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Courage SkillsChapter 60 from Instructions on Psychological Skills by Joseph Strayhorn Copyright Joseph Strayhorn, 2001 Courage skills are useful in dealing with real danger. They are also useful in dealing with situations that feel more dangerous than they really are. Fear serves a purposeSome people think that it would be good to be “fearless.” This is not true. Fear is the brain’s signal that there may be danger. There is a good reason why we are able to feel fear! Fear tells us, “You’d better protect yourself!” It’s our brains’ way of making danger stand out and be noticed. Because of fear, we don’t find ourselves thinking like this: “Humh, what’s the best thing for me to do now? Plan a vacation? Make up a poem? Or get out of the street so I won’t get run over by that big truck coming straight at me?” When dangerous situations come up, fear helps them take over our attention and get us moving quickly toward safety. Some people seem relatively fearless. Being fearless poses problems. When fearless people are children, they often wind up in emergency rooms. Some wind up dead. They are not afraid of climbing into high places or leaping from them. They are not afraid of running into streets. If they make it through childhood, fearless people often get killed from risky ventures like motorcycling or reckless driving or fighting. Fear is meant to keep us out of trouble. Much of the time it does that. Fear was not invented just to keep us alive. It’s also meant to help us avoid losing precious things, such as our money and our reputations. People who have no fear of losing money often throw it away on risky deals. People who have no fear of losing their reputation often blow it by making fools of themselves. Suppose a person is so fearless that he challenges someone else to a public debate. He knows little about the subject and does not work to prepare himself. He comes away from the debate looking foolish. He would have been better off if some fear had given him a signal that said, “Watch out!” So having good courage skills is not so simple as just trying to get rid of all your fear. We need fear to alert us of danger, whether physical, financial, or social. Too Much Fear Interferes With LifeOn the other hand, you can have too much of a useful thing! And many, many people do have too much fear. Fear is very unpleasant. Fear is the emotion that goes along with blood-curdling screams and thoughts like “Aaah! Let me out of here!” If you feel that emotion too often, it can make you enjoy life lots less. It’s a problem to solve. Almost everyone feels a certain amount of “unrealistic fear.” Unrealistic fear is fear that is too big for the amount of danger. Suppose someone is going over a very well built bridge. The person feels huge fear, 10 on a scale of 10, that the bridge will collapse. He feels this even though he can say that it is almost impossible that the bridge will actually fall. This is unrealistic fear. It’s a problem to solve. Sometimes people don’t use the word “fear” in describing the bad feeling that’s attached to a situation. Someone is “afraid” of doing homework, for fear that she will mess it up and do badly at it. But she might have other thoughts that make her feel angry about it, or bored with it, or upset about it, or that it disgusts her. She may feel these other bad feelings more than fear. We will talk about fear in this chapter. But most of what we will say goes for any bad feeling that is attached to a certain situation. We’re lucky that there are some good ways of making fear go down. This chapter will talk about these ways. If you have too much fear, you will benefit from learning these ways very well, and using them very often. But first we need to talk about ways of assessing danger, and dealing with real danger. Assessing DangerTo have good courage skills, you need to be able to assess danger, to figure out how much danger there is. Here’s a formula for assessing danger: Danger = Chance that bad things will happen x How bad they are That is, you multiply the chances of bad outcomes by a rating of how bad the outcomes are. Suppose I’m walking outside on a sunny day. It occurs to me that I could get struck by lightning. How bad would be if that happened? Very bad, close to 10 on a scale of 10. Yet I’m in no danger. Why? Because the chance that this will happen is very close to zero. If I felt a lot of fear, it would be unrealistic. I’d be feeling lots of fear with low danger. On the other hand, if there’s a storm and lightning is striking very close to me, the chance of the bad outcome is lots higher. Suppose a student goes to take a test, with a hundred questions on it. The student is well prepared. The student thinks, “Oh, no, I might miss a question!” Even for well-prepared students, the chance of missing at least one question is usually pretty high. But how bad is this outcome? It’s not terrible to miss a question. So there’s still not much danger. If a fear is unrealistic, usually someone is overestimating something. Sometimes it’s the chance that a really bad thing will happen. Sometimes it’s how bad something is. See if you can figure which one the person is overestimating. Suppose there is a man who has lots of money saved up. He can support his family for the rest of his life, just on his savings. He hears from a very reliable person that at his job, his