I’m taking a little side-trip from my review of the Comfort Zone to talk about the energy demands of wrestling with and getting control of anxiety and fear. The bottom-line is this: it takes a LOT of energy to push past our Comfort Zones.

It is easy for us to credit physical work – work you can the results of in the visible world. If you wash the dishes, well, you get clean dishes. If you vacuum the living room then you have a clean floor in the living room. If you empty the in-basket on your desk at work then presto! You have an empty in-basket.

It is often much more difficult to credit ourselves when we do this invisible world work in our thinking. But make no mistake: it takes at least as much energy to face into and tackle our anxious thinking as it does to vacuum that floor or clear that in-basket.

As If You Didn’t Know This Already…

You’ve experienced this: you decide to tackle a fear (or a fear is pushed into your awareness by the current situation you’re in.) You wrestle with it, which takes 5 minutes or 15 minutes or an hour, and suddenly you’re WIPED – feeling beat-up, like you’ve run a race.

Many of us (probably most of us) become very dismissive of that feeling/experience, both to ourselves and to other people. “What’s the problem?” we ask ourselves, shaking our head at our apparent weakness and frailty. It isn’t like we were DOING anything, after all…

Except we ARE doing real work when we face into our fears! We learned along the way to treat the mind and the body as distinct and separate creatures – like 2 passengers in a car. But those two things are NOT separated – they are connected together, and what drains one drains the other.

Thus The Need For Self-Care In Fear-Busting!

I know that we live in the work 24/7/365 culture of the modern age – that all success is measured by our output and visible productivity. But there are kinds of productivity that can’t be easily measured except by ourselves, internally, and one of those is this work on fear.

We need to be patient and self-caring as we take on our fears. I’ve said that a lot in this blog. But this is doubly true when it comes to the energy cost of taking on our anxieties.

Part of the problem is we’re often terrible energy managers. We create to-do lists, we set out to build Rome in a day (and no, I’m not exaggerating!), and then we wonder why we’re so stinkin’ burned out at the end of that day.

If You’re Going to Run a Race You Better Have Your Gatorade

I’m going to write more specifics about this, but here are some things to consider in today’s Fear Mastery thinking:
1) What ARE your energy demands in the day?
2) Are you attempting to do too much some days?
3) How does that impact your work at unplugging fear and worry for you?
4) What can you do, even in small, beginning ways, to make this work more successful for you?
5) What is one thing you can defer or wait on until you’ve unplugged a fear or two?
6) What energizes you and gives you MORE energy to do this work?
7) What is one way you can do self-care better – different food, different sleep habits, different physical activity? Even in a small way?

You are worth the effort, and you are your own best care provider for yourself. Rome really wasn’t built in a day (except on HBO.) You won’t master your fears in a day either. But you can do a significantly more effective job of it if you’ll do the self-care that makes that work less draining, and gives you the energy you need to do it AT ALL.

In my last post I began discussing the various challenges of that last stop on the Chronic Anxiety Cycle Tour, the Comfort Zone. I talked about how the Comfort Zone is restrictive – i.e., that it tends to want to push us back away from whatever scares us, building a wall in our thinking to keep us away from that scary subject.

But Constrictive Is Just The Start

One of the challenges of the Comfort Zone’s tendency to shrink away from danger is that it then starts to limit our range of motion in our lives and thinking. It isn’t just constrictive – it is restrictive as well.

My Mom is a good example of this quality of the Comfort Zone. My Mom was, once upon a time, a big fan of driving. She owned (when I was in Junior High School) a Triumph MG drop-top. She loved that car! I remember her taking us to her school (she taught Junior High, oddly enough), a wildly colorful scarf around her hair, the wind roaring over us as we sat in the tiny back seat, and her telling jokes and laughing as we thundered through Las Vegas.

Somewhere along the way she began to find driving uncomfortable. She was never crazy about freeway driving, ever, and even in the Triumph preferred surface streets. As the years passed she became more and more nervous about driving. She gave up the Triumph for a “safer” car, a Ford, and then began asking her children to run the errands she used to do – go to the grocery store, pick up dinner, etc.

And all this while still in her 50′s! By the time she retired at 64 she had completely given up driving, depending on my Dad or one of us kids to take her where she wanted to go. She always warned us to be careful when we left the house, and was clearly uncomfortable with the whole subject of driving.

The truth is it was horrible to watch her slowly, sadly losing her freedom of motion with respect to driving. Worse still, when pressed on it, she just changed the subject and got mad if you continued talking about it.

Let’s Just Not Go There

Maybe the worst part about this aspect of the Comfort Zone is that we’re mostly unaware that we’re losing our freedom of motion. We begin to adapt to our shrinking world – because that beats all to hell (in our thinking) having to consider the alternative – facing our anxiety.

We also get really good at arguing for our limitations/restrictions. No, we really don’t like going to parties (because we’re afraid of meeting new people, or saying something stupid, or whatever we’re afraid of in groups of people.) No, we really don’t need to travel (because we’re afraid of something bad happening when we’re away from home, or whatever we’re afraid of when considering travel.)

No, even though we HATE our current job and would probably give an arm or a leg for a different one (let alone actually chase down the kind of work or life that REALLY interests us), we’re OK with this current job we can’t stand. We say that because it feels safer (notice the use of the word “feels”) to stay in this yucky job, rather than take the risk of facing our fears and trying for something better.

We are NOT Losers!

Another risk of this Comfort Zone business is how quick we are to trash ourselves, beat ourselves up for our refusal to take our fears on. We’re losers, we’re failures, we’re weak, blah blah blah. None of that is true! We are AFRAID. The strongest person in the world wrestles with fear.

No, the problem isn’t that we’re losers. The problem is that we’re reacting to our fears, to the restrictions placed on us by our reacting to our Flight or Fight Response, by stepping away and allowing our worlds to shrink.

OK – Good To Know – What Then Shall We Do?

The biggest thing to think about with this restrictive quality of the Comfort Zone is to stop arguing for our limitations. Even the personal challenge to NOT just meekly accept our restrictions can go a long ways towards helping energize us to take action about our fears.

It FEELS easier, and definitely safer, if we just quietly let the Comfort Zone hred us into a quiet corner of our lives. It ISN’T better, and it definitely doesn’t do anything to help us overcome our fears.

Where is your life shut down right now? What would you like to be able to do or experience? Warning – even asking this question will potentially piss off your Comfort Zone. That’s GOOD – just expect some twinges from your habitual Flight or Fight Responses. For me that usually meant some uckiness in my stomach, the threat of some dizziness (talk about scary, for me) and almost always some sadness and anger.

ALL GOOD. Our Comfort Zones get entirely too much control of our lives. Maybe it is time to start thinking about taking the wheel away from that Comfort Zone?

Next up – more on the Comfort Zone and the qualities that make it hard to unplug those fears.

I have a number of conversations in the last week or so around self-care – the work we have to do (regardless of our training or belief that everyone else comes before us) if we’re going to live healthy and unfearful lives. Today’s video is some of my thinking around this subject.

Please let me know what you think, and your own thoughts about self-care!

OK. We’re done some serious review in the last few posts about what happens when we turn a problem into a crisis in our thinking. The last stop in this joyride I call the Chronic Anxiety Cycle is the Comfort Zone.

