Feel the Fear and Help Your Body Feel Safe
Fear.
It stops us.
Plain and simple. Fear stops us from moving forward and taking action.
Many of us have heard the advice - “Feel the fear and do it anyway.” I’d like to offer an alternative option, “Feel the free and help your body feel safe.” The info I share here goes beyond ignoring your body’s message and pushing through and can help in all sorts of situations.
Go to the Body
Contrary to popular belief, you will want to start with and work with your body first. Your body has sensed the situation or potential situation as a threat so it’s working to protect you. Following these steps will help you move forward.
Assess - Where did your body sense the threat? Was it inside of you (hunger, etc.)? Was it in your environment (issue at work or home)? OR was it from another nervous system (confrontation with someone)?
Acknowledge any sensations or feelings that are alerting you. It’s actually a good thing that your body wants to protect you. Maybe even thank it for working so hard on your behalf and understand that it may be responding the situation inaccurately or based on previous similar experience.
Help your body feel safe. The blog series on stress referenced below offers simple practices you can use that are related to your senses/areas of the senses that can quickly provide your body with safety.
From Managing Stress to Influencing It, parts 1-6:
From Managing Stress to Influencing It - Part 1
Another quick technique is to MOVE your body. You likely have a build-up of adrenaline and other activating hormones in your body. You can literally shake it out or do some air squats (20-30 usually does the trick for me).
Work With the Mind
Your body is sending you a strong and dominant signal that you need protection so your mind will respond with a story. The story doesn’t have to make cognitive sense so getting curious here can help. At our human core is a need to belong so often times the fear of losing the tribe/being excluded is circling around.
These 3 steps can help you shift your cognitive response to fear after working with the body:
Acknowledge the thoughts. Similar to the body’s sensations, make note of what thoughts my be running on loop for you and ask Byron Katie’s 4 questions.
Prepare - Fear not only stops us from taking action. It stops us from getting ready. Often times we can be so in our head that we don’t prepare properly. We can spend too much time planning for what can go wrong that we fail to plan what can go right.
You perform how you practice. No practice means you will flub your way through your performance. My favorite line to my children since they’ve been little is, “How do you get better at anything?” and they respond with a reluctant tween tone, “Practice.”
Start Small - What’s the next smallest step you can take? If it seems too hard, go even smaller. This will show your mind (and body) that these baby steps are safe to take.
How do you work with fear? Let me know on Instagram here!