pay will soon be reduced. He feels great fear over this. Which is he overestimating? A child is lying in bed. She feels very scared. She feels that a kidnapper might come into the house and steal her away. She guesses that the chances of this happening tonight are about 50%, or about one chance out of two. Both of these people have fairly unrealistic fears, don’t they? Neither of them is in much danger. The man is overestimating the badness of the outcome. The child is overestimating the chance of a bad outcome. What To Do About Realistic Fear and DangerNot all fears are unrealistic. And even for fears that are fairly unrealistic, there is often a realistic part. Take the example of the man who feared that his pay would be reduced. It is not horrible if his pay is reduced, but it is undesirable. So if he can do something to prevent that, so much the better. If he can find another job he likes just as well that pays more, he has dealt with the danger. Or take the example of the child fearing kidnappers. The chance may be very low, but if the doors are unlocked, it makes sense to lower the chances by locking the doors. Very often, there is something we can do to reduce danger, whether it is great or small. Here are three types of things we may choose to do: pump adrenalin, avoid or escape the situation, and work toward skill in handling the situation well. 1. Pumping adrenalin. Adrenalin is one of our hormones. Our body often pumps it out into the bloodstream when we are scared. It helps us if we need to run fast or fight hard or otherwise use lots of energy quickly. It gets our bodies ready for lots of hard exercise. Once I was walking by myself in a rough section of Chicago, late at night. (I furnished a very bad example of decision-making skill.) Three big, mean-looking guys started following me. Then they started running after me. I’m very thankful that my body pumped adrenalin. It helped me to run the fastest 200 yards of my life. We pump adrenalin when we are scared, so that we can save ourselves in situations like this. Sometimes, though, pumping adrenalin gets in the way. Suppose I’m going to put on a violin concert. Pumping adrenalin makes my muscles ready to work hard. The muscles are so ready to move that they tremble. I don’t want trembling muscles when I play the violin. I need to teach my body not to pump too much adrenalin. Pumping adrenalin does not help me do a violin concert, the way it helps get away from mean guys. Let’s look at other things we can do about danger and realistic fear. 2. Avoiding or escaping. This means to stay away from the situation that causes the danger. Or if I’m already in the situation, it means to get out of it. This would have been the smartest thing to do when I got the urge for exercise in the middle of the night, on the night I told you about. Realistic fear might have led me to lift weights inside rather than walk around outside. Avoidance would also be a good way for me to reduce danger in putting on a violin concert. To reduce the realistic danger of looking foolish, I avoid scheduling violin concerts for myself. I stick to an instrument that I have learned how to play! Suppose that I’m out with some friends and someone dares me to dive off a cliff into a river below. If don’t have total certainty that I won’t land on some rocks and kill myself, I have reason for realistic fear! Avoidance is the best strategy in this situation. Avoidance and escape are often extremely wise choices. I wish that I could magically give more people realistic fear of alcohol, cigarettes, and other recreational drugs, and promote more of a strategy of avoiding these substances. But sometimes avoidance has big costs. Suppose I am very much frightened of doing a bad job on a paper I’m assigned to write. Every time I think of writing, I feel scared. So I avoid by not thinking about it. I end up not turning in a paper, and getting a zero for a grade. I would have been better off writing a bad paper! Suppose that I am lonely and would like to invite someone to do something with me. I think about calling up someone and inviting this person. I have some fear that I will look foolish and will just get a rejection. If I use avoidance and escape, I might simply decide not to invite the other person. The loneliness is the price I pay for avoidance. 3. Skill-building and preparing. This means to build the skills necessary to handle the situation well. If you are a violin player, it means practicing the song so thoroughly that you can almost do it in your sleep. It also means practicing getting worked up to just the right degree of excitement—not too much, not too little, but just the right amount. It means practicing playing the song in front of people. It means practicing in your mind playing it in front of the people at the concert. Suppose someone has “test anxiety.” This means that when tests come up at school, the person gets very scared. Skill building and preparing means working very hard to prepare for the test. It could mean making up tests over the material and practicing taking them. If someone has made up very difficult tests and taken them, scored them, and passed them with flying colors, the person has less cause for realistic fear of failing the test. Suppose I am scared of looking foolish when calling someone up and inviting the person to do something with me. Skill building and preparing means that I