The first real traceable source I have for this term comes from Peter McWilliams, and it is essentially his model of the Comfort Zone that drives my thinking here. (For further reading see his excellent book “Do It – Let’s Get Off Our Buts.”)

Here’s the bottom-line: Flight or Fight will continue to activate in us every time (EVERY time) we think about a particular issue or problem that scares us. We eventually reach a place where we are SICK and TIRED of being afraid, so we wall it off from our thinking to the best of our ability. We finally create a way to get away from the tiger in our minds…

And that wall is the metaphoric Comfort Zone. Think of it as a yard with a fence around it. If you’re inside the fence you’re golden. But you KNOW that just over the fence is a really scary dog that barks at you if you get up on the fence. So you DON’T. You stay on your side of the fence, and that way you don’t feel fear/risk getting hurt -

The Origins of the Comfort Zone

This fence in your head, however, is different from the fence in your yard. This fence is electric! OK, it isn’t really electric. But it will attempt to shock you if you try to get over it -

Let’s go back to the natural world for a minute. Let’s imagine that you are Erik the Zebra. You’re hangin’ with the other zebras, doing that eating-grass-on-the-plains thing, and you decide you’re thirsty. You head for the water hole, and suddenly you smell that unmistakable odor of lions.

This is a classic example of what the Flight or Fight Response evolved to do. You are going to remember that experience! You’ll, in the future, find yourself a little more wary as you approach watering holes (assuming you lived through the first encounter.) In other words, you’ve developed a Comfort Zone boundary around the subject of water holes – and good thing too, right?

You’ll be smarter and more careful the next time you get next to water holes! A great evolved mechanism to keep you safe, in the natural world…

You Ain’t Natural Marge!

The challenge for us humans and our Comfort Zones is that we can do this exact creating of safety boundaries around stuff that scares us IN OUR THINKING. And this is when the Comfort Zone, so useful in the natural world, gets us in trouble instead. We wall away our fears from our thinking, and that’s where they can fester and grow and mess with our lives.

When I was a kid I touched a hot stove. I remember it VERY clearly. I really came to understand how much pain was possible that wonderful morning… I learned that Comfort Zone lesson so strongly that for years I wouldn’t even touch a COLD burner.

That’s not necessarily bad, when it comes to hot stoves. But it can really get in the way when we have problems we need to address, fears to unplug, anxiety to shut down, but we are afraid to face them, because we’ve trained ourselves (and, by extension, our Comfort Zones) to keep us as far from those fears/anxieties as possible.

Fences That Move

The Comfort Zone has some very specific qualities that make this work just a tad more challenging as well. Unlike those fences we have in our backyards, our Comfort Zone boundaries are mobile. What I mean is those boundaries are always striving to keep us safe – and you really can’t be too safe, right?

So, in the reasoning of the Comfort Zone, if 10 feet from danger is good, 20 feet is better – and 30 feet is better still. The Comfort Zone winds up, as a result, being constrictive. It tends to shrink inwards towards YOU and away from the thinking that scares us.

Safety is a great thing in the natural world. Better to be safe than sorry – seriously. But that isn’t the case when it comes to facing problems! No, to solve problems we need to face problems and start experimenting with solutions. More accurately, we need to convert things we’re afraid of in our thinking BACK to problems, and then start experimenting with solutions.

The Comfort Zone however isn’t having any of this conversation. NOT interested. Here’s the thing: you decide you’re afraid of something, and that’s all the Comfort Zone needs to know. It has one mission – to keep you SAFE.

Safety IS Job One, For the Comfort Zone

Remember that quote from Ford Motor Company? (OK, if you’re under 30 then you probably don’t.) Might as well have been written by our Comfort Zones.

Can’t overstate this, and if you get this you’re a long ways towards having a real handle on how fear and anxiety work in the human brain and body. If you have any conviction that something could hurt you then you are telling your Comfort Zone that this issue or problem is BAD, and you need to stay away from it. End of story!

So as far as your Comfort Zone is concerned, you need to STAY AWAY from this scary thought or problem. It is the classic story of falling off the horse or the bike. We get thrown and we get hurt, and when it happened, for most of us, it was scary as well.

We know that the only way to get back on the horse or bike is to get up on it and face through our fear about what MIGHT happen if we ride again. But instead if getting up on a horse or bike we have to face through our fears, face through the Comfort Zone warnings that this didn’t work so well last time – really, you shouldn’t do this horse or bike thing.

SO – What to DO?

Since I am addressing the various qualities of the Comfort Zone across several posts I will be addressing each quality with one or two recommendations per post, then review them all in the last of this group. For now keep in mind one thing: your fear isn’t going anyplace until you take the risk of getting up on that fence.

More specifically, you have to PUSH BACK on the Comfort Zone. Given that your Comfort Zone is always working to keep you safe, and as a result is trying to make you step back, you will have to push back on your Comfort Zone for the rest of your life.

And that’s a GOOD thing, because in that direction lies our freedom. I’ve outlined in other posts (including the most recent video post) that a small collection of practiced skills is what will break us loose from chronic anxiety and fear. The very first thing on that list is the knowledge and practice of NOT running from our fears, but instead facing into them.

That takes practice, patience and a little skill. Anyone – ANYONE – can do it.

Next up – more on the Comfort Zone. Keep those comments and feedback coming folks – really helps as I continue this work!

This blog post is mostly about the video blog today. I am in the midst of refining the specific ways I’m working the tool set of Fear Mastery, and this video blog post is another step in that direction.

(BTW, I say at the start of this video that I’m putting two video posts up today – but in fact I put up one video with my blog entry at the start of this week, and this video is #2.)

But I also wanted to quickly let you my faithful readers know that I’m kicking it up a notch with the blog. Here are my New Year Resolutions for Fear Mastery:

1) I’m really, truly ramping up the blog entries to two times a week. Today’s post is the first installment in that commitment. It will probably vary in form from week to week, but what I’m thinking right now is I’ll do a written post and video post, then later in the week do another video post.

2) I will make the written posts shorter, I swear it! It is very tempting to try and completely cover a blog topic in a single post (at least it is for me), but it can also make for long and sometimes cumbersome reading. So I’m committing in 2012 to keeping the posts to no longer than about 1100-1200 words. (I have been averaging 2000 – holy crap!)

A Couple of Questions for You, the Readers

Lastly, for this entry, I have some things I’m wondering about, and I’m hoping you’ll let me know what you think, either here at the blog or by email:

1) Would it be useful to anyone here if I created a Twitter Account and posted some quick Fear Mastery thoughts/reminders/suggestions, 3-4 times a week?

2) Would a Facebook Page be something that would interest you folks? It could be a place where we can trade notes about personal challenges, progress, places we’re stuck, and shared experience. I am in the midst of designing a website where there will be forums for that same purpose (including by mid-summer live chat for folks to have real-time conversations) but this might be a test run/intermediate step.

Next Up

As promised last post my next several blog posts will cover the specific issues we face when we confront our Comfort Zone fears – those fears we’ve been carting around for (usually) years, or even decades – the fears that are usually the most resistant to us taking them on and pulling them apart.

Have a good weekend Fear-Busters – remember, we have (literally) nothing to fear but fear itself – and with a little work, we don’t even have to be afraid of that.

I continue today with my review of the basics of the Fear Mastery roadmap of anxiety. Thanks to the unnamed (in this blog post anyway) commenter who said to me in email this past week that I should call the “Worry Engine” stage of the Chronic Anxiety Cycle the “Oh My God!” stage. Pretty funny!

