The first step in reducing the intensity of anxiety and panic is accepting and applying a reframe of the word FEAR from something dangerous and bad to: “Feeling Everything As if it is Real”. Just because it is rational that we do in fact feel feelings, does not mean those feelings and attached responses exist in the world outside our own learned interpretations of them. Whether a forty degree Fahrenheit room feels “warm” or “cold” to us depends on the temperature of the air to which we were acclimated before stepping into the forty degree air (minus thirty versus one hundred fifteen).
The biological response to fear, stimulates the flooding of adrenal-cortisol hormones in a life-preserving formula that is millions of years old, written in our genetic makeup. It provides the power to the fight or flight options when confronted with T-Rexes, cave bears and saber-toothed tigers. When was the last time you had to face any of the three? Yet, our hormonal reaction is still the same as when the possibility was real. We can reduce the hormonal flood by exercising our major muscle groups (running, walking, lifting, chopping wood) which sends the hormones back into the glands to be stored. This frees the upper cerebral cortex’s executive functioning to dispute and act differently regarding our fears.
The basic human fears are connected to the answers to five questions all related to “F” words: flight, fight, freeze, food and the “reproductive” “F”. Should I fight, flee, freeze, are you food for me or me for you, are we going to have “fellowship”? RET/CBT shows us how we can use rational, cognitive learning in our evolved human brain to restructure our “automatic” responses to fear. The “how to” is included in my blogs from April 2016 – November 2017. When anxious or feeling panic, we identify which of the “Five F” fears is stimulated and use the disputation/change behavior formula of RET/CBT.
Our fear reactions were helpful, even essential, to our survival in the past. They are of little or no help to us in the present or the future. As many know, in a past life I taught swimming. I started beginners with a question: do you want to start in the shallow or deep end? Most voted for the shallow end. I would then explore the options with them: start in shallow water and each step gets deeper, start in the deep water and the depth is no longer an issue. Other lessons from swim class: no one ever learned to swim without getting wet, eventually you have to let go of the pool edge, trust me in the deep water and you will learn to trust yourself. Be safe and enjoy the uncomfortableness of new learning and growth.
Please feel free to share comments, questions, disagreements, snide remarks and silly stories.