prepare myself thoroughly in the art of social conversation skills. I rehearse in my mind various comfortable and genuine conversations. I prepare so much that I assure myself that even if my invitation is declined, I will have acted appropriately and will not feel foolish. Suppose that I sign up for a sports team. I am afraid of being embarrassed. I’m afraid that other people will be lots better than I. Skill-building and preparing means that I do my homework ahead of time. I observe to see how good the people are whom I will be playing with. I check to see where my skills are now. I work and practice to see if I can get my skills to a level where I’ll realistically feel confident. If lots of work and practice can get me to that level, I’ve used skill building and preparation successfully. If I find that I can’t get to that level, then my preparation has at least led me to make a wise choice of avoidance. Suppose that I have a fear of driving a car. If I use avoidance, I simply stay away from the steering wheel. Skill building and preparation, however, might involve lots of careful watching while someone else drives. It might involve lots of study of a manual. It might involve practicing with a computer simulation. It might involve going out to practice on a parking lot in the wee hours of the morning when no one else is there. I can use lots of fantasy rehearsal of handling more difficult traffic. Suppose I find out that I’m at risk for heart disease. This causes some realistic fear. The strategy of avoidance might lead me to turn my eyes away whenever I catch a glimpse of an article on heart disease. Skill building and preparation might involve eating a very healthy diet, building a sensible exercise program, and so forth. Suppose there is someone who is very much afraid of living his life in poverty. In order to defend against this fear, he spends a great deal of time studying to decide how he can make enough money. He spends time building the skills he needs for a high-paying profession. He spends time deciding how to save and invest the money he makes. Suppose someone is very scared of writing badly and having her writing look foolish. She studies manuals on how to write well; she studies good writing so that she can imitate it; she practices writing very often; she does lots and lots of revision; she starts very early to give herself lots of time before any deadline. There’s one short word that summarizes what’s we need for skill-building and preparation strategies. When I say it, you’ll immediately know why many people don’t use these strategies enough. The word is work. It takes lots of work to get really prepared and to build skills. But work can make great things happen. People who are in a habit of working hard and long to improve their prospects of success are very lucky. They have a great way to defend themselves against fear. To summarize: pumping adrenalin, avoidance and escape, and skill building and preparation all have their place in dealing with real danger and realistic fear. Having good courage skills involves choosing appropriately among these strategies. Reducing Unrealistic FearNow let’s talk about reducing unrealistic fear. First I will outline techniques of fear reduction; then I will explain these steps more fully. Techniques of Fear Reduction1. Recall and list situations. 2. Rate your handling of them. 3. Use behavior, not feeling, as the measure of your success at the beginning. 4. Move up the hierarchy of difficulty. 5. Use prolonged enough exposure. 6. Choose your self-talk. 6.1 Accurately assess danger, use not awfulizing if possible. 6.2 Think about advantages of cultivating toughness. 6.3 Use self-reinforcement. 7. Choose your Imagery. 7.1 Use positive imagery. 7.2 Transfer success image to the scary situation. 7.3 Habituate to scary images. 8. Use relaxation. 9. Use fantasy rehearsal. 10. Reinforce courage, not fear. Recalling and Listing SituationsRemember that you don’t want to get rid of all fear. You want to work on the situations where the fear is out of proportion to the danger. Without a specific situation, you can’t decide whether the fear is realistic or unrealistic. You need specific, concrete situations to practice with. To get those situations, you search through your memory for times when you had unrealistic fear. Write down these situations. As you continue to work on this, add to the list. Any time a situation comes up that causes you unrealistic fear, write it down. If one of your fears is of social embarrassment, then showing someone this list may be a scary situation in itself! Or perhaps even the prospect of telling someone about these situations is scary. If recounting the real situations is too scary for now, you can still work by making up stories. Make up situations that are like the ones you are afraid of, situations you would be afraid of, but which have not happened. You can envision these situations as happening to someone else, not you, if you like. Or someone else can make up specific situations for you, based on some knowledge of the type of situations that are hard for you to handle. Sometimes the hardest task is figuring out exactly what situations you are afraid of. Sometimes what really triggers the fear are thoughts or images that you forget about soon after having them. Here’s an example. A man notices himself getting anxious approximately the same month each year. He