What happens if we don’t stop the Worry Engine? I’m guessing you don’t need me to tell you. What happens is that we usually tend to land on one or two or three of those scary projections about the future, focusing on them in our thinking – often because they are the scariest to us.

We do this, and then we start assuming that those hypothetical outcomes are actually certain to happen. Worse, we assume it will be bad ALWAYS – it will go bad and stay bad – hence the name – the Indefinite Negative Future. It isn’t that (to use my example about the work presentation from my last blog post) someone will merely laugh at us once if we flub a presentation.

No, they’ll laugh, and then continue to laugh. They will mock us, dismiss is, and it will go on FOREVER. And of course that means it will be horrible, unendurable. We will be unable to show our face in the lunch room, we’ll never be able to go out after work with our colleagues, we’ll be made fun of by strangers in the supermarket… you get the picture.

That’s the heart of Indefinite Negative Future thinking.

INF – This Way Lies Madness…

I could almost describe landing on one or two or three Indefinite Negative Futures (INF’s for short) as a way of “carving a groove” in your fearful thinking. I suspect you know exactly what I’m talking about.

You’ve been doing that Worry Engine thinking thing for a few days, or weeks, or months, or YEARS, and you keep revisiting the same scary scenarios over and over again… and now you seem to go there at the drop of a hat, and you’re roaring along with your worrying about the future with no effort at all.

As I said in my last post this dwelling on the potential scary future is the Flight or Fight’s attempt to find you an escape route from the scary thing in your thinking. Sadly there IS no escape route – because it isn’t a crisis, it’s a problem. However to YOU it FEELS like a crisis, it LOOKS like a crisis, so you’re responding to it AS a crisis.

So you keep “worrying” the same fearful projections about the future over and over, like a dog with a bone -

Keep that up for any length of time and you’ll start to “shorthand” those fears – boil them down to a handful of fearful scenarios that you revisit again and again. Which of course keeps firing up Flight or Fight.

Which keeps scaring you. After awhile we don’t even remember how the scenario got started! If we even get close to a general area in our thinking we get afraid…

The Tiger in The Room

One metaphor I use a LOT on this blog about our problems-turned-crises is that we (metaphorically) create a tiger in our thinking. Tigers are dangerous. They are big, they are unpredictable, they tend to eat things like people when they’re hungry, and they seem unbeatable. Why wouldn’t we be scared of them?

Each of those INF’s in our thinking is another glimpse of what happens if we let the tiger get too close to us. Remember, all we’re really trying to do (in our brains) is figure out a way to get away from the tiger.

You’re hard-wired to do this. You’re not crazy, you’re not weak, you’re not “obsessive” – you’re just doing what our evolutionary histories have taught us to do – find a way to get away from the danger.

And It Isn’t Like We Just Have One Tiger!

If we only had one tiger in our thinking to contend with we might not have it so bad. But of course life just keeps coming at us, and if we’ve been set up in our thinking to find one thing frightening we can definitely do it with another thing, and another, and another.

This is part of what can make this Fear Mastery work so tiring. We’re often not fighting one tiger, we’re fighting three or four or seven of them in our thinking. Nope, we can have multiple INF’s running on multiple fears.

And let’s not forget that we’re often not really conscious of our fight to escape the tigers. So much of our thinking isn’t in the center of our awareness – a lot of it runs in the background unless we call it up front in our consciousness.

I probably can’t overstate that whole thinking-running-in-the-background thing when it comes to fearful/anxious thinking. This is the root of why so much of our anxious physical and emotional responses can seem to come up from nowhere, or catch us off guard the way they seem to do.

And this does a great job of explaining why we can feel so overwhelmed, so tired, so trapped. You have this shorthand list of fears that can be triggered by a memory, a comment from someone, a particular situation where you often worry about this or that fear, etc. This gets even easier when you’re tired, or upset, or feeling overwhelmed by the day.

Let me say it again – 1) our thinking often isn’t very conscious, and we are usually dealing with more than one fear at a time. Energy suck – check. Exhaustion – check. Wishing we had a switch in our brain for our fear – CHECK.

What To DO?

I mentioned in the last post on The Worry Engine that when you’re starting into Chronic Anxiety (and doing that projecting into the future, imagining all kinds of horrible outcomes to your problem-turned-crisis) a big key to shutting that process down is becoming aware of what you’re doing, and then deliberately calming ourselves down physically.

That is good advice for this stage of the Chronic Anxiety Cycle as well, although it is fair to say that it is harder here – takes more energy and effort, very often, to power down at this point.

Remember that you’ve been doing serious work at scaring yourself, and you’ve picked some favorite scary scenarios, when you get to the INF point of any particular fear or worry.

So:

1) Identify the fact that you are focusing on frightening future scenarios, and, at this stage of Chronic Anxiety you’ve landed on a small collection that scare you the most. This is the HEART of what is making you anxious right now.

The work here is to get clear on WHAT you’re afraid of in the future, and then steadily convert these fears/crises in your thinking back into problems that need resolution for you.

When I use the word problem I am not implying that your particular concern is necessarily light, easy or small. It might be huge. You could be dealing with serious family issues, financial problems, work challenges, you name it. No, I’m definitely not saying small when I say problem.

I AM saying that (hopefully you’re sick of my saying this by now!) that a problem is a fundamentally different creature from a crisis.

If you’re treating back taxes or your retirement in 15 years as a crisis (something that will hurt or kill you RIGHT NOW) then you are both burning enormous amounts of energy in self-hurting and usually useless ways, and you’re still not (in all likelihood) actually doing much to resolve the problem.

So – you need to get clear in your thinking, first, about what you’re afraid of/treating as a crisis.

That means doing what I call triad – making the decision to look your fears in the eye, identifying them clearly – wading through the inevitable Flight or Fight Response reactions in your body, feelings, and thinking – and then practicing unpacking/converting those fears/crises back into problems.

2) Come out of the future and back into the present! You’re burning a lot of time at this point, consciously or otherwise (usually otherwise). Practice realizing that you are obsessing over the future, whether you “mean to” or not!

A good way to counter that relentless focus on what might happen in the future is to, along with the identifying of and converting crisis back to problem, is practicing activities that pull you into the present.

Take a long walk. Visit with a friend and deliberately focus on them and their lives for a little while. Take a drive and practice just noticing what you see around you.

Put a record on and dance by yourself for 30 minutes. (You’ll feel great when you’re done, btw.) Play with your dog at the local dog-park. (He or she will thank you for it.) Make a meal, or bake some cookies (you can send me some if you like – always up for cookies.)

In other words, do whatever makes you come into the NOW, and get out of the future.

It is an illusion, to be very blunt, to think that by obsessing over the future you can somehow avert disaster. It is a very clear betrayal that we have Flight or Fight activated in the wrong direction (see the discussion on Flight or Fight in the two most recent blog posts.)

3) Work to identify what you CAN do, as you convert these fears back into problems, and take first, even if only small steps, to move in that direction, instead of obsessing. Some problems are remarkably easy to correct with even small amounts of action.

Some problems are larger, more tangled, or involve us confronting other fears. That takes more work.

