Fear can take over your body before you even have time to think—so what can you actually do when it happens?
In our last episode, we looked at how the fears you carry from the past can shape your reactions and decisions in the present. But understanding where fear comes from is the first part of the story. In the second half of our two-part conversation on fear from our new series, Uncovering Your Hidden Motives, Lynn Roush, LPC, and Austin Conner, PLPC, want to help you move into managing your fears rather than being controlled by them.
As therapists, we’ve spent a lot of time reading, studying, working with clients, and doing our own internal work around emotional regulation. We’ve discovered that a tangible, experiential sense of safety can help calm your nervous system and give you the space you need to respond rather than simply react. Helpful strategies for finding safety include noticing and naming what’s happening in your body, breathing, grounding, and responding to the scared parts of yourself with compassion.
We’ll also talk about what to do after the fearful moment has passed: how to explore where your fear came from, develop a plan for future situations, find safety in relationships, and draw on the promises and wisdom of Scripture. We’ll even discuss therapeutic tools and the role of medication in managing overwhelming anxiety.
Most importantly, we’ll end where we always want to end—with Jesus. As you continue to take an honest look at your hidden motivations, he invites you to come with all your burdens, fears, and anxieties, and find rest in him.
Highlights from this Conversation
We’ve just started a new series called Uncovering Your Hidden Motives to explore the deeper heart issues that may be unconsciously driving your actions and decisions. In the last episode, we explained the roots of fear—the hidden causes of fear and the reactions and decisions that result.
Today’s episode is going to be insightful and practical as we discuss how to manage the weeds of fear in your life. We know that the worries and fears of life are endless, but here are just a few things that we thought of that you might be going through right now and can relate to:
Sending your child off to college
Working a stressful job
Health issues for you or a family member
Taking care of aging parents
Financial uncertainties
Marriage or relationship issues
While these may be things you’re dealing with in the present, as we learned in the last episode, fears from the past can intensify your present reactions. We want to help you manage these very real fears, because we think that a regulated nervous system is the best gift that you can give yourself and the people around you.
Even though we often think of fear as negative, if you never experienced fear, you’d be extremely vulnerable to threats. So our end goal is to manage fear, not eliminate it. As therapists, we’ve done a lot of reading, studying, and work with clients to help them regulate their emotions. But we’ve also worked on ourselves. We’re real people with real feelings!
We’ve concluded that there’s one thing that needs to happen in order for us to manage our fears. It almost seems too simple. But the target to aim for can be summarized in one word: safety. Regardless of any fear management strategies you may learn, if you don’t have a felt sense of safety, everything else will crumble.
Because it sounds so simple but it’s true, we’ll restate it: The best and most effective way to manage your fear is to have a tangible, experiential sense of safety.
It could be the moment you get off your feet after a long day of work; going on a much-anticipated vacation; sitting on a porch watching the sunrise over the mountains; working on a hobby or project that fulfils you creatively; or chatting with a small group of friends. Those experiences can bring a felt sense of safety.
From Awareness to Action
The most powerful and effective experiences of safety are when others are around. They’re relational. So the million-dollar question that everybody’s asking is: how do you actually find safety?
We’re going to divide the steps to safety into two categories:
Assessment. This is something you do in the moment when you’re having the actual experience of fear.
Action. What you do after the fearful moment is over and things have settled down.
Let’s start with ‘in the moment’ stuff. The first thing you have to do is assess. In other words, you just notice. You’ve got to notice that you’re actually experiencing fear. We ended our last episode by talking about the importance of acknowledging this fact. Usually, your body is going to be the first indicator of fear.
That’s because the experience of fear hits you bottom to top, left to right. It might mean cold or clammy hands, upset stomach, racing heart, panic in your chest, or hyperventilating. In this assessment phase, you can just say, “Hello, fear. Hi there.” Say it with compassion and curiosity, not judgment.
Panicky feelings are meant to be noticed. These intense emotions are connected to a part of you that has its own thoughts and beliefs about itself and the world. So before you try and shut your feelings down, take notice that your anxiety, the fearful part of you, has come online. It may sound strange, but naming it makes it easier to manage.
Panicky feelings are meant to be noticed. These intense emotions are connected to a part of you that has its own thoughts and beliefs about itself and the world. So before you try and shut your feelings down, take notice that your anxiety, the fearful part of you, has come online. It may sound strange, but naming it makes it easier to manage.
The next thing you can do as you assess is to put your experience on a scale of 1 to 10. How fearful are you? Are you at an 8 out of 10 or a 3 out of 10? The number you’re at will help you figure out what to do next. Finding the number will get easier the more you do it, but start by using those physical signs of fear as a barometer.
After you’ve assessed, there are three actions you can take. They need to be in this order. You may not be able to do this perfectly the first time, but with practice, these steps are going to get easier and more natural.
1. First, you need to breathe. The reason you need to breathe is because it’s going to slow down your anxious reaction by engaging the parasympathetic nervous system. If you’re in a fight, flight, freeze, or fawn response, slow deep breathing is going to get you unstuck and moving again.
Deep breaths push your diaphragm out, which pushes against your adrenal glands. The adrenal glands are pumping adrenaline and cortisol into your body. But when those adrenal glands feel slow, consistent pressure, they turn off. That helps your thinking brain come back online again.
2. Second, after you breathe, visualize the scared part of yourself. That will look different for everyone. One person might see themselves as a little kid with the covers pulled up over their head. Another person might picture themselves hiding. Once you can visualize that, ask your scared part, “What are you scared about? What are you afraid might happen?” Then your calmer self can tell your scared part, “Can you trust me that we’re going to take care of this and get back to safety?”
This step may sound a little strange—awkward, even. But we tell clients, “Don’t knock it until you’ve tried it.” One resource we often suggest to clients is a book called Altogether You by Jenna Riemersma. When they use it, the light bulb goes on and they are able to do this kind of internal work.
3. Third and finally, you need to decide in the moment, in the real embodied world, whether you’re going to stay or whether you’re going to go. You might be in a situation where you have to stay and you’re just going to have to endure the fear for a while until you can go. You’ve just got to wait out the storm. But if you can leave, you may decide that leaving is the best thing you can do in the moment.
Choosing to stay or leave is related to fears you experience in the present moment. If you experience fears that are related to the past, bring yourself back to the present by using the Grounding 5-4-3-2-1 method. Look around and name five things that you see, four things that you tangibly feel, three things that you hear, two things you smell, and one thing you can taste.
4 Ways to Find Safety
1. Speak your fear out loud to someone. That can be a trusted friend, spouse, therapist, or your small group. That helps the scared part of you know that you’re not alone, that your emotions and feelings are valid, and that it’s going to be okay. You can also journal about your feelings. It won’t necessarily solve the situations you’re dealing with, but it can help you have clarity about your motivations and understand your present connection to past pain.
Ask yourself, “Why was I so fearful? What came up? What is this connected to? Was there a time before the age of 18 that I felt this way?” Asking these questions and sharing the answers will bring insight and help you feel heard and validated.
2. Develop a plan of action. You can rehearse. Ask yourself, “What can I do differently the next time I’m in that situation?” Talk with somebody who can help you script out some if-then scenarios. When you feel a little bit more prepared, it might not keep the fear from rising, but you will be able to manage it better.
3. Visualization. Close your eyes and think of yourself in a calm, quiet moment. Imagine a person that brings you a feeling of safety. If you like, you can picture Jesus. As you do that exercise, think of the verses in Philippians 4:6-7, “Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God; and the peace of God, which surpasses all comprehension, shall guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.”
Your circumstances may shift. Fears will rise and fall. Anxieties will come and go. But what’s the one thing that remains constant? The love of God. The truths and the promises of God. Paul tells us that as we dwell on these things, the peace of God will be with us.
4. Listen for God’s wisdom from the Scriptures. Here are some verses we find very comforting:
Psalm 139:16, “Your eyes saw my unformed substance. In your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me.”
Isaiah 41:10, “Fear not, for I am your God. I will strengthen you. Yes, I will help you. I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.”
Psalm 27:1, “The Lord is my light and my salvation—whom shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life—of whom shall I be afraid?”
We’re going to wrap up by talking about some different therapeutic methods of managing anxiety, starting with medications. There are three things to keep in mind regarding medications:
First, meds can keep you afloat, but they’re not going to teach you how to swim. A medication like Lexapro or Zoloft can be really effective in managing overwhelming anxiety. However, that doesn’t address the underlying problems that are causing the anxiety. Internal work (often with the help of a therapist) is where those issues are addressed and resolved.
Second, meds should be used to return you from a state of abnormalcy to a state of normalcy. But using medication to take you from a state of normalcy to abnormalcy is not healthy and appropriate. That’s how addiction begins.
Lastly, meds should be prescribed by and supervised by a doctor that sees you regularly for check-ins.
If you’ve done internal work, sought therapy, and used medication, but still find that fear is part of your daily life, you can try EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing). EMDR is a great tool for addressing PTSD. Likewise, brain spotting uses your visual field to access stress in your body and then creates a corrective experience that calms your nervous system. Progressive muscle relaxation and meditating on God’s word are two more things that can help.
Finding Rest in Jesus
You can’t build a calm regulation system alone. And you don’t have to. Jesus says in Matthew 11: 28-30, “Come to me all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart; and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”
Jesus doesn’t tell you to figure out all of your fears and then come to him. He says to come as you are, heavy laden, burdened, fearful, and he will give you rest. He’s not impatient with your fears, but he’s present with you. Every tool that we’ve talked about today is meant to lead you into the presence of people who love you well and ultimately into the presence of God, who is your lasting refuge and ultimate source of safety.
Recommended Resources
Roots of Fear - Lynn & Austin explain what fear is and how it affects you in the first half of our 2-part conversation on fear
How Does EMDR Help You Heal from Trauma? - Austin sits down with Dr. Mark Pfuetze for a closer look at what EMDR is and how it works
All Together You: Experiencing Personal and Spiritual Transformation with Internal Family Systems Therapy by Jenna Riemersma - practical, life-affirming steps to experience wholeness and healing
Excellent breakdown and very good advice.