doesn’t know why. He just feels “immanent doom.” He finally spends some time posing the question, “What am I afraid of,” and letting his mind drift to an answer. The image comes to his mind of his dying of a heart attack. He then remembers that it was at this time of year that his own father died of a heart attack. He gets in touch with the image of his own children struggling and being victimized after he dies. His thoughts are, “Their lives are going to be terrible.” Now he has “gotten in touch with” what he is really afraid of. Here’s another example. A teenaged girl finds herself with a pounding heart, trembling, and vomiting on certain mornings during the week. At first she thinks that something is physically wrong with her. She finally asks herself why the symptoms come on certain days and not others. She realizes that on those days she is scheduled to come in contact with a couple of boys at her school who harass her. They sometimes poke or grab her in very unwanted ways. She becomes aware of how much she mistrusts the school authorities. She is afraid that if she tells, she will only be doubted, laughed at, and embarrassed. She now has some very real problems to solve. But the fear is now attached to concrete situations rather than being mysterious and unknowable. A boy finds it very hard to get to sleep at night. He gets very “wired up” and tense. The next morning he can’t remember what he was tense about. He resolves to keep track of the thoughts that go through his mind. He lies down in his bed at night and immediately the image comes to his mind that a criminal will sneak in his window and kidnap him. He saw this image in a movie and he recalls it vividly. He realizes that this is what is scaring him. I have talked about this process earlier in this book. I have referred to it as filling in the STEB matrix. You get aware of what situations you are having trouble with, what thoughts you are having in those situations, what emotions you are feeling, and what behaviors you are doing. How do you come to realize what is really scaring you? Sometimes you just ask yourself questions and give your mind time to answer. What bad things am I worried will happen? What is the worst that could happen in this situation? What would happen as a result of that? What scary scene am I trying to keep out of my mind? Answering these questions can be very uncomfortable. You answer them when you are ready to handle that discomfort, in exchange for having a better chance to solve the problems. When you make lists of the types of situations you want to handle better, you are really on the road to improvement. This is often a very hard step. It’s much easier for most people to tell themselves that something or someone else is the problem, not that their own reactions are the problem. For example: Instead of “I have math anxiety,” the person thinks, “Math is stupid and boring.” Instead of “I’m scared of meeting new people,” the person thinks, “These parties are stupid wastes of times.” Instead of “My fear of failure makes me anxious all the time at school,” the person thinks, “All the teachers are bad and nothing that I’m taught is worthwhile.” Instead of “I’m scared I might say the wrong thing and embarrass myself,” the person thinks “I don’t want to meet those people; I have nothing in common with them.” Blaming other people or other things is a tempting pattern to get into, because it saves face. It allows us not to have to admit any imperfection in ourselves. But we pay a severe price for doing this. First, it doesn’t lead us toward making the changes in ourselves that we need to make. Many people have spent their whole lives complaining about other people and other things and avoiding making changes that would make them much happier. There’s another severe price. When there are lots of negative thoughts and beliefs about the world and other people and activities, these thoughts are very depressing. Perhaps this is a reason why anxiety and depression tend to go together. In summary, a first very important step in overcoming fears and gaining courage is simply to admit to yourself, “Here’s a situation that scares me more than I’d like it to.” If you can have the courage to say that to yourself, you’re on the way. Rating Your Handling of the SituationsHow good was your handling of each of the situations? Or how good is your imaginary handling of it, now? You can use the following scale:
0=Very bad 2=Bad 4=So-so 6=OK 8=Good 10=Very good
Or you can rate the sheer degree of discomfort or distress you would feel in this situation. This is referred to as a SUD rating: subjective units of discomfort. 0=None 2=Very little 4=Some but not much 6=Moderate amount 8=Great amount 10=Very great amount
