Fear is Not an Obstacle to Overcome. Manage Your Fear By Embracing It Instead. Here’s How.

One of the biggest challenges people face, whether it involves their personal safety, or other aspects of their life, is managing fear. Fear is a primitive emotion that occurs in response to a physical or emotional threat. The challenge comes in keeping the fear you feel from stopping you from accomplishing what you need to accomplish.

In this piece we’re going to look at approaches to managing fear by acknowledging and embracing this normal conditioned response to a threat, that I used during my 30+ years of working in some of our nation’s most dangerous neighborhoods.

If you’d like to learn some more personal safety tips, download my free PDF guide, 5 Situational Awareness Tips to Help Keep You Safe While Living the Life You Want down below, Or check out my free, pre-recorded online workshop, Be More Confident About Your Personal Safety over in the side bar.

Why Overcoming Fear Is The Wrong Approach

Conventional wisdom pushes “overcoming fear.” I don’t like that phrase. Overcoming means surmounting an obstacle. But, fear is not an obstacle. It’s a natural warning sign that exists to alert us to something that can harm us.

It’s that little voice (intuition or antennae) that picks up that something doesn’t feel right. Society conditions men and women differently about dealing with fear. Men are supposed to “ignore the fear” and “bravely soldier on”. While women have been taught to ignore it. “You’re overreacting”. “You’re seeing things that aren’t there”. “It’s all in your head”.

Ignoring your inner voice can get you harmed with lasting ramifications. PTSD, medical bills, lost wages, and even retreating from work and the things you love to do. Therefore, you need to learn to manage the fear in a way that doesn’t increase your risk of harm.

Fear is Part of Your Built In Alert System

Being able to acknowledge and embrace fear’s role as an alert system designed to help us keep safe by recognizing and assessing a threat, requires a mindset change for many of us. Especially for those who’ve been taught that fear is bad.

So what can you do to learn to manage you fear, and the stress that comes with it, so that it doesn’t keep you from doing what you want to do?

I know a little something about doing just that.

It was my job, as an investigator working with attorneys, to walk up to a total stranger’s home, knock on the door, and ask that person to let me inside the home so we could talk in private about something, likely horrifying, that this person had witnessed.

In most cases I did not know if the witness had a history of violence or mental health challenges, whether there were firearms or other weapons in the house. I did not know who else might be in the house, And I did not know what the interior of the house looked like, or where the ways into and out from the house were located if the situation quickly went south.

Not feeling some fear in these types of situations would do more harm than good.

Fear was my brain’s way of telling me to be prepared for any situation that I might encounter inside the house or in the surrounding area. On some occasions, my observations of the house itself, triggered a strong warning not to go into the house, and to conduct the interview while standing outside the front door.

In a situation like that disregarding that fear would put me at greater risk by going into the home. Managing the fear, allowed me to still conduct the interview. But to do so from the safety of remaining outside.

Proven Action Steps You Can Do to Manage Your Fear

• Fear causes physical responses. It speeds up the heart rate and respiration. So the first thing I would do, was to focus on my breathing. Usually when approaching the front door. I would take three deep breaths. Doing so allowed me to oxygenate my brain, so that I could be focused, and alert, without feeling stressed.
• Incorporating vigilance regarding my surroundings—situational awareness. By watching and listening to what was happening around me, I was doing what the fear wanted me to do. To assess and prepare for any potential threats I could encounter.
• Talking is calming. Even if it’s just describing to myself what I see around me helped to manage stress, while helping me to make implementing situational awareness automatic.
  I’d also practice, while approaching the residence, what I would say to introduce myself, and I would do this a couple of times. Doing so helped me focus on the task at hand.
• Finally, I found that using my words and body language to project calm to the witness, calmed me down, while helping the witness feel calmer too. Think of this as de-escalating the situation, which helped avoid a stress spiral.

Each of these actions helped me manage my fear as I went through the act of making contact with a total stranger. And I was able to do so thousands of times. So that I could help people going through very difficult times.

Ignore the Merchants of Fear

One last thing to add when it comes to fear. There is an entire industry designed to amp up your level of fear so that you’ll vote for X candidate, or look to others to help you feel safe by outsourcing your fear. Amping up the fear of crime is a political standard.

Basically these folks are pushing fear on you, and telling you, “trust us” we’ll take care of the threat that is causing your fear. And they do so, because they know that fear is a motivator. In this case, they’re trying to motivate you to vote for them.

Further, when it comes to your personal safety, the fear merchants, many of whom help fund those politicians seeking to instill and capitalize on your fear, want you to see their products, firearms, mace, and other “security devices”, as your path to eliminating your fear.

But, a false sense security is more dangerous to your safety than fear itself. By a lot. Don’t buy into the notion that you can eliminate fear through putting your trust in things or other people.

Instead, listen to your fear when it activates. It’s telling you that you need to be prepared. Don’t ignore it, or don’t downplay it. In fact, do the opposite. Embrace your fear. It’s there for a very good reason. And then look for and recognize the threat that has triggered the fear. And deal with that threat.

Practice, Practice, Practice

Start practicing these simple steps to help you move forward: breathe deeply a few times, describe to yourself your surroundings and see if you notice a threat, let your preprogrammed senses know you are listening to them. Appreciate the power that comes from such an effective instinct. And finally talk out loud to help calm and focus yourself.

And if you’re interested in learning how to implement situational awareness and de-escalation techniques into your daily life, download the my free PDF guide below, or check out my free pre-recorded online workshop in the sidebar.