But the ONLY way our problems will get solved (or at least 99% of the time) is by us ACTING rather than WORRYING. Which, of course, you already know…

4) How about asking yourself (and focusing on) what IS working for you right now? It is SO tempting when we’re doing anxiety to focus on how things are bad, how they are going wrong, how awful things will get later -

But how about deliberately centering your thinking on what is working in your life, right now? This isn’t a feel-good exercise or just something to make you feel better. This is deliberate practice of taking control of your thinking.

Because in case it isn’t clear yet from this blog the central theme of this Fear Mastery stuff is developing the skill and capacity to become a better master of your thinking. It is our thinking that gets us in trouble, and it is our thinking that will get us out of trouble.

It is all about acquiring a new set of skills in directing and being a better manager of our thinking. It is learning to think more clearly, more usefully, and as a result, with a lot less fear and anxiety in our lives.

5) Last, but not least, remember that you’re always able to calm your body down somewhat with deep breathing, deliberate relaxation efforts like stretching and meditation, exercise, etc. You’re dealing with both your thinking and your body’s/emotions reaction to that thinking.

Now Let’s Get To It!

OK, so there you have some basic recommendations for pulling this stuff apart at the Indefinite Negative Future stage of things.

You can use these recommendations really at any stage of the Chronic Anxiety Cycle (remember, this cycle is a linear structure imposed on a very organic process – useful for explaining, but limited in that most of us are at different points in the cycle for different fears, as well as moving back and forth along the cycle over time.)

Next up here in the blog I’m skipping over the stage called Anticipatory Anxiety – I completed several posts about this in the early fall, and I encourage you to look back at those after you finish this post.

I will be going on to a review of the basics around The Comfort Zone, that final stage of the development of anxiety in our lives, in my next few posts.

In the meantime, patience and stamina to you as you make the move to face down what is making you anxious. This is work you CAN do. It can feel overwhelming, impossible – but it is completely possible.

Thank you for the great feedback on the last three blog posts. Sure makes my day when I see your kind words. Please allow me to encourage you to post your comments to the blog so other folks can see them, if you’re willing/comfortable with that (I know some folks are not!)

One of my BIG goals with this blog, and the website to follow, is to develop a community of people who are helping each other bust their fears and anxieties -

Today I’m all about outlining what happens when we make the easy-to-make mistake of turning a problem into a crisis. I call this the Chronic Anxiety Cycle. Please be clear that while I call out specific stages of this cycle for clarity and understanding, this is very much an organic process – you can move back and forth through this cycle, and different stages can happen at the same time, and at different speeds.

The point is that there are specific things we do when we turn a problem into a crisis in our thinking, and there are specific things we can do to disrupt that cycle and get our fear and anxiety back under control. So don’t get too lost in the stages! Do, however, please get clear on what’s happening in our thinking when we continue to worry over a problem as if it was a crisis…

The Descent

In my posts on the Flight or Fight Response I listed out some of the things that are happening in our bodies and brains when we activate Flight or Fight. The Chronic Anxiety Cycle is the result of that activation. In a very real sense it is simply the long-duration effort of Flight or Fight to get us away from the danger we perceive.

It starts like this: let’s pretend for a moment you’ve been asked by your manager to give a presentation at work. Let’s pretend further that you’d rather face down a pack of saber tooth tigers (I am really stuck on saber tooth tigers right now – can you imagine how scary THEY must have been?) than get up in front of an audience. (I know NONE of us are afraid to speak to an audience – but this is just hypothetical…)

Now you’re feeling afraid – and so Flight or Fight kicks in. Along with your favorite/preferred physical and emotional responses to Flight or Fight (maybe for you it is sweaty palms, a racing heart and an abiding, restless feeling of frustration and anxiety) you also find yourself trying very hard in your thinking to resolve this crisis.

How does that look?

The Worry Engine

This is the name I have given to this first stage of the Chronic Anxiety Cycle. You know the drill. We start asking ourselves all kinds of “what if?” questions, and NONE of them are hopeful, maybe-it-will-be-fine questions. Oh no. We’re asking ourselves SCARY questions -

Questions like “what if I make a mistake during the presentation?” or “what if I say something stupid?” Questions like “what if I stutter?” or “what if I can’t talk at all?” And of course every time we ask a question like that we continue to activate Flight or Fight (assuming these questions scare us.)

It’s a lot like revving an engine without engaging the clutch – you make a lot of noise and burn a lot of energy, but you don’t get anyplace. Except that you DO crank up your stress and anxiety and fear and worry – hence the name.

Those scenarios you’re spinning out? They’re efforts to escape – efforts to find the way out of the danger. Except there IS no danger – you can’t die from giving a presentation. (I can hear some folks now saying “sez YOU ERIK! It sure FEELS like dying!”)

Sure – But What IF Those Horrible Things I’m Worried About Actually Happen?

Just asking this question reveals how much our thinking can frighten us. Without exception when I’m talking to coaching clients they ask this question. Let’s go back to the work presentation example question “what if I say something stupid?”

When we’re doing Worry Engine obsessing we imagine all kinds of nightmare scenarios. We say something stupid and people laugh at us. We say something stupid and people shake their heads, get up and leave the room. Then our boss tells us we’re fired. Then we’re being evicted from our house. Then we’re living on the street… etc.

All of this stems from Flight or Fight trying desperately to 1) figure out a way to get away from the danger you’re perceiving/thinking (looking for what might happen, doing projections to help you quickly decide what to do next) and 2) get you moving as a fast as possible. Think of Flight or Fight trying to find an escape route, so it is sorting out which things to avoid doing…

Brilliant – if you’re facing down a saber tooth tiger! NOT so useful if you’re worrying about a presentation at work. In fact it is seriously NOT useful for the latter.

OK, Smart Guy – What Might Actually Happen If My Fears Come True?

I’m not saying something difficult, embarrassing or frustrating couldn’t happen. Those things do happen to all of us. I’m saying our Worry Engine Fears are way, way distorted from the actual likely outcomes.

Let’s say you do say something goofy during your work presentation. Let’s do one better and define goofy – let’s say you say a word wrong, pronouncing it incorrectly. OK. So what? People look at each other in puzzlement, maybe consider it for a second (assuming they even noticed, which they often don’t) and then they move on. Maybe someone gently corrects you privately after the presentation.

Heck, maybe someone teases you after the presentation! OK. So? You don’t get fired, you don’t have co-workers howling at you, you don’t wind up on the street.

I’ve mentioned before in this blog that one of my professional skills is helping people become better presenters. I easily spend 40% of my time in that work just helping people get over their anxieties and very deep fears about failing at presenting.

Better still, you KNOW this already – when you’re not afraid. When you’re in your problem-solving, calm mind you already get this. But let’s not forget that Flight or Fight degrades or even largely closes down rational, critical thinking capacities – you don’t need those to escape tigers.

What to DO When We Start the Worry Engine?

Great question. Here are some suggestions:

1) Realize that you are firing up The Worry Engine! Just identifying the fact that you’re now racing into hypothetical, dark, unnerving future scenarios is a step in the right direction.

2) Along with that realization, remember that you’re busy scaring yourself every single time you conjure a scary future scenario – you are activating your own Flight or Fight Response, and so of course you’re also conjuring the frightening feelings and sensations that come with doing that.

3) Take a moment to physically calm down. Do some serious deep breathing – conscious, deliberate, controlled breathing, driving your focus into your breathing and away from your anxious thinking about the future. This works. It probably won’t shut down your fear permanently, but it is a great short-term relief technique.