These two ratings measure very different things: how successfully you behave in the situation, and how you feel in the situation. If you want to change something, it’s important to measure it. If you want to improve your responses to situations that are scary to you, measure those responses. Use Behavior, Not Feeling, As the Measure of Success at the BeginningI recommend rating situations in both of the above ways. But then when you start practicing with the situations, I recommend making your first measure of success whether you behaved the way you want. The reason for this is to avoid vicious cycles. Suppose I’m really intent on giving a speech without fear. I stand up on the stage. I think, “Am I scared?” I notice my trembling hands, and my rapid breath, and my sweaty palms. I notice the urge to run out the side door. The answer is, “Yes, I’m scared!” Now I can think, “Oh, no, my fear-reduction techniques aren’t working! I’m failing at the goal I had wished for so strongly!” These thoughts make me even more scared. When I notice this happening, I say to myself, “Oh, no, I’m even more scared than before! When is this going to stop!” A vicious cycle has set in. I am monitoring my fear, and when I find it, that makes me more scared. On the other hand, suppose my main criterion is behavior. I am thinking, “My goal is to get my ideas across. It doesn’t matter if I’m terrified the whole time. I just want to get these words out.” I start giving the speech. This time, if I notice my sweaty palms and pounding heart, I think, “Who cares? The words are coming out! I’m succeeding!” Eventually, I want not only to handle the situation well, but to enjoy myself while doing it. Eventually, I want the SUD level to go down. But the first priority is establishing some memories of “success experiences,” of behaving the way I wanted to in the situation. Move up the Hierarchy of DifficultyOnce you have listed the scary situations, you want to arrange them in order—in a “hierarchy.” You arrange them in order of their SUD rating. Which are the 2s and 3s and 4s, that are uncomfortable but not terribly so? Which are the 8s and 9s and 10s, that are the big fear-provokers? And which are the 5s, 6s, and 7s, that are in the middle range? After you arrange the situations in order, you will usually want to start out with the low level ones, and work your way up. This way you get some success experiences under your belt before going into the really tough situations. This way you learn to trust that the fear reduction techniques will really work, before you take on the biggest fears. In research studies, sometimes people have jumped right to the scariest situation and have stuck with it for a long time. If you can hang in there and stick with it, this seems to work for fear reduction just as well as moving gradually up the hierarchy. But I still recommend working up the hierarchy if possible. This is because you want to avoid attempting the scariest situation, getting too scared of it, and escaping from it. As we’ll see in the next section, escaping when your fear is greatest can do more harm than good. There are many instances where you will have no choice but to start high on the hierarchy. For example, you take on a very important job, and you are anxious about your ability to perform in it, but there are very great costs if you try to escape or avoid it. Or you find yourself in a school situation that causes great anxiety, but the costs of dropping out are far greater than those of staying in. In situations where you can’t have the luxury of working your way up the hierarchy of difficulty gradually, you’re going to need to get tough and tolerate some pain. The consolation is that you can probably get over the problem more quickly than you would have if you had taken it gradually. Use Prolonged Enough ExposureThere have been lots of different programs for fear reduction. Many different ones have been successful. But the one thing that successful programs seem to have in common is prolonged exposure. This means that you have to be in the situation that you are unrealistically afraid of—you have to expose yourself to it. And you have to stay in it long enough—the exposure has to be prolonged enough—that the fear goes way down. This is one of the main secrets of fear reduction that most people don’t know. It’s important to understand this principle. Suppose someone says, “I get exposed to the scary situation all the time. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t have a problem. Why doesn’t the fear go away, if exposure cures fears?” Let’s understand the difference between prolonged exposure and short exposure. Let’s imagine I’m working with a fear of being on an elevator. Suppose I get on an elevator, and I notice myself feeling scared. I feel a great urge to escape. Now the door finally opens and I get off in a hurry. “Thank goodness I’m off,” I say to myself, and my fear goes down. The students of behavior speak of “negative reinforcement.” This means that a behavior is rewarded by the turning off of something unpleasant. For example, there’s an unpleasant noise coming from an alarm clock; the stopping of the noise rewards the behavior of turning off the clock. Is negative reinforcement going on in the situation of brief exposure to the elevator? And what is being reinforced? When the fear goes down, that is the turning off of something unpleasant. And the behavior that it rewarded was hurrying off the elevator. In other words, fear-reduction rewarded escape behavior. But what is fear? It’s largely the urge to escape. Rewarding escape has much the same function as rewarding fear itself. The fear is likely to be just as great, or greater, the next time I get on the elevator. On the other hand, suppose that I make myself get on the elevator and just stay on it. I ride up and down and watch the door open and close. At first my fear is very great. Then it starts to go down. The emotional part of my brain is gradually finding out that nothing horrible is happening. I’m gradually starting to really appreciate that I’m not