October 2024
From Fear to Freedom
Irrational fears can cripple your life and prevent you from achieving your full
potential. Learn from experts on how to eliminate fear and
become a winner, says Jamuna Rangachari
Whenever I needed to go to my children’s PTA (parents teachers association) meet, I would be scared of what I would hear. Though my children were pretty decent in academics, they did not follow all the instructions, and the teachers would complain about this to me. The emotion of fear made me so inept that I did not understand what I needed to do to make them more disciplined.
This experience made me understand that fear is a terrible emotion to carry in our hearts.
In another context, I recently saw the movie cum biopic, Srikanth about the visually challenged protagonist Srikant Bolla who became an inspiration by combatting his fears and emerging a winner.
Another such person is Dr Ketna L. Mehta, the founder of Nina Foundation from Mumbai. She decided to learn paragliding and enrolled for a camp in Mumbai in 1995. Unfortunately, her fearless adventure led to a devastating accident. She came down with an irreversible spinal cord injury which paralysed her from waist-down. Dr Ketna now requires lifelong expensive treatment, along with managing bladder and bowel movements, and skin numbness.
Despite such a heartbreaking prognosis Ketna did not give up but dared to re-start from scratch. She started editing, consulting and doing quality management of publications in an honorary capacity during her home bound rehabilitation phase; to stay connected to her field of consulting management. Furthermore Ketna dared to travel solo to Thailand to attend the Women with Disabilities International Summit in Nonthaburi, Thailand, which was her first international trip ever in 2003. She was the only woman nominated by the National Centre for Promotion of Employment for
Disabled People from India. Ketna managed to live independently for eight days with the blessings and good wishes of her family and medical team. She brought laurels to India through her stellar presentation at the summit and returned with the agenda to make India more inclusive for the disabled.
What is fear
Fear is defined as a feeling that something dangerous, painful or frightening might happen. At the same time, fear is relative. Someone’s fear of swimming could be someone else’s hobby or profession. Fear is not merely a textbook definition but a phenomenon that evolves in the life span of a person. Each one of us has a different kind of fear since we are mentally conditioned in different ways since childhood. A child has the fear of examinations while a businessman fears bankruptcy. Both fear are relevant and stressful for that person at that point in time. For a child who has a fear of failing in the examination, the best way is to prepare well and focus on the exam rather than the fear of failing. Whereas a businessman requires a good business plan and a good team to ensure profitable returns.
Exposing yourself to whatever you’re scared of can help you maintain control and overcome your fear. If you face your fear, you will find that it isn’t as scary as you thought it was, just like the child and the businessman. Overcoming fear is a systematic process of conditioning the mind and focussing on the matter at hand instead of irrational thoughts which build up that ‘fearsome’ situation.
Percy Ghaswala from Mumbai who is the founder of an NGO says, “Fear is in the mind and overcoming fear is up to you and you alone. Others can support you, counsel you, empathise with you, molly coddle you but ONLY you can
overcome your own fears.”
He concludes by saying, “Fears and apprehensions hold us back from achieving what we set out to achieve. Removing fear from within can be life transforming but it can be done ONLY by the ones facing it. All other factors (family, friends, colleagues) can be supportive but real boundaries can only be broken by the person themself and that’s when the real strength is achieved, which reflects in the form of self-confidence. Winning over our fears, our miseries is the real victory!”
How to overcome fear
Mr Anil Bhatnagar, a motivational coach from Delhi says something similar. He states, “Admit it. Fear or stress response happens on their own at a subconscious level, for nature has programmed us that way. Therefore, knowing about the irrationality of our fear may not be of much help unless we experience and release
48 LifePositive | OCTOBER 2024
the energy of fear. Become aware of and feel the sensations of fear in your body. Ask yourself what you are afraid of, particularly in a current situation. See the need to overcome it and decide to do so. Please list all the possible actions you can take to prevent the dreaded from happening or to cope with it. Examine your irrational fears and develop a habit of consciously challenging them whenever you notice them.”
He suggests the following method, “Do this by making a list of all the things that you are afraid of. Examine how rational they are and how they may keep you from doing what may help you live a better life. Fear is a learned conditioned response. We are likely to fear doing something that has proved disastrous once—even though our fear, and its intensity, both may be irrational. Irrational fears are triggered in our memory by the residue of a fragment of someone else’s (sometimes our own) unpleasant or disastrous experience that shares a part of the situation we may presently be in.” Anil’s explanations can be summarised as given below.
Our fears become habitual and irrational if we don’t challenge them and allow this erroneously associated memory to kick in every time we are required to do that act. Our brain, cannot distinguish between an irrational habitual fear and a justified well-meant fear. We need to challenge the former and honour the latter consciously. Just as we are conditioned to fear certain things or situations subconsciously, we can also consciously recondition ourselves to undo that fear. This re-conditioning to undo our learned conditioned fears is known as fear extinction. Fear extinction begins through exposure to our specific fear triggers in a safe condition and may take several repetitions to mature.
For example, someone may have an irrational fear of water. They may avoid going near a lake, river or a water body for fear of drowning. However, if they wish to overcome this fear to learn swimming and enjoy water sports, they would have to learn this skill under an expert coach in a shallow swimming pool, until they have fully beaten this fear and mastered swimming.