Why? Because it to some extent shuts down Flight or Fight. The two responses can’t co-exist – you’re either panicking or you’re calming yourself down, physically.

4) Once you get a little less worried, start challenging your worst-case thinking. Lose my job? Really? Sure, it is scary to think about that – but then it is scary to think about LOTS of things. Does that mean you should sit around and WORRY about them?

The answer is no, you shouldn’t. Work, prepare, take sensible precautions (in the case of presenting; sort your data, create some sort of outline, practice a little), but then practice letting it GO. This runs counter to our very natural inclination to worry the concern to death in the vague hope that doing all that worrying will somehow create something useful or productive.

Time for a strong statement: worry does nothing for us. It FEELs like we’re doing something, but in reality we’re only making ourselves crazy, giving away energy that we can spend better in other ways.

Stop The Worry Engine, And You Stop the Chronic Anxiety Cycle

Here’s the funny thing: all of us, all the time, have topics or issues that might start us into Worry Engine/What If thinking – but then we stop it, get a grip and move on. All of us. Less funny but equally true, just about all of us have things that get our Worry Engine fired up, and off we go, heading merrily down the road to on-going anxiety and fretting and fear…

We have the capacity, the real power to stop this dance in its tracks. It is a great place to do this stopping, the stage I call the Worry Engine – in some respects it is the easiest place to stop this descent. It takes the least energy of any point in the Chronic Anxiety Cycle, and we’re potentially the most aware (or most likely to be aware) that we’re driving into worry at this point.

Of course the best place of all to avoiding starting the cycle is to get skillful at not converting problems into crises in the first place.

Next up – the next stage in Chronic Anxiety – the Indefinite Negative Future

Sometimes we naturally, as I said earlier, stop at The Worry Engine stage of things, getting ahold of our thinking and remembering that we’re facing a problem, not a crisis. But sometimes we don’t – sometimes we continue to obsess over our frightening future projections -

which in turn often leads us to landing on one or two “what ifs?” that really scare us, and we begin to focus on them most of all. We begin to act as if we KNEW those things were going to happen. And that takes us to the next stage of the Chronic Anxiety Cycle – more on that next post.

I did a little time in my last post outlining some very basic features of the Flight or Fight Response, as well as how that danger management system in our bodies can take us sideways when we’re not actually dealing with physical danger.

I will finish up my discussion of Flight or Fight in this post, including some examples from my own and other people’s experience. I will also talk about specific work to continue “discounting” our anxiety and fear in the experiencing of those Flight or Fight symptoms that tend to freak us out…

Enter the Dark Side of Flight or Fight

So let’s go back to the physical responses of Flight or Fight. I know for myself that one of the things that used to rock my world during my fight with anxiety was extremity numbness (mostly in my fingers and hands.)

It scared the crap out me. Why was this happening, and what if it didn’t stop? It seemed weird, and unnatural, and I was really afraid it wouldn’t stop.

But of course it DID stop, all the time – I was just afraid, deeply afraid of it. And of course it happened when I was really worried or afraid, although often I was completely unaware, or only vaguely aware, that I was battling anxious/fearful thoughts.

Another way to say this is that it SEEMED like I was having that particular sensation, numbness, for no reason at all. I would be driving to work, I would be reading a book, I would be eating dinner, and suddenly my finger and hands are tingling, or I’m holding something and suddenly it feels small or light or I can’t feel it at all.

That scared me. There’s no other way to say it. Not only did it seem to come from nowhere, but the sensations made me think it would just keep coming , and my fear asked “what if, this time, it doesn’t stop? Or what if I have to deal with this for the rest of my life?”

It is important to also mention that the minute – literally the minute – my attention/obsessive worry about numbness or some projected scary future event was pulled into the present the numbness faded and stopped. I think about this now and I shake my head. I had clues the whole time, I just didn’t know how to put them together…

But Wait, There’s More

Another thing I used to fight was a terror (not too strong a word) of the dizziness and vertigo I’d sometimes feel when I was very afraid/anxious. As bad as the numbness was, to me this was worse.

It had begun when I was very young, in Junior High, and again it seemed like it was something completely abnormal, weird, wrong, malfunctioning, and it scared me.

This even extended to just a sense of lightheadedness – like when you stand up too quickly, for example. Or anytime I was fighting congestion from sinus trouble – allergies or a cold – I ran the risk of having this scary sensation.

So anytime I even began to feel a little bit numb, or a little bit dizzy, I could ramp myself up with a LOT of anxious worrying about what if this time it didn’t stop, what if this time it just kept going on and on and on… I suspect you know pretty much what I’m talking about.

This single symptom more than any other would lead me to end conversations, leave a movie theatre or a party, freeze up at work, and worst of all, work to avoid going to bed at night (when it was most likely to happen to me.)

Why at bedtime? Because of course that’s when I had the least to occupy my thinking, so the Worry Engine thinking could REALLY fire up…

Let me say again that I had had moments/situations where I had been numb, or dizzy, and was freaking myself out, only to be distracted by something, and then those sensations would stop. One of the key elements in this conversation is that half the battle (or more) with our fear of Flight or Fight symptoms is disconnecting the obsessive worry ABOUT those symptoms!

Nothing Abnormal Here…

I wish all to hell that someone, anyone had said at some point, “Hey, there’s nothing weird going on here. You are firing up Flight or Fight, and your body/feelings/mind are responding in ways that make perfect sense in that situation.”

And while I finally found some information that partially communicated that message (when I finally stumbled across someone who was working with anxiety and panic attacks) the message could have been a WHOLE lot clearer, a whole lot sooner.

And to be completely frank even after I found that therapist (a wonderful, compassionate, smart guy) this could have been driven home much earlier and much more effectively. Which would have in turn shaken me free of my fear a great deal faster.

You have your own preferred responses to Flight or Fight, right? Sure you do. And I’m betting, to some extent, they freak you out. Hear me now when I say that 1) You get scared of your body/feelings/mental responses – I get it – and 2) there’s nothing freaky about the responses per se. They are normal, everyday, natural human things, just the outcomes of Flight or Fight firing up.

I’m not saying that you’ll stop being afraid of your body/feelings/mental responses just with my telling you there’s nothing weird or scary in those responses. No, it takes some deliberate effort and practice on our parts to bust that apart, that fear and worry.

One of the things that convinced me that these were caused BY me (my thinking) was when I finally put together that they often, even usually, went away when I was distracted. This was a HUGE clue that I still look for today to determine if something is “real” or not.

Other Examples

It is amazing to see the range of Flight or Fight reactions that can rattle our cage. I have one friend who blushes like you’ve never seen when he’s anxious/worried/angry. He can feel the heat in his face and skin when he does that, and the moment he feels that he is climbing a tree (metaphorically), anxious to get away from whatever situation is making him respond that way.

He is, btw, VERY afraid of looking stupid or less than perfectly competent, and after we had some conversations two years ago he began to map that Flight or Fight Response to those moments where he was worried or anxious he might drop the ball (mostly at work, sometimes with his in-laws).

But more importantly he also started “discounting” the importance of his blushing – he stopped making THAT something he was afraid of, in addition to the worries/fears that were causing that response in the first place.

I know a former co-worker (from my teaching days) who starts to stutter when she is worried or anxious. She immediately gets even more anxious and worried when she is stuttering, and that just feeds the cycle for her. She used to get SO MAD when she stuttered! It would have been laughable if it hadn’t clearly been so frustrating for her!

