Free Yourself from Fears (26 page)

What would it be like to have committed yourself?

What do you think you would lose?

“Hell is other people,” said the existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre. To this I would reply, “So is Heaven.” We are formed by and through relationships with others. We cannot be alone, because we define ourselves in our actions with others. We need to connect and commit to other people to be fully ourselves.

Commitment may seem like losing yourself, but it is the only way to truly find yourself.

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in the Body

Change and pain are part of life but suffering is optional.

THE FEELING OF FEAR, BOTH AUTHENTIC AND UNREAL, is unmistakeable. The fear response, orchestrated by the amygdala, leads to feelings that are like no other. It can make us freeze or panic. The fear response directs blood away from the brain, therefore when we are frightened we do not think so clearly. We need some way to deal with the feeling so that we can feel more resourceful, and take action.

Controlling your feeling of fear

What can we do to control the physiological feeling of fear? To begin to answer this question, do this small experiment.

Sit in a chair and relax your body. Make sure that you relax the muscles in your forehead and the back of your neck. Breathe in and out deeply and slowly a few times.

Now try to feel afraid.Think of something that might normally make you afraid. Make sure that you stay relaxed and breathe in a slow and measured way.

Can you feel fearful?

DEALING WITH FEAR IN THE BODY

The odds are that you cannot. When we relax, we are not able to feel fear, worry, or anxiety to anything like the normal extent. Emotions are a loop between body and mind. The mind creates fearful pictures.

This makes us feel tense and changes our breathing. Our brain reacts to the mental images as if they are real. The tension and breathing pattern back up the feeling of fear. A vicious circle is set up. When we break the link between the anxious thoughts and the usual physiological response, we cannot feel afraid in the same way. Our brain is trying, but our body says: “What danger?” When we relax the body, fear cannot get a foothold.

We can use NLP to stop the thinking strategy, or to change the physiology. Then we can think clearly about what to do.

There are three main ways to relax and control the feeling of fear.

Before you start, rate your fear on a scale of one to ten, where one is slight fright and ten is absolute terror. Then as you use some of the following processes, rate your fear again after a few minutes. It should be lower. Keep doing the process until the fear is gone or down to a reasonable level.

Controlling fear through breathing

Breathing is the key to relaxation. Changing your breathing pattern helps to make you feel relaxed. Quick, shallow breathing changes the acidic level of the blood and makes you feel more anxious, even 209

FREE YOURSELF FROM FEARS

when there is nothing to feel anxious about. “Take a good deep breath” is advice that many people give to help you be calm, but this is only half the story. If you take many good deep breaths too quickly, you will hyperventilate and this will make you feel panicky. To feel calm, you need to concentrate on the
out
breath.

To feel more relaxed and calm, breathe in slowly, for at least a count of three. Hold your breath for a moment and breathe out for twice as long as you took to breathe in. This will calm you for both unreal and authentic fear.

When you can control your breathing in this way, you will find that what was anxiety turns into a feeling akin to excitement.

Excitement gives you energy to meet the challenge. Anxiety makes you want to run away from it.

This is also the reason laughter is such a good resource: it changes your breathing, distracts you, and releases beta-endorphins—natural chemicals that make you feel good. Laughing at your fears does work.

Controlling fear through feeling

This seems a paradox. However, you cannot will your feelings away; when you try to do this, it usually makes them worse. Just feel the pure feeling. The feeling is unpleasant because you are not getting into the pure feeling, you are thinking of it as fear and trying to escape it.

To control fear in this way, feel it deeply, simply as a feeling. Go through the exercise on page 146, and really explore the submodalities of what you are feeling. Pinpoint the exact place you are feeling it. Explore how hot or cold it is, how intense, how deep in your body.

Don’t have any thoughts about it; don’t try to get rid of it. Just feel exactly what is there.

One tip to help you: look down. Looking down helps you contact your feelings. Where you place your eyes is important to your thinking. Looking up helps you think in pictures. Looking to the side helps you think in sounds.

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DEALING WITH FEAR IN THE BODY

Once you have the pure feeling, then you can play some games with it. Move it around. If it is in the middle of your abdomen, move it up into your chest, then down to your belly, then maybe into your knee or your big toe. What is it like to have a frightened knee? See how far you can control the feeling by moving it. When you move it, see if it stays there.

Controlling fear through relaxation

The best way to control anxiety is by relaxing your body and mind.

Many things people do to “relax” like watching television are not relaxing at all. Your body may be slumped in the chair, but the television has control of your mind, you are open to all the images it sends. These may add to your stress.

When you do any relaxation exercise, pay particular attention to your forehead, neck, and shoulders. It is easy for tension to settle in a furrowed brow, tight shoulders, and stiff neck. As we get older, muscle tension draws lines on our face where we are habitually tense. We carry muscle tension in our body without noticing because we are used to it.

Some years ago, I took lessons in both the Alexander technique and the Feldenkreis method. Both are means of being more aware of the body and using it in the most effective, efficient, and graceful way.

I remember in one lesson, my teacher asked me to stand up absolutely straight. I did so. She asked me if I was sure I was standing straight. I said yes, it felt like I was straight. Then she brought a full-length mirror and showed me how I was really standing. I was amazed to see I was leaning to my left. I could see that in the mirror.