The new memory of these conscious repetitions in a safe environment develops a new neural pathway in the brain that signals the message of safety in place of threat. The safest place to begin practising fear extinction is within your mind through mental rehearsals.
The power of imagination
Our brains cannot discern between an imagined situation and a real one, and hence our imagination is a tool that we can use to learn or to unlearn many things within the privacy and safety of our skull. Using this tool, you can run
through the TERROR process every night and mentally rehearse a changed response to the identified trigger. For eg, a young woman may have a fear of driving on busy roads. The very thought might freeze her reflexes and she may refuse to learn driving even though she may be in dire need to use her car. To combat this irrational fear, she can imagine every night before going to bed that she is confidently driving in heavy traffic without causing a dent or an accident. Imagined repeatedly over time can drastically change her mindset as well as the outcome.
Anil Bhatnagar concludes, “When you feel ready, start practising it in the real world— initially where it is very safe and then against progressively more challenging situations. Mentally prepare yourself to face any kind of fear. If fear is in your nature, you will find it everywhere. You cannot run away from it. It is like a dog, the more you run away from it, the more it will chase you. We cannot escape fear. We can only make it into a companion that accompanies us on all our exciting adventures. Mentally prepare yourself to face any kind of fear that is bound to attack us. Grow your ‘courage’ muscle.”
Fear could be rooted in ancestral trauma “Fear is a coping mechanism that keeps us safe,” says Nehaa Goyal, an empowerment coach with over a decade of experience.
Nehaa recounts, “I worked with a client once who was afraid of being seen in public settings. This fear was rooted in an ancestral trauma: her grandmother was ousted from her home due to communal tensions, and the family had to prioritise basic survival. The emotional charge from this event was passed down, creating a legacy of fear around visibility. Through our customised work together, we addressed these deep-seated fears, helping the client to process and release them.”
She observes, “If you have a fear that seems unexplained or disproportionate to your experiences, it may be ancestral in nature. The good news is that these fears can be worked on and transformed, allowing you to live more freely and authentically.”
Ameeta Shah, a transpersonal psychotherapist from Mumbai says, “Fear is a stopper, stopping a person from participating in life. The missing emotion here is often anger that has been suppressed. Such fears can be diagnosed and medicated as social anxiety disorder. However, many times inner healing and cognitive behaviour therapy can help.”
Ameeta shares the case-study of Trishna who was able to overcome some very deep- rooted fears that hindered her growth.
Trishna had social anxiety, a fear of facing authority, and a fear of speaking up which led to a fear of making eye contact as she felt judged and scrutinised. She would feel scared to say something stupid, have cold hands, palpitations and then get distracted, losing the thread of conversation itself. Being able to look people in the eye is a basic aspect of social interactions. It helps forge better connections and enables self-assertion. It makes you look friendly, and at appropriate moments, be able to hold your ground. However, for fearful people, eye contact becomes a danger sign, activating the amygdala of the brain, making the person react with flight or freeze responses.
Ameeta recalls, “Inner child therapy of Trishna led her to her childhood memories where her father used sarcasm and name calling to humiliate her for getting less marks, making spelling mistakes or day-dreaming which was natural for her age. This made her feel humiliated, scared and embarrassed about
The best way to beat fear is to do mental rehearsals of the desired outcome herself. She felt angry but helpless to express herself. Healing these memories helped her regain confidence and release the old emotions of anger and fear. Suppressed anger also makes a person fearful of what they may do or want to do with their anger. We also worked with assertion skills, and language to assert at her job with her supervisor.”
During her therapy, Trishna connected to two of her past lives that were filled with abuse, and feelings of fear, anger and violent retaliation. There was also a foreign energy of a lost, trafficked child within her that was released to safety, and her energies were cleared of these influences. Moreover Trishna’s grandparents had fled to Pakistan in boats during the partition. And though they had very courageously built a new life, Trishna carried thee fears from her lineage too.
An inner exploration of these sabotaging feelings of fear, and stifled self-expression have made her much more confident today. Trishna is doing very well at her job which at one time she felt that she would have to leave.
Past lives’ traumas generate irrational fears Ameeta talks of another client, a confident 45 year old lady who had a fear of flying. She took medicines to cure this fear but to no avail. Her work, holidays and family life were hugely disturbed due to this paranoia.
When she did an inner exploration session, she went into a past life, where, as a male pilot, she had died at the same age in an air crash. Her feelings in this life inside a plane were of panic with thoughts of “I need to control, I can’t control.” This was the exact thought she had died with, as an Air Force officer on a rescue mission in a tricky mountainous area. The plane had crashed and that pilot had died disheartened and in a state of panic. When this fear was healed, she could go on air travels without any more panic attacks.
We may think it is impossible to overcome fear but as human beings, we are have the power to overcome anything in life including the demon of fear that resides within us. As it lies within, we alone can combat it by connecting within ourselves.
Jamuna Rangachari, the former assistant editor of Life Positive, has authored two books for children, and compiled and interpreted Teaching Stories-I and II for Life Positive. Write to her at jamunarangachari@gmail.com.
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