She has told me as we’ve discussed this that initially she couldn’t bring herself to practice not getting upset when she stuttered. Wouldn’t people think she was an idiot for stuttering? Wouldn’t her students think she was dumb or stupid or something?

She could really talk herself into a frenzy if she even mispronounced a word (something everybody does) or talked too quickly and got tongue-tied (something she often did in her haste to get the words out before she would, God forbid, stutter!)

She has, however, with some practice and time, begun to stop letting the stuttering bug her so much. I will never forget the phone call the afternoon she realized that she had started to stutter in a staff meeting.

She stopped, took a deep breath, told herself that it didn’t really mean anything when she stuttered (as colleagues looked her quizzically and waited for her to start again) and then, a few minutes later, realized that she had 1) forgot she was worried about stuttering and 2) had stopped stuttering.

Interesting, yes?

Practice Makes Perfect

Bottom-line: Flight or Fight is just trying to do its job when we get worried or afraid, and we don’t have to be afraid of our Flight or Fight Response.

So what then to DO?

1) Get very clear on your own particular, preferred Flight or Fight symptoms. Mine are extremity numbness, fingers and hands mostly, and dizziness/vertigo. (I occasionally wrestle with an upset stomach too.) What are yours? Work to both identify them and just let them be what they are.

This can be scary work at the start! Just thinking about those responses sometimes can be unnerving – we often associate panic and worry with just the symptoms. That’s OK – practice makes perfect, and this takes some practice.

2) Remember that it is our thinking 99% of the time that is starting up those Flight or Fight reactions, and if it isn’t, well, something else in your body is generating that response. In ALL circumstances however those reactions don’t have any meaning IN THEMSELVES. They are just reactions. Period. They don’t signal disaster. They signal that YOU ARE AFRAID.

3) As you identify your particular favorites (if that’s the right word!) and begin to practice “discounting” their meaning you can then begin to practice experiencing them and continue that “discounting” practice. That’s called by the psychology folks “desensitization” and it is exactly the right thing to do.

That means deliberating exposing yourself to those reactions in situations where you KNOW that nothing bad is going to happen – home, safe in your bed, or in a chair, or taking a walk, or whatever works.

This is another example of what I call Triad Work – decide to face the scary thing (in this case, the Flight or Fight reaction that makes you scratchy), practice riding out the actual reaction for a little bit (30 seconds, 1 minute to start) and then practice unpacking your fear – in this case, that the reaction has any meaning other than just you’re afraid.

You’ll Get There!

This isn’t anything you can (usually) do in one sitting. It takes some time and effort. You’ll probably have better and worse practice sessions at the start of things, and you’ll have moments where suddenly you’ll have the particular reaction surface and scare the crap out of you. It is certainly what happened to me.

That’s OK. We have usually spent long months, years or even decades telling ourselves how scary this Flight or Fight reaction is – it will take some time to unpack. Be patient with yourself. Don’t try to do this all at once.

And you will be blown away at the progress you can make in reducing your fear of your Flight or Fight responses. Don’t take my word for it – try it.

We have amazing bodies. Actually we have both amazing brains AND amazing bodies. We have the capacity to respond to danger/physical risk in highly effective and FAST ways. The secret of that first-response system to danger is the Flight or Fight Reflex (what I call the Flight or Fight Response.)

Why is that so amazing? It is amazing because it is completely hard-wired into us. This system developed to do ONE THING – get us the heck away from danger. Period.

I said in my last post that we can literally sit back and relax when it comes to sudden, dangerous situations, because we have a brilliant, automatic response to danger already built into us.

We will literally do the best we can as quickly as possible when presented with physical danger. Nice, eh? I’m not saying we’re guaranteed safety in the presence of risk. I’m saying we’re as equipped as we can be (short of driving around in an armored car) for the dangers of the physical world.

The Basics of the Flight or Fight Response

Here’s the summary of Flight or Fight: We have in our bodies two remarkable hormones, adrenaline and cortisol. These are the workhorses of Flight or Fight. When we are faced with danger that puts us at risk for immediate injury or death our brain fires up both of these chemicals, and an amazing host of physical, emotional and mental responses follows.

These two substances race through our body, getting us ready RIGHT NOW to deal with the danger. It makes for interesting reading, seeing just how FAST this process takes place. After all, we don’t usually have a lot of time to gear up when we’re being stalked by a hungry tiger, right?

The primary purpose is to GET US AWAY from the danger. Running is our first, best strategy. Why run? Because if we get away then we’re in a sweet place – we avoided getting hurt and we live to eat and play another day. Nice, yes?

If we have to fight (and sometimes in the physical world you can’t get away without a fight) then we can do that too – but preferably until we can get clear and RUN!

Our Bodies/Physical Responses

Wow – where to start just this part of the discussion of the Flight or Fight Response? Adrenaline and cortisol start their race, and in our bodies a cluster of things happen in seconds.

The body starts to shut down blood flow to the “unnecessary” body parts for the duration of the crisis (i.e., the parts we won’t need to run or fight right now, like our stomachs or our sex organs or our immune system.)

It also restricts blood flow to places that are more likely to get bit or cut in our efforts to run or fight, like our fingers and toes – those parts of us that are flapping out there away from the center of our body.

Remember, the whole mission is to GET CLEAR of the danger and live to have pizza another day… and that works better if we don’t lose a lot of blood in injuries!

And of course our heart beat goes up, often way up, as we start pumping the body full of oxygen to get ready for that sprint we’re about to make. Respiration goes up to match that need for oxygen, and so we’re breathing faster and more shallowly.

We usually start to sweat too – all that energy coursing through our body heats things up, and we need to start dumping that heat, which is what sweating does. We also become more sensitive to stimuli around us – our hearing and vision and even our sense of smell can improve/sharpen, as we get VERY alert for what’s happening around us during this moment of danger.

(This is why it sometimes feels like things are suddenly moving slowly in the midst of a traumatic event like a car accident.)

Impressive, yes? Why tell you all this? I’m doing this because it is crucial in our fight to deal with anxiety and fear that we understand that there is NOTHING WEIRD OR STRANGE about any of these physical responses. They all make perfect sense in light of what is happening during the experience of Flight or Fight.

These responses don’t mean that we’re about to die – they just mean our bodies are gearing up for dealing with danger. Period. End of story.

I’ll refer back to this list in a little bit – but for the moment just note these interesting responses in your body as you deal with Flight or Fight…

Our Feelings/Emotional Responses

Our emotions also get fired up by Flight or Fight to help get us moving during this tiger attack we’re experiencing. This is a complex and subtle dance of hormones and nerves in our brain and body, and we don’t really need to explain all that here.

(And, frankly, science is still coming to understand exactly how all that works in the brain – it is a pretty impressively complex set of activities.)

The bottom-line here is, again, the need to GET MOVING. And what could be better than scaring the CRAP out of you? When you have that surge of worry/fear/anxiety/terror flood through your body you GET MOVING – or you freeze in place (which is another way of running from the danger – if they can’t see us they can’t eat us, right?)

Same thing for anger/rage/upset – these get us ready to fight! Both sets of emotions supply us with both motivation and energy, and so we’re ready to deal with whatever we need to do in that moment – make like the wind, or find a handy tree branch and get ready to fight this danger to a standstill.

