumph instead of failure and shame. Your body and mind start to understand that the feeling of anxiety isn’t going to kill you and that when you push through your fear you can experience intense pleasure, the likes of which are hard to achieve through anything else.
The important thing is to keep moving forward. Keep pushing the needle bit by bit until you start to tackle some of the 9s and 10s on your fear hierarchy. This can take time and like any worthwhile pursuit, you will have moments of doubt and feelings of impatience. The important thing is to let go of the negative thoughts and keep going. It is common to stray from the path, especially after you have experienced some success. Let’s say you finally take the plunge and start a new job. You conquered your fear of change and now things seem okay, and you allow yourself to settle. So what if it isn’t the job of your dreams? It’s good enough, right?
Good enough isn’t.
It’s easy to settle. People do it every day. This doesn’t make them happy though. One moment of triumph, one moment of pushing through fear isn’t enough. It has to become a practice, a dedication. Just because you got what you want this time doesn’t mean the work stops. Keep developing. Keep working on the weak points. If you don’t there will come a day when you need to step outside your comfort zone and you find yourself frozen in fear and incapable of action. This doesn’t have to happen if you keep practicing bit by bit every day. Keep working on facing fear. It’s like building muscle. It is hard to do at first and requires a hell of a lot of work. When you have the body you want you don’t have to exercise as hard but you still have to maintain that body. You still have to eat right. Relinquish the healthy habits and you’ll be back to square one, having to do the hard work all over again.
Alright, that’s all I got at the moment. This is Jeff Perryman, last survivor of the Nostromo, signing off.