The feedback I had from my body was mistaken. When I thought I was standing straight, I was leaning to the left. So I changed my posture so I could see I was standing straight. It felt like I was leaning to my right, even though I could see it was straight in the mirror. I had the habit of leaning to the left and had done it for so long that it felt correct.

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You may think your neck is relaxed, but in fact you do not feel the tension because you are used to it. You can do three things to help you relax more fully.

Before you relax a part of the body, tense it as fully as you can. Get a sense of what it is like when it is very tense. Then relax as fully as possible. By tensing first, you will be able to relax more because you will be able to notice the difference more clearly.

Secondly, feel the muscle with your hand. Feel the back of your neck and massage it gently. Feel your forehead and smooth out the furrows.

Thirdly, take a relaxing massage whenever you can. At the end, be aware how your body feels. Then when you relax by yourself, you will have a better idea of what it feels like when you are fully relaxed.

Proper relaxation helps to control stress and anxiety. Also, by building in a time for relaxation every day, you help the body to relax and relieve the symptoms of stress. Each day’s relaxation helps to lessen the load on the body. Of course, you can never relax every muscle in your body. You need some tension, otherwise you would collapse like a jelly.

There are many excellent relaxation books and tapes on the mar-ket (see References, page 245). Here is a simple relaxation exercise to do every day for a few minutes that will make a big difference to your stress level.

Skill for freedom

Relaxation exercise

J Lie down in a quiet place where you will not be disturbed for a quarter of an hour at least. Close your eyes. Become aware of your body, starting from the feet and working up, or from the head and working down. Be aware not just of the limbs and muscles and the outside of the body, but also the inside—the organs and muscles that are working all the time to keep you alive and well.

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J Notice what feels good in your body.Also, notice those places that do not feel good, either because they are painful or there is a feeling of malaise. Simple awareness will help. Do this for at least five minutes. Do not try to change anything, just notice what arises.

J Breathe deeply into your abdomen and let your lungs fill from the bottom upward. Feel that you are filling your whole body with the vital force in the air.

J Hold your breath for a moment and imagine charging the air within you with vitality from all of your body that feels good. Let all the good feeling from your body pass into the air.

J Exhale, and as you do so, imagine pushing the charged vitality of the air to every part of your body and feel it invigorating all your body.

Let all the pain and stress in your body pass in the air you are exhaling into the surroundings and be lost.

You can supplement this relaxation with another skill—witnessing.

Fear has no power unless you identify with it, in other words think that it is an essential part of who you are. Witnessing is a way of disidentifying with the fear. You see the fear as something you have and separate from the real you. The essential you is not touched by fear. The real you is never frightened. The real you simply feels. As soon as you separate yourself from the fear and witness it, it loses its power.

The following skill is the most useful one in the whole book. It is not just a short-term process for controlling fear when you feel frightened. It is a spiritual exercise that helps you separate the real you from all the conflicting feelings and attachments that you have to everyday life. It is a form of meditation and if you do it every day, you will be less identified with fear and anxiety and less stressed. It will help you to center yourself. It will give you more resources to absorb the stress that life sends your way. It will help and nourish you at a deep level, whatever fears you may have.

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Skill for freedom

Witnessing

Relax and say the following to yourself.The words do have to be exact.

“I have a body, but I am not my body.

I can feel and see my body, so I cannot be my body.”

Pause a moment and let this sink in.

“My body may be tired, anxious, sick, or healthy, but this is nothing to do with the real me. I have a body and I am not my body.”

Pause.

“I have wants, but I am not my wants.

I can know what I want; I am more than what I can know.

I can be aware of my desires, but they do not touch the real me.

I have wants and I am not my wants.”

Pause.

“I have emotions, but I am not my emotions.

I feel my emotions and what I can feel and sense cannot be the true me.

Emotions come and go but do not affect the real me.

I have emotions, and I am not my emotions.”

Pause.

“I have thoughts, but I am not my thoughts.

I am aware of my thoughts, so I cannot be them.

Thoughts come and go but do not affect the real me.

I have thoughts, and I am not my thoughts.”

Pause.

“Who am I really?”

214

in the Mind

Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear—not absence of fear.

MARK TWAIN

NLP PROPOSES THAT WE LEARN UNREAL FEARS and then they are constantly triggered by anchors. Every time you change your thinking and use your resources, you weaken the strategy and help to unlearn the fear.

How does this work in practice?

I have a personal example that will illustrate many of the ideas in this book. When I was writing the book, I trained on some NLP courses in Rome. When the training was over, Andrea and I had allowed ourselves a couple of days to experience the sights, sounds, tastes, and smells of the Eternal City. The Spanish Steps, the Coliseum, and many wonderful churches vied for our attention. Rome is unique.

One moment you can be walking down a dirty, narrow street flanked by graffiti-encrusted buildings. It seems as if you are in an insalubrious suburb of a third-world sprawl. Suddenly you emerge into a beautiful piazza, with dazzling examples of bygone architecture.

How could we visit Rome without going to the heart of Christendom? We had to visit St. Peter’s Church. The square in front of the Basilica is spacious and beautiful. We arrived mid-morning, just missing the Pope’s weekly address. The chairs were still laid out in the square. We went straight to St. Peter’s Church to see as much of it as possible in the time we had.