Let me say it again – the rush of fearful and anxious and angry feelings all are gearing us to deal with whatever needs to happen in that moment. So there’s nothing mysterious in that rush of feelings – it is a completely natural, normal response to danger.

Our Thinking/Psychological Responses

Something to note here in this discussion – Flight or Fight came before big brains in the chronology of our becoming human. Brains are great, and they sure are useful sometimes, but it is important to know that this Flight or Right Response we have is hard-wired into us – it happens and it happens FAST. And it has some very specific ways it affects our thinking -

Like, for instance, shutting down (or at least impairing) some of our higher-order thinking abilities. After all, if you’re faced with a tiger suddenly you don’t need to calmly analyze why the tiger is here, or what would have been smarter to do so you can avoid the tiger next time – nope, no time for that. You need to be IN MOTION – NOW!

So we’re not really thinking very clearly (or even sometimes at all) when we’re in the middle of Flight or Fight. Let me say that again: we are not at our best, usually, when we’re in the grip of adrenaline and cortisol. So we can feel disoriented, confused mentally, during the surge of Flight or Fight.

Other things happen to us mentally in this context. One is that we find ourselves summoning up past experience when we were in danger – what did we do then? This is happening VERY fast – we need that information NOW. What happened the last time we saw a tiger? What worked?

We’re also trying to find ways out of the danger that we’re in – essentially looking for possible escape routes, scanning and evaluating them very quickly. Should I run this way or this way? Realize you’re doing all this unconsciously – you’re just in it.

And by the way, language probably isn’t working so well for you either – you don’t need to be having a conversation, really, when you’re running. So we can find ourselves stammering and stuttering too – doesn’t that make sense?

Again, nothing weird or mysterious in this rush of experiences during Flight or Fight – it is all part of what happens, and is to be expected to a greater or lesser degree.

Thank You Flight or Fight!

Take a moment here and appreciate your body – you have one heck of a danger response system, on guard for you 24/7/365. This system has been in field tests for roughly 500 million years – you’ve got a solid system here.

And wouldn’t it be great if we were just dealing with physical danger in our lives? That might sound crazy – but think about it. If you’re a gazelle on the plains of Africa, making your way through your gazelle day, you really don’t have any worries, except for when you catch the scent of a pride of lions moseying past, or if you’re keeping watch over that baby gazelle when a pack of hyenas drops by to say hello -

otherwise your gazelle life is pretty much worry-free. Why worry-free? Because a gazelle isn’t worrying about tomorrow or even five minutes from now. Just like us it has a first-rate emergency response system hard-wired into its brain and body, and it will deal with danger when it shows up.

The Problem Isn’t Physical Danger…

If only we just had to deal with the risks of living in the physical world! No, we human beings have a second level of concerns to manage, unlike the rest of the creatures in the natural world. We have the blessings AND challenges of intelligence to manage as well, and that’s where anxiety and fear can become a problem.

This is a problem for a very simple reason: some of the concerns and problems we face in our lives can frighten us. Not all of them – even those of us who have been mired in panic attacks and deep depression still have issues that don’t rock our worlds – but some of them can and do.

The bottom-line here is simple: we have one system to deal with physical danger – Flight or Fight – but we have two sources of fear (as I mentioned in the last blog post.) Our miraculous system to deal with real, physical danger doesn’t recognize the difference between real, physical danger and danger to our thinking; it treats them exactly the same.

What’s The Bottom Line Erik?

I have reviewed all this about Flight or Fight for three reasons:

1) EVERY sensation and response we experience in our Flight or Fight Response is COMPLETELY NORMAL. There is nothing wrong with us, absolutely nothing wrong with us, when we have ANY of these reactions.

2) We trigger Flight or Fight when we PERCEIVE danger – real or in our thinking.

3) We learn to start thinking of Flight or Fight Responses as scary things all by themselves – when they are NOT.

Let me say that again: your body, emotions and mind are all impacted in a big way by the triggering of Flight or Fight. That’s crucial if you’re facing saber tooth tigers. It is anything but useful if you’re having scary thoughts (conscious or otherwise).

Your take away – there is nothing scary in our bodies, feelings or mental responses per se. They FEEL scary. They SCARE us. But they don’t carry any special information, and they don’t MEAN anything, except that you are scared!

I will discuss this more in the next post on Flight or Fight. In the meantime – however unnerving or frightening those responses can feel to you – practice thinking that they don’t mean anything except that you are scared.

That isn’t something that will usually change things overnight for any of us. But it is a vital foundation tool, with practice and a little time, in unlearning and calming down one of the hardest parts of anxiety/panic/depression.

And anyone can do it. It FEELS hard – it is exhausting – but it is completely achievable.

More on this next post…

I’ve been looking back over my oldest blog posts, and it seems like a good time to take a fresh stab at discussing the basics of the Fear Mastery framework and toolbox in depth. My goal is to make it clearer, more accessible and less academic-sounding than those early blog posts, as well as do some accompanying video blog posts.

With that goal in mind I’m starting with the basic premise of Fear Mastery: EVERY one of our fears, without exception, stems from one of two sources. It either starts with a real, physical danger we are suddenly confronted with, or it starts with something in our thinking that frightens us. End of story. Either we are reacting to a situation that can kill or injure us, or we are reacting to our thinking.

Let me say that again: fear has two and only two origins. Either we are dealing with something that can hurt us RIGHT NOW, or we are dealing with something we’re thinking about, some problem or issue that we’re facing, and we’re afraid of that problem or issue.

Crisis Vs. Problem

In other words you are either facing a crisis (real, immediate, physical danger) or you’re facing a problem (something that your brain finds scary or worrisome, but which isn’t immediate or physical, and can’t hurt or kill you here in the present moment.) Crisis vs. problem. These are the two sources of fear for us human beings.

That sounds deceptively simple. In truth it IS simple, and one of the great weapons we have to deal with fear and anxiety. Simple, however, doesn’t mean easy.

WHY isn’t it easy? It isn’t easy because the survival mechanism called Flight or Fight is a deep and ancient part of our physical, emotional and mental nature. It is powerful, and it evolved to GET US MOVING when threatened with danger (real, or perceived.)

When we are afraid Flight or Fight has one mission – to get us away from whatever scary thing is making us afraid.

Think about it: when you’re faced with a real danger – the brakes failing on your car, a menacing-looking person approaching you on a dark street, an angry barking dog off its leash, anything that could hurt you or even kill you – you don’t have TIME to sit and rationally think through what should happen next. You need to be in motion NOW – and Flight or Fight’s preferred direction of motion is AWAY from the danger.

None of that changes when we frighten ourselves in our thinking. We can be equally afraid of a roaring lion or the IRS wanting their back taxes from us. If we are afraid of it – i.e., if our brains go “holy crap that’s scary!” then Flight or Fight has only one mission – to get us AWAY from that scary thing.

Your Thinking CAN Scare You!

Let me say for the record at this point that I am NOT saying you are “making up your fears” or somehow failing for being afraid of your thinking. Everybody, and I mean everybody, has things they think of that frighten them.

No, the message here is that we can be JUST as afraid of a problem or issue that we’ve turned into a crisis as we can of an actual crisis (i.e., physical danger.)

A large part of the reason that our thinking can be just as scary as an actual physical danger is that Flight or Fight has a host of things it does in response to danger, real or perceived.

