Mentality

Phobias

A date, a speech, a theatrical performance, all have one thing in common. Opportunity. An opportunity that we don’t want to waste. An opportunity that can be somewhat exciting. Excitement can feel like anxiety and brushed off as just that. If it is just excitement, then we don’t have to worry or obsess about it. However, we do get obsessed, most alarmed, and disquieted by things. The cure is pushing ahead and forcing yourself to go on a date, onto the stage or up to the front and begin speaking. Your nerves will jangle making your whole body react. The more often you push yourself into those uncomfortable situations the easier it becomes. Nerves give way to enjoyment. We learn to love the attention.

Many of us find workarounds rather than tackle the problem head on. We can become quite adept at doing so. We find ways to avoid confronting our fears. It is understandable given the hideous feeling in the pit of your stomach, real pain, and a true clenching acidic sensation that we get. It is not just a mental foible. These experiences, mighty unpleasant experiences become one big reason to shy away and come up with excuses to steer clear of something.

Look up at the ceiling, it is a ceiling, a limit to how high you can go in the room you are in. Anxiety has a ceiling too. It feels as though the amount of anxiety we can have is unlimited, but it is not. Anxiety builds and we want to get it back down as quickly as we can. We rarely take our anxiety to the maximum possible. To overcome the problem, we may have to. Once you realise that there is a limit to how much anxiety you can feel, you can start to tackle it. It is just a case of taking yourself up to that maximum, experiencing it and coping with it. As you approach the anxiety inducing issue, the level of anxiety will rise and rise, but it will always peak and then go down. When people pull away before they reach the peak, they don’t get to overcome the problem. The worst part of the process is at the start. Each time you face the issue it gets easier. Much easier. You don’t experience that maximum level each time. The level will go up, but not by the same amount. Hence, why the first step is the hardest.

We can have phobias relating to dogs, spiders, public speaking, heights, small spaces, crowds. Untold things. There is often a trigger, an identifiable day or set of events that brought on the phobia. Worrying about how it began is not relevant. Wanting to be un-pestered, unperturbed, and unrestricted by it from now on, is. Though you may cast your mind back to times where you were locked in a small cupboard and that initiated fears of claustrophobic tight spaces. The past is the past.

Are you ready to face your fears? Are you fed up with the impact it is having on your daily life? If so then you can kill off your anxiety through a simple step-by-step process. If you were fearful of spiders for example, then the first task is to view a picture of one. As you study the picture your anxiety level will rise, until it reaches a maximum. It will then gradually tail off. You will soon discover that the anxiety, whilst not pleasant, doesn’t harm you. The next step would be to look at a true living spider. Firstly, from a distance. Allow the anxiety to build up once again. After a few minutes the anxiety will die down. Get closer to the creature and once again watch your anxiety rise then fall. It won’t be long before you are reasonably comfortable picking one up. Your mind gets rewired, and you become virtually free of the phobia. You may never get to like spiders, but you will become much less afraid of them. There may be some benefit from tapping parts of your hand or head during the worst of the anxiety as this can help refocus. Any method that you try needs to be repeated quite a few times, some phobias are not sorted overnight.

Are you checking something endlessly, worried that something will go badly wrong if you haven’t performed a ritual? After hours of therapy one word sticks out: maybe. Maybe it will go bad, maybe it won’t. Maybe it is not your fault. Maybe you can deal with the consequences. If you fall ill, most likely you won’t, but maybe you will recover soon after. If someone breaks in, you will sort the mess and maybe it won’t be so tragic after all. Bad things can happen. Bad things might happen. Maybe. The chances of something bad happening might be slim but can’t be ruled out. That will always be true but maybe what you are doing in the belief that they will prevent bad outcomes is making it worse. Maybe reducing your behaviours might lower the danger.

It doesn’t take much to spot the children who are still learning to swim, they will be the ones standing in the pool with dry hair. Chucking someone in at the deep end might seem like a fun way to get them to swim, but it can create an aversion to water and deter people from swimming forever. Oddly, the best place to learn the basics is not in a pool, but in the bath or with a big bowl of water. Overcoming a fear of water is handy if your boat submerges. Besides that, swimming is a popular pastime. Follow these steps. Move on when you are comfortable with each step.

1. Hold your nose, close your eyes, and put your whole face into the bowl of water. Repeat a few times.

2. Take a deep breath, eyes closed and hold one side of your nose breathing out slowly and then submerse. Repeat a few times.

3. Take a deep breath, eyes closed not holding your nose at all - then submerse, breathing out slowly. Repeat a few times.

The aim is to overcome the fear of water entering your nose and having an unpleasant drink. Keep practising until you can manage to exhale into the water for 30 seconds. Avoid the temptation to open your eyes when you lift your head out of the water. Wipe away as much water as you can first. Say to yourself ‘don’t panic’, wipe, then open your eyes. Chlorine in a pool can make them sting a bit but much less so if you take your time, wait a few seconds, wipe your face properly before you open your eyes.

Now you are ready to try it out in the pool or the sea. You may find yourself swimming underwater easier at first than on the surface, but the ability to submerge yourself is pivotal. Go through all these steps again standing up. Then take a swim of sorts. Stand up, wipe eyes and repeat. All the strokes, leg work, efficiency and so on can be worked on later.

I managed to coax huge strapping lads in Africa to swim in under thirty minutes. They had not been anywhere near water before and were somewhat wary. I used the same techniques on some youngsters, including my own in the hot tub. Had I known about this method when younger myself, I would not have spent hours and hours with rings and floats never progressing much.