STOP BEING SCARED

Is being afraid taking over what you do, say and think? Here Dr Pippa Grange, the psychologist who worked with the England men’s football team during the 2018 World Cup, explains how to turn down the volume on fear

Don’t let fear hold you back

It won’t be a surprise to you, right now, to find out that your body and mind are uniquely primed for fear. Your incredible, extremely complex brain has an evolutionary design flaw. It processes negative emotions – especially fear – super fast, and other types of information more slowly. So your brain readily defaults to distress and suffering, and it is particularly good at jumping into fear.

This is because, very broadly, there are two competing systems in your brain. One system, the ancient part, is focused on self-preservation. It is always vigilant about danger and alert to avoiding risks. The other part allows you to act from reason and choice, among other things. It works out the fine details of competing projects, develops your character, moderates your social behaviour and helps you to grapple with the meaning of life.

The two systems aren’t well co-ordinated. Instead, they work together in an uneasy coalition. So, very often on any given day – or, more accurately, at any given second – there’s a big, unseen fight over who’s in charge. The ancient part is always quicker to step in, as you might have felt over the past few months. And because we are wired for fear, our culture tends to recycle it, share it and emphasise it, until it becomes what runs our lives.

During 2019, as I was writing my new book,

Fear Less, to share what I’d learned in my work,

I had no inkling that fear was going to turn out to be quite so relevant at the moment it was published. The subject of the book came out of what I’d learned from working as a performance psychologist, in both sport and business. I’ve spent almost 20 years coaching athletes, leaders, CEOS and performers in locker rooms and boardrooms, trackside, poolside, pitchside and courtside. In the course of my work and all the conversations it involved, I realised that fear lies underneath so many of our unhelpful behaviours and negative beliefs – from shame and inadequacy to loneliness, jealousy and dissatisfaction. Fear stops us performing at our best – and even when we do perform well, it stops us appreciating our success. You could say that when fear is at your table, it ruins the taste of the food.

I began to analyse the ways in which people learn to overcome fear, and to share those methods and use them in my work. I found that one very useful way to look at fear is to divide it into two kinds. There are ‘in-the-moment’ fears, that you feel when you need to face a difficult moment or a challenge. It’s a jolt of anxiety, tight muscles, shallow breathing. Then there are the ‘not-good-enough’ fears. These are behaviours that are a distorted form of some of our most basic fears. For example, when you feel jealousy, at its root you’ll find a fear of not being lovable. When you get sucked into perfectionism, at its root you’ll find a fear of failure. When you want to judge people or you feel judged, at its root you’ll find a fear of inadequacy. When you feel you have to hide the real you, at its root you’ll find a fear of being rejected. And at the bottom of that pile of twisted roots is one big, overwhelming and ultimately human fear: the fear of not being enough, and therefore of being abandoned. I found, in the course of my work, that even seemingly successful people often find themselves derailed by both kinds of fear.

TAKE CHARGE OF YOUR PRIMAL FEARS

You can learn to override those in-the-moment fears by being deliberate about choosing not to be fearful.

You can do this with the kinds of fear management techniques and routines that are followed by athletes at crucial moments – think Rafael Nadal wining a match point or performers getting into the zone before they go on stage to speak. I have divided the strategies into three broad camps (see overleaf). The idea is to plan what you have to do, then rehearse the hell out of that plan until it becomes second nature.

A key part of fear management is to stay rational. So it’s good to make the distinction between real, rational fear about what might happen (and the adaptive behaviours that might help), and neurotic worrying. In the present climate, sensible adaptive behaviours are, as I’m sure you know, social distancing, hand-washing and stopping socialising and travelling. Doing these will help you overcome the more neurotic fears that are less helpful, such as those that cause irrational behaviour, like buying too many toilet rolls or a huge hoard of face masks.

Our fears about what will happen all have one thing in common – they are always mind-made. Even when some of those fears are valid, our own experience of them, how overwhelming they are, and how much we can manage to counteract our negativity bias, comes down to what we allow our minds to do. This is important, as if we allow ourselves to give in to the fear of what will happen in the future, it will take us away from what really matters now. And that is connection, clear-headedness, reflection, prudence and compassion.

‘FEARS ABOUT WHAT WILL HAPPEN ARE ALWAYS MIND-MADE’

FIND LONGER-TERM SOLUTIONS TO FEAR

The second half of my book is devoted to all the creative and interesting ways people have found for moving beyond their fears – for the future and about the past – and how they’ve transformed them into something far stronger and more useful.

One of these ways, which I’ve called ‘protection in connection’, is key right now. Being seen and known and feeling that you belong are fundamental human needs, not just nice-to-haves. In fact, belonging may be the strongest psychological desire we have, so it’s important for helping us cope with painful emotions, including fear.

The isolation we are living in right now is taxing. But we are so very lucky to have ways to connect via technology. This has been a great time to be creative about showing others you are there and that we are all connected, and to show yourself that borders are psychological, more than physical.

Perhaps, in your area, you have seen people setting up local groups, or making sure their neighbours are okay. You will have found new ways to check in with your family without physically being next to them: some people have been watching TV or movies together virtually, others have been keeping Facetime on as they go about their day. Singers such as John Legend have performed online, and people have been meditating together on a global scale.

Our worst fears probably arise when we think about the risk to our biggest treasure: the people we love so fiercely. When those thoughts come up, can you allow the image of those precious people to fill you with gratitude and joy? Could that be the thread that connects you, rather than one made up of dread?

If you have found the loss of control hard, that’s not surprising. There’s a way of thinking about life that you might find works in this situation, that I’ve called ‘useful surrender’. This is about letting go of what we can’t control, so we no longer feel its huge weight more than necessary. Surrender may or may not be a natural part of your culture and faith. But for all of us, the idea of some kind of force(s) greater than us can be of huge value in the face of fear. One example of people using it is the air crews who flew in the Lancaster bomber squadrons in the Second World War. Every time they flew, they faced conditions that incited tremendous fear. One way they adapted was through useful surrender. Here is gunner John ‘Ginger’ Stevens talking about the plane at the beginning of a mission. His surrender is to make the plane itself an entity, with its own power and magic, its own will. ‘You are in her world now… You roar down the runway and all you can hear is the noise, the noise – and it’s a beautiful noise. You’ve got 1,400 yards to lift about 14,000lbs. It starts to seem that she’s going to lose the game against gravity. But just after halfway, you feel a gentle bounce and then another gentle bounce, and suddenly you’re weightless and you’re airborne. It’s moments like that she tells you what she’s all about. She’s magnificent.’

So, while the risks were out of the crew’s control, they found safety in their imagination and the idea that it wasn’t just up to them, alone. The point is, if you feel the need to surrender to something bigger than you, then don’t worry if it doesn’t feel logical. That doesn’t stop it being useful.

There’s another kind of surrender that is helpful in countering fear, and that is to let the emotion itself move through you. So many people suppress fear, in order that no one sees it. It’s one thing to hold back emotion at the moment you’re facing down an opponent in the boxing ring, for example. But there are times and places when you should let down your guard. How much better do you feel after a good cry? If you haven’t done it for a while, try it! I can assure you, I’ve known the toughest of the tough to cry. Or try screaming, roaring, head-banging heavy-metal style, stomping, or singing ridiculously loudly. Anything to allow the emotion to flow through you rather than staying jammed up.

Finally, you may have felt that life has lost its joy recently. Alternatively, you may have felt pulled towards humour, even if that is dark humour. Can you connect with the people who are finding the chinks of light in the dark? Because if you can find a reason to laugh, even if it’s at your own neuroticism and quirks, that can be very powerful.