What is Normal Fear?:

Anxiety, depression, worry and fear can be very normal. You become anxious when threatened or when you think about being threatened. The heart beats fast, there is a need to overbreathe, you get the cold sweats and shakes. These are all normal changes that will help your body function best if you have to run or fight. But in this modern world we are threatened and get anxious in places where physical activity does not help. Thus the body changes are identified, not as helpful but as harmful and unnatural. Being a little anxious is good. It sharpens up judgement and skill and helps you cope better. Being psyched up is a good thing if you have a difficult challenge ahead.

If you become anxious over and over in the same situation, then you will learn to fear that situation and try to avoid it and others like it. If you know that you will have to deal with the situation sometime in the future, you will worry about it, hopefully using the worry to think of a way of solving the problem. If all goes badly and you lose something you value or love then you will get depressed, which can be helpful in giving you time to recover from the loss. So being anxious, fearful, worried or depressed is a useful part of a normal life.

Small amounts of these feelings can be helpful and actually improve your ability to cope. Persistent or severe anxiety, fear, worry or depression feels awful, and can reduce your ability to cope with your difficulties. And not coping can make things a lot worse. There are simple ways of controlling the levels of these feelings. They can be used together. We will describe them separately, for the feeling they best control.

Fearful?
Fears of dangerous things and places are normal, they help you to stay safe. Fears of things that are not really dangerous are phobias. The common phobias are few: agoraphobia (fear of panic); social phobia (fear of being the centre of attention); obsession about dirt or harm; fears of insects, snakes and animals, heights, closed places, still water. Phobias do not matter unless they stop you doing what you want to do, or doing what you should do. If they limit your life and you want to overcome them then use:

Graded Exposure to Phobic Situations:

• Write down your phobia then

• make a ten step list from what you can just do to what you fear the most

• make most of the initial steps what you could do if you tried very hard

• the remaining steps can be things you presently think are too hard

• do the easiest step on the list three times or until it is boring, then do the next step on the list until that is boring too

• if one step is too hard, break it into steps you can manage, and keep working.....

Get a friend to record progress as you confront your phobias. People can overcome irrational fears with 30 days of steady work. If you don't really need to overcome your phobia, why bother? If it really matters that you can't travel on your own, you can't mix socially, you can't face heights, you can't be in elevators then work on your fears starting today.

Do something. Click on the button to agoraphobia, social phobia, specific phobia or obsessive compulsive disorder for more information.

Edited by Gavin Andrews MD, UNSW, 2007
©2007 CRUfAD