Fear X Mental Health Monday

 

Life aint fucking easy man and it can scare the shit outta ya...Fear is paralysing, it can have you all sorts of messed up - it's one hell of an emotion that's usually caused by thoughts or experiences and it keeps you stuck in a state that's very hard to move through but don't give up, don't stay where you are, you need to take action to move through it.  

Fear has two meanings as an anagram, Forget Everything And Run or Face Everything And Rise, whichever meaning you give it depends on your fight or flight response and you can train this fight or flight response yourself by exposing yourself to anxiety situations that you'd normally avoid. Repeatedly doing this lessons your anxiety meaning you're less fearful. For example if you was fearful of spiders you would need to expose yourself to them for as long as possible as many times as possible till eventually you're okay to hold one or if you was fearful of going outside you'd need to go for a short walk maybe 5 mins and then next time increase it to 10 mins and then once you can be outside half an hour maybe go shopping at a time you'd usually avoid etc. build it up in baby steps, it really does work I promise! Give yourself permission to lose the feeling of extreme fear and to build your fight or flight responses to a healthy level. 

Fear can have you paranoid further worsening the fear, it's a nasty cycle that you gotta break by challenging the thoughts of, think about the most logical counter argument for whatever you're paranoid about; receiving cognitive behavioural therapy will train you to naturally challenge your thought processes and a professionals advice will always be more personalised and specific to your needs than self help information however I do try share what I've learnt that works for me. 

Fear is overcome-able, it's basically extreme anxiety which through resilience training you can overcome it,  it just takes a lot of bravery to try tackle it which isn't easy but once you overcome it feels like a huge weight lifted off your shoulders. 

What are some things you're fearful of? 

Till next time,

Stevie x