in big danger. It takes time for this to get through. But over time, it does, and the fear goes down. My SUD rating gradually goes from 10 down to 1 or 2. Now the fear-reduction has not rewarded escape behavior. If anything, it has rewarded courage behavior, staying with the feared situation. The next time I get on the elevator, the fear is very likely to be less. If I repeat the prolonged exposure enough, I can reduce the fear to a very low level, or to zero. This story has a very important moral for all who would reduce unrealistic fear. Once you have decided a fear is unrealistic, you want to avoid getting scared of the situation and then escaping from it before the fear has gone down. You want to set yourself up for prolonged exposures. Suppose that a girl has stage fright. Suppose someone says to her, “Well, just come to the recital. If you feel too scared, you don’t have to play. If you are not scared, you can play.” Is this a good plan? The reasoning we just went through helps us know that it isn’t. You don’t want to reward fear by making escape or avoidance depend on it. Suppose that the same girl gets a choice. “You can have a recital in front of just a few people you know well, and play all the songs you know well. Or you can be in a big recital, and just play a very short piece. That way you won’t have to be on the stage very long.” For fear-reduction, which would be better for her to choose? The longer she can be on the stage, the better. And if having a small group makes it easier for her to put on a long recital, then she should go for it. The best thing for her would be to get an audience who was willing to keep listening until her SUD rating was low. There’s a word worth knowing, in talking about the effects of exposure. The word habituation refers to the fact that we gradually get used to things. If we stay in scary but nondangerous situations long enough, we habituate to them. Consciously Choosing Your Self-TalkOne of the most helpful discoveries in the field of fear-reduction is that you can change how you feel by what you think. If you are saying to yourself, “This is going to be awful! I can’t stand this! I’ll never live this down. I’m going to be so humiliated!” then it’s easy to see why there would be some fear. But people often say things like this to themselves without even being aware of it, or at least without remembering it well enough to recount later. So one of the first steps in choosing your self-talk is becoming aware of what you automatically say to yourself. If you notice that you are saying things to yourself like, “Something horrible is about to happen,” this is not something to regret or to punish yourself for. This is something to celebrate! Why? Because you have become aware of your self-talk, and this is an important step in changing it. Try to congratulate yourself for taking this important step. In thinking about your own thoughts, it’s useful to refer to the categorization we’ve used several times before in this book: 1. Awfulizing 2. Getting down on yourself 3. Blaming someone else 4. Not awfulizing 5. Not getting down on yourself 6. Not blaming someone else 7. Goal-setting 8. Listing options and choosing 9. Learning from the experience 10. Celebrating what happened to happen 11. Celebrating someone else’s choice 12. Celebrating your own choice
If you want to reduce fear, you want to choose things to say to yourself that are “not awfulizing” statements or even “celebrating” statements rather than “awfulizing.” You want to choose statements such as the following: “I am safe, because...” “I know that I can handle this situation successfully, because ... “ “There’s no need for me to escape. This will come out ok.” “I’m so glad that I prepared for this situation well.” “I’m glad that I can trust another person to make it come out ok because...” “I’m glad that it so happens that the danger level is very low.” What if you don’t believe that these statements are true? What if you’re really in great danger? Then you’re dealing with realistic fear. Maybe you really do need to escape or avoid. But if you have carefully figured out beforehand that you are not in danger and that any fear that you will feel is going to be unrealistic, you need to remind yourself of the reasons for this. In addition to reminding yourself that you are not in grave danger, there’s another useful line of self-talk. This is to remind yourself of the advantages of being tough and strong. These fall into the category of goal-setting. These are self-statements like: “I want to make myself tougher.” “If I can tough out this situation, I’ll be more able to handle others.” “I won’t have to be bothered so much by fear if I can get tougher.” “I’ll like myself better if I can learn to be strong on this.” “If I can just get over this hump, I’ll save myself a lot of pain from then on out.” As you continue to stay in the scary situation, there’s still another line of self-talk that is very useful: self-reinforcement, or celebrating your own choices. This includes self-statements like this: “Hooray for me! I’m gutting it out!” “I’m doing it. I’m being brave.” “Some people may not have thought I could do it. But I’m doing it! I’m making a triumph for myself.” Consciously Choosing Your ImageryWhat you say to yourself in words is an important portion of your thoughts. But another important portion is the mental images you give yourself. Suppose