When we get it wrong

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 or at the very least feel happy about our courage.

Rather than tackle a problem head on, many of us find workarounds. We can become quite adept at finding ways to avoid the problem. We find ways to avoid confronting our fears. It is understandable given the hideous feeling we get in the pit of our stomachs. Real pain, a true clenching acidic sensation. It is not just a mental foible. These experiences lead us to make excuses. These mighty unpleasant experiences make us shy away and steer clear of something we would rather not face.

Look up at the ceiling. It limits how high you can go in the room you are in. Anxiety has a ceiling too. Your level of anxiety can’t rise above that ceiling. When anxiety builds, we want to get it back down as quickly as we can. Wanting it to go down immediately is part of the problem. Knowing that it will peak is helpful. Your anxiety level will not rise and rise to a point of passing out and death. It will not be something that you enjoy, but the result will help you enjoy your life more. The anxiety is stopping you doing something, stopping you taking part in something. Or you have a fear of encountering something on your travels. That is not good.

There is a simple way to rid yourself of any anxiety problem. It does not entail shock therapy, far from it. Gradual easing in works better. Those wanting to deal with social anxiety would not gain from being put on the spot, in front of a large crowd of people. Those wanting to deal with the fear of heights will not benefit from being taken up high into the sky in a crane. Go up five feet, stay there for a few seconds and then come back down. Go up again and come back down. Go up six feet, stay there a while and come back down. And so on. Small steps, a gradual increase.

Each time you face the problem your anxiety will build. You must allow the anxiety to build and wait for it to subside. If anxiety were to be measured on a scale of one to ten, most need to allow the anxiety to pass five before they retreat. It needs to peak somewhere between five and ten for the process to take hold. After it peaks, it will always return to somewhere closer to zero. 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 high level each time. The level will go up, but not by the same amount. The first step is likely to induce the greatest, quickest, rise in anxiety. Hence why that step is usually the hardest.

No matter what the phobia is, dogs, spiders, public speaking, heights, small spaces, crowds; you can do something about it. 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. Knowing the root cause of your problem is useful with certain mental conditions but less so with phobias.

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 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.

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 but 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 in the water. 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 technique with my children 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.