I will talk more about that in my next post, but for now be clear that a pair of powerful chemicals in your body, adrenaline and cortisol, get released the moment you are frightened, and they in turn make all kinds of things happen in our body and emotions and thinking.

In other words you are not just reacting to the scary thought, but you are also reacting to the intense responses of Flight or Fight. You gear up physically and emotionally to either RUN (preferred course) or FIGHT (if you have to because at the moment you can’t run, until you can get away or until the danger is over.)

I can’t overstate this part of the discussion. We are literally hard-wired to react with Flight or Fight if we perceive danger – and I mean hard-wired!

You know this yourself from your own experience. You can be frightened and be in motion before you’re even aware that you’re reacting, yes? We have all felt the surge of anxiety and energy and the physical rush of our bodies reacting to a scary thing.

So it shouldn’t come as any surprise that even our fears about the future, or fears of failing, or fears of getting in trouble, or whatever is scaring us in a particular moment in our thinking (be that conscious or unconscious), can be as unnerving, even panic-inducing, as such thoughts can be.

A Good Mechanism Gone Bad

We have a magnificent mechanism that every living creature on Earth evolved to deal with real, physical danger – the Flight or Fight Response. This mechanism fires up the SECOND you sense you’re in danger.

A finely-developed set of brain processes starts up, which in turn activates a host of responses in your body, and as a result you are doing one of two things – you are either running like hell from that danger, or you are turning to fight that danger UNTIL you can run, or until you’re out danger.

And that’s a GREAT thing! We literally don’t need to worry per se about that kind of danger. 500 million years of evolution have taken care of that for us. In a very sense you can relax about those dangers – you can only do so much to anticipate those dangers and prepare for them.

Otherwise, sit back and enjoy that episode of Seinfeld – you’ll react the way you need to when you’re faced with that danger, to the best of your ability.

No, it is the OTHER source of fear that gets us in trouble that takes us down the life-draining road of anxiety, chronic anxiety, panic attacks and depression. And THAT is what Fear Mastery is all about.

Because if you’re not facing down an angry dog or a blown tire on the freeway, but you are facing down something you have developed a fear about in your thinking, then you have turned a problem into a crisis.

And this is where that amazing mechanism for dealing with physical, immediate danger, so well-suited to handling that kind of danger, can take us REALLY sideways when dealing with problems. It is a great mechanism that is NOT helping us – a mechanism that is in fact making things much worse.

Why DO We Turn Problems Into Crises?

Well, it isn’t so much that we set out to create crisis out of problem. It is that we REACT to a problem that we’re afraid of – we respond to it as a crisis – and that in turn creates a feedback loop. We scare ourselves, our Flight or Fight Response fires up, and immediately we are trying to get away from the thing that scares us… and so the cycle begins.

As an example let’s take one of the classic fears, the fear of snakes. Lots of people like snakes – but some of us are terrified of them. We have all kinds of excuses for not liking snakes, but the bottom-line is that we avoid them because they make us anything from profoundly uncomfortable to panicky about being near them.

We could try to figure out WHY someone has become afraid of snakes, but that’s unnecessary. All we have to know is a person is now frightened of them. The more interesting question is why is another person NOT afraid of snakes… and of course the answer in both cases is what each person is thinking about snakes.

Snakes are by and large harmless creatures that are probably more afraid of you then you are of them. Most snakes like to stay hidden, especially from creatures as large as ourselves. Most snakes are NOT poisonous, and most snakes won’t bite.

But none of that makes any difference if we are afraid of them. It doesn’t matter because of what we are thinking about the snake. We are afraid that something bad WILL happen if we get too close to a snake.

And of course that bad potential thing that might happen scares us – maybe scares us badly. The thought frighten us, and in turn Flight or Fight fires up to some degree, and we are, usually unconsciously, already in motion away from (as much as possible) even the THOUGHT that we might get near a snake.

Another person doesn’t have the same scary thinking about snakes. They are NOT projecting disaster about meeting a snake or being near a snake. So they don’t turn the issue (or what we might call the problem) of meeting a snake into a crisis in their thinking.

Which means they don’t activate Flight or Fight, and they arn’t caught in the feedback loop of their fearful thinking and Flight or Fight responses to that thinking.

We Can Make ANYTHING scary (In Our Thinking)

It doesn’t have to be snakes. Regardless of how that fear started, as long as we are frightened of it, we can turn a problem or issue into a crisis IN OUR THINKING.

Let’s do another example. Let’s say you’re afraid of personal conflict (like lots and lots of people are.) Just the thought of getting in a fight with someone (verbal, not physical – that’s a whole different ballgame) makes you restless, edgy, anxious, worried. You find yourself moving away from even the thought of fighting with someone because it makes you so uncomfortable.

Yet you know people who seem to have no trouble at all mixing it up (verbally, not physically!) with the people they care about, and they seem none the worse for wear. You kind of envy them, really – you wish you could be as straightforward and direct as they are, and stand your ground the way they do.

In a very real sense you are assuming that any conflict will be a crisis – something scary, something that could really hurt you – so you avoid it, like any sensible creature would avoid danger. Here’s the thing – a verbal argument can’t hurt you. It can make you upset, it can make you angry and hurt and sad… or it can be very productive, clear the air, open up communication and improve honesty between two people.

NONE of those things are a physical danger than can injure or kill you. A verbal conflict, or the risk of having one, is a problem, not a crisis.

You Can’t Treat a Problem Like a Crisis

Well, OK, you can. And most of us do, way, way too often. What I really mean to say is that it is rarely useful or productive to treat a problem like a crisis.

The problem with treating a problem like a crisis is that problems need a very different approach. As I’ve already said in this post we are hard-wired for crises, thank you very much.

Problems need THINKING. When we are faced with a problem we need to spend a little time thinking through the nature of the problem, the elements of the problem, and sort out some possible solutions.

We probably need to do a little study or research to get good information (read, get on the Net, talk to people) and we probably need to give it a little time.

As I said, this is vastly different from run-for-the-hills-there’s-a-hungry-tiger-loose responding! But most of us are doing an enormous amount of responding to problems as if they were crises…

The Trouble With Crisis Thinking

When we do make the mistake of treating a problem like a crisis we start a crazed and energy-draining process I call the Chronic Anxiety Cycle. In short we continue to keep treating this problem as a crisis, trying hard to solve it the way we would solve any life-threatening danger.

The only problem is we usually CAN’T solve it that way. There is NOTHING to run from, and nothing to fight -because the crisis is in our thinking, not in the physical world. Ugh! Talk about crazy-making!

More on this in my next two posts. In the meantime here are the takeaways from this blog post:

1) We all have a brilliant, hard-wired system for dealing with real, immediate, physical danger – Flight or Fight.

2) If we are faced with real, immediate, physical danger Flight or Fight is usually our best bet for dealing with that danger.

3) We get into trouble with fear and anxiety when we use that same response to deal with a problem, because most problems require a different approach than Flight or Fight, crisis-based thinking.

Crisis vs. Problem. This is the heart of our battle with anxiety, fear and depression. This in combination with our learned-over-time fearful responses to our Flight or Fight responses – the physical, mental and emotional signals we get as Flight or Fight tries to get us to run away from the scary thing in our heads – is what drags us down into acute and chronic anxiety both, and their close cousins panic attacks and depression.

We don’t have to go there, and if we’re there, we definitely don’t have to stay there! More on that in my next post…