you are trying to write an article, and you are struggling against the fear that causes writer’s block. It doesn’t do much good to say the words “I am safe,” if you are visualizing a committee of readers frowning at you, and hearing in your mind their highly critical tones of voice. It’s good to cultivate, consciously, an image of getting positive feedback, perhaps accompanied by some useful criticism. You “keep your eyes on the prize,” and imagine the good consequences that writing the article will bring. Choosing positive imagery If you’re afraid of flying, it doesn’t help to say, “I know the chances of a safe flight are very high,” if the image you are seeing and hearing in your mind is plummeting toward the earth with people screaming. You visualize the airplane flying safely and uneventfully, on a boringly routine flight that is nonetheless a triumph for you. If you’re giving a speech, you might imagine that at least one person will enjoy it, find it useful, or be excited by it. You may know that others will disagree, but you focus at least some attention on the sympathetic listener. Some people are helped by calling to mind the image of a very nurturing, loyal, strong, and dependable friend to take with them into scary situations. Some people have referred to this as the “inner guide” image. Transferring a success image to this situationHere’s an imagery technique that lots of people have found useful. You first ask yourself, “How would I like to feel and act in this situation?” Perhaps the answer is relaxed, perhaps brave, confident, silly, slaphappy, assertive, or pleasantly excited. Then you search through your memory bank for at least one memory of feeling and acting that way. If you haven’t ever felt and acted that way yourself, then you search for an image of someone else’s doing so. (I have written some “modeling stories” for the purpose of providing suitable images.) We can call a memory of the desirable pattern the “resource,” because we draw upon this resource in handling the scary situation. The next step is to imagine very vividly the resource image. You run it through your consciousness perhaps several times, as though playing a videotape. The next step is to take the scary situation, and imagine yourself handling the scary situation in the same way that you (or someone else) handled the resource situation. In other words, you take the desirable pattern and just transfer it over to the situation you want to handle well. You run this sequence through your imagination repeatedly. Then you step into the situation in real life, and enact the sequence that you have been imagining. If you are successful, then the success experience you have just created can be a new resource! Here’s an example. One afternoon I spoke with a woman who was experiencing great anxiety. She was retiring, and there was to be a dinner in her honor later that evening. She would be asked to say a few words, and she faced this prospect with terror. I asked her how she would like to feel, instead, during these moments. She would rather feel relaxed, humorous, grateful, and in charge of things. I asked her whether she had ever had these feelings before, especially in public speaking sorts of situations. She was a schoolteacher, and could retrieve lots of memories of times she had felt that way, in front of her classes. I asked her to retrieve memories of very specific times and places, and to run these images through her mind in great detail. After she had done so, I asked her to take the same pattern of her thoughts, feelings, and behaviors and lift it over to the scene that she would experience later in the evening. I asked her to imagine feeling and acting the same way at the dinner. She was able to do so. I asked to keep practicing this fantasy. Later I found out from her that the evening had gone well. Habituating to negative imagesThere’s sometimes a problem with consciously choosing your imagery. If you try NOT to think of a certain image, it will often pop right into your head. A story by Tolstoy had to do with someone’s trying not to think of a white bear. If you try, right now, not to think of a white bear, does the image pop into your head despite your efforts? This brings up another imagery technique worth using. If the worst outcome pops into your head, you can go ahead and expose yourself to it in your imagination, and become less scared of it. You purposely keep imagining one of the worst outcomes. You imagine yourself handling it, maintaining your courage and dignity, prevailing, even in this unwanted event. For example, I imagine myself coming to the end of the speech I’m giving. The people don’t applaud. One by one they start hissing and booing. I remain calm, pack up my materials, and stand proudly as they yell insults at me. Here’s another example. I imagine calling someone, to invite the person to do something with me. The person says, “With you? You think that I would get together with you? Ha! Ha! No way! You’re such a klutz. I would never want to be seen near you! If you ever come close to me, I’ll get out a sign that says, ‘I did not invite this ridiculous person to come near me.’” But in the image, you are not devastated, but you are thinking, “I can handle this. It’s not the end of the world if this particular person doesn’t like me. I’m not giving this person the power to determine how I feel. I can be strong.” Or I imagine