Mastering Fear, pt. 2
Practical Tools To Conquer Fear, pt. 2
Hi everyone!
In the last newsletter Mastering Fear in the Face of Burnout I explored the lesser-known connection between burnout and fear, how burnout can trigger long-term fear, and its detrimental effects on our daily lives. At the end of the newsletter, I offered some practical tools that helped me to reclaim control and tame fear once and for all.
In the newsletter, I presented four different exercises that help me look at fear objectively, analyze it and move through it.
But sometimes you can’t really rationally think yourself out of the fear.
Sometimes our minds are too strong and we can’t think ourselves of what we’re experiencing and we have to use other tools and practices to escape the grips of fear. So in this newsletter, I’ll talk about emotional and spiritual practices to conquer fear.
1. Feeling The Fear
Even though our primary way of dealing with everyday problems, negative feelings, and emotions, is to ignore them, escape them, or run away from them, usually the best strategy is to confront them face to face.
As the quote from famous American poet Robert Frost goes:
“The only way out is through”
Often fully feeling and experiencing feelings and emotions can be very hard and uncomfortable, but feelings and emotions just want to be felt - and usually, after they are felt, they loosen up and evaporate. It’s the same with fear.
Sometimes when emotions and experiences created by fear become too loud and take over my rational mind, I have to let go of control and just allow myself to surrender to the fear and fully feel it.
It’s hard and scary when you’re fully in that experience and feel the full emotional force of it - but as I surrender, as I allow myself to feel it, I slowly move through it, and I come out of the other side feeling that the energetical charge of the fear has decreased or even dissolved completely.
You can feel fear while you journal about it (more about how to journal about fear in my previous newsletter here) or by meditating (the next point).
2. Mindfulness and Meditation
The part of our brain and mind that is responsible for fear response is the amygdala, the center of the brain responsible for anxiety and fear response.
Studies show that the amygdala plays a significant role in regulating fear responses in both humans and animals, and it is implicated in post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The central part of the amygdala is involved in fear responses, cortisol release, startle response, and autonomic nervous system modulation.1
When we experience fear, our amygdala signals the body and the autonomic nervous system to go into Fight or Flight mode and release cortisol which creates chronic stress in the body which then leads to many problems and chronic diseases.
Meditation only our helps us calm down not analytical mind but also the amygdala.
A 2018 study examining the impact of short- and long-term mindfulness meditation training on amygdala reactivity to emotional stimuli showed that long-term meditators showed lower emotional reactivity and that mindfulness meditation may lead to decreased emotional reactivity and that mindfulness meditation may improve automatic emotion regulation.2
I personally find that when I meditate and practice mindfulness I can better control my emotions and my responses to emotions. Not only that, but I also find that when I’m able to reach that deep meditative state, a state between wake and sleep state where my mind quiets down completely, I lose my mind and go into another state of mind, afterward my fear is much much lower than beforehand.
I use different types and kinds of mindfulness and meditation, it depends mainly on how I’m feeling, but I often use the following tool and biohack to go even deeper into meditation and access those deep meditative states.
3. Binaural beats and sound-healing music
Another great way to calm down the mind, amygdala and loosen the fear response is to use binaural beats and healing sounds.
Humans constantly switch between different brain waves. Brain waves are physiological reactions to our environment and help us to optimize our mental functioning according to the current state.
We know 5 states of brain waves - gamma, beta, alpha, theta, delta - and each state is useful for a certain situation: gamma waves are best for daily decisions, alpha for concentration and flow, and theta and delta for rest and sleep.
This is where binaural tones come into play. Binaural tones are special tones and music designed to help achieve the desired state of brain waves. If we want to relax and calm down our mind and amygdala, theta and delta binaural tones will help us do that.
The internet and YouTube are full of apps, videos, and music with binaural tones, but it's important to use them with headphones because that's the only way they can work properly.
On the other hand, healing sounds and sound-healing music consist of different vibrations and frequencies that positively affect the mind, body, and soul (more about vibrations and frequencies in the following point).
You can use binaural beats when meditating, while working, doing chores, while driving, or as a background during anything you do.
My favorite two tracks that I put on as a background to calm down the amygdala when my mind is either agitated or I feel the fear taking over are the following:
4. Raising Vibrations
I learned about the importance of raising vibration a couple of weeks ago at a well-being and healthy lifestyle festival in my home region during a lecture from a speaker who I grew to respect tremendously.
According to him, there is no “positive” and “negative”, nor “good” and “bad” - only high and low vibrations. Vibrations are different frequencies of energy that we experience and live in our daily lives - whether we realize it and feel it or not.
As the following resource explains:
“High vibrations are generally associated with positive qualities and feelings, such as love, forgiveness, compassion, and peace. On the other hand, low vibrations are associated with darker qualities such as hatred, fear, greed, and depression.”3
As you can see, fear is pretty low on the vibration ladder and on the edge of the suffering zone. The speaker at that event emphasized that we cannot be in both high and low vibrations at the same: meaning you can’t be in a state of joy and guilt and the same time - you either are in one or the other.
So one way to tame the fear and move out of it is to raise the vibrations by cultivating high-vibration feelings and emotions:
Acceptance: of the circumstances, world, and yourself,
Love: for others, the world, and yourself,
Joy,
or all at the same time.
So next time you find yourself in those low vibrations and frequencies of fear, try to cultivate high-vibration feelings and emotions like acceptance, love, and/or joy, fully immerse yourself in them and notice how your whole world’s experience changes.
5. Nature
Spending time in nature is also a great way to raise vibrations and move into good (or God) frequencies.
Nature has profound feel-good effects, well-being, and healing capacities. Contemplation in nature is the original form of meditation. In nature, it is far easier to quiet the mind.
As Aubrey Marcus explains in his course Go For Your Win:
“Meditative states are generally found in frequencies between 6-10hz (theta and alpha). The frequency of the Earth, called the Schumann resonance, sits at 7.83hz. Babies sync their heartbeats to their mother. If we can sync our brain to the frequency of our great Mother, we’ll be on the right track!”
I find a ton of relief when I go on a longer walk in nature (30-60 minutes) or spend more time in nature without any technology. So I would recommend that the next time you find yourself in the grips of fears, spend some time in nature: I guarantee you it will help you tremendously!4
6. Gratitude
Gratitude has immense benefits for our state of mind, well-being, and general health.
Expressing gratitude is associated with a host of mental and physical benefits. Studies have shown that feeling thankful can improve sleep, mood, and immunity. Gratitude can decrease depression, anxiety, difficulties with chronic pain, and risk of disease.
With gratitude, you can override any other mental and emotional state that you’re in, even fear. You can feel the gratitude so much that it shifts your mindset and thought patterns from fear to gratitude, appreciation, and joy.
Gratitude also turns off fear response and enables you to access a more relaxed state of mind and those feel-good hormones and neurotransmitters, like dopamine, serotonin, and GABA.
There are a lot of ways to practice gratitude, to be and feel grateful: journaling, expressing gratitude out loud, expressing it to others, etc.
The key point with gratitude is that it has to be immersive: you have to really feel it, experience and immerse in it fully for it to work.
Thinking about things that you’re grateful for in the moment is better than nothing but if you want the full benefit of gratitude you have to really feel and saturate your mind in the feeling and emotions of gratitude.
If “gentle” ways for overriding fear don’t help, then you have to go more aggressively and almost go to war with your fear.
In the next newsletter, I’ll explore the physical tools and practices that help us change our physiology and consequently transform and shift our mental and emotional state of mind.
Stay tuned for that and if you haven’t already subscribed so you don’t miss it!
Ressler KJ. Amygdala activity, fear, and anxiety: modulation by stress. Biol Psychiatry. 2010 Jun 15;67(12):1117-9. doi: 10.1016/j.biopsych.2010.04.027. PMID: 20525501; PMCID: PMC2882379. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2882379/
Kral TRA, Schuyler BS, Mumford JA, Rosenkranz MA, Lutz A, Davidson RJ. Impact of short- and long-term mindfulness meditation training on amygdala reactivity to emotional stimuli. Neuroimage. 2018 Nov 1;181:301-313. doi: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2018.07.013. Epub 2018 Jul 7. PMID: 29990584; PMCID: PMC6671286. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6671286/
Do You Have a “Low” or “High Vibration”? Read These 61 Signs https://lonerwolf.com/low-or-high-vibration-signs/
Aubrey Marcus, Go For Your Win:Determine Your Mission, Train A New Mindset, Overcome Your Resistance& LIVE THE LIFE YOU REALLY WANT! A 12 Week Transformational Masterclass and Community Experience, p.77 https://www.aubreymarcus.com/pages/go-for-your-win
Love the part on vibrations. So, then the question become: how do we cultivate acceptance? And love? And joy?
Concise, helpful. It helps to know vibrational resonance. It helps to know that we can change it through specific practices ❤️ I go with “Feel the fear & do it anyway”