that the airplane I’m riding on is going straight down, and people all around me are screaming. I relax and give thanks that I have had the opportunity to be alive. I review some of the best moments of my life. I check and see if there is anyone whom I can comfort by my calmness in the remaining seconds of my life. Or I imagine that I hand in a written article. Rather than getting an A, it not only gets an F, but also it gets loudly criticized before a whole group of people. The critic very sarcastically comments on every paragraph, after which he rips the paper into small pieces. Meanwhile I take some pleasure in being able to watch this spectacle calmly and with dignity. Perhaps if the critics make some good points, I tell them so, and if I disagree, I voice my opposing opinions. The same principles of exposure apply to imaginary situations as apply to real situations. If there is an image that scares you more than you’d like, you can habituate to it by prolonged exposure. You can remind yourself that the image itself is not dangerous, even though the real life situation may be dangerous. If I find that one of these images is too scary at the beginning, I can change it around, until it is at the right point on the hierarchy of difficulty. Perhaps I imagine the critic of my article with a banana peel draped across his head. This image is so silly that the whole scene is sapped of some of its ability to scare me. There are other ways to make a scary image more tolerable at the beginning. You can choose to see it in black and white rather than in color. You can see it on a television screen rather than in real life. You can make the image small and far away. You can see yourself as though watching yourself from the outside, rather than looking out from your own eyes. Some people have found that with scary memories, it helps to visualize the whole scene running very rapidly backwards, as in a videotape played backwards very quickly. My guess is that when this method helps, the helpful thing is learning that you can control the frightening image. You learn that imagining it is not something that just happens to you, but that it is something you can change around in any way you wish. If you become an expert in manipulating the images in your own imagination, you are well on your way to conquering any problems with unrealistic fear. RelaxationWhen most people get scared, they tense up. They may clench their teeth or tighten their face muscles or grip with their hands. For this reason, you probably come to associate tense muscles with scary situations and relaxed muscles with safe and secure situations. If you can learn to relax your muscles on purpose, you can help yourself to feel safe and secure. It takes some people a great deal of work and practice to learn to relax their muscles thoroughly and completely. Many people are not willing to do this work. But the work of refining this skill can be of great benefit. How do you work at developing muscular relaxation skill? You practice noticing how tense your muscles are. You make them a little tenser on purpose, and pay attention to the feeling. Then you let the tension off, and pay attention to how the feeling changes. You do this separately for every muscle group of your body. If you have access to an EMG (electromyogram) biofeedback machine, you can help yourself by measuring your degree of muscle tension, rather than just feeling it. If you tend to get sweaty hands when you get scared, this is a clue that your “skin conductance” is a measure of how nervous you are. It may be useful to get a machine that measures skin conductance and use it as you train yourself to relax. Having dry hands gives you feedback that you are relaxed. Likewise, if you get cold hands when you get scared, you can train yourself to warm your hands, using a suitable thermometer for feedback. Sometimes thinking of comforting and relaxing images works well in getting the muscles relaxed. Some people practice saying a “mantra” to themselves, such as the word “one,” that gives themselves a signal to relax. There are many techniques, and I have written more about these in the chapter on relaxation skills. You first practice relaxing at regular times, in the sort of situation most conducive to success. When you have gotten very good at relaxing, you are then ready to use your relaxation skills to help in fear reduction. You get yourself relaxed, and then you practice handling the scary situation (using role-playing or fantasy rehearsal, or real life exposure) while trying to stay as relaxed as you can. Fantasy RehearsalI have spoken in previous chapters about the technique of fantasy rehearsal. Let’s review this crucially important way of practicing. Positive fantasy rehearsal means imagining yourself handling a situation as you would most like to handle it. You imagine yourself coming out with the thoughts, emotions, and behaviors that are the very best you can pick. Each fantasy rehearsal builds up the habit strength of the new and better response just a little bit. You have to do lots of them to build up the habit strength to the point where you will automatically act this way in real life. One type of fantasy rehearsal is the “fantasy rehearsal out loud.” You speak aloud, describing the situation, your thoughts, your emotions, and your behaviors. Let’s imagine that I have a fear of spiders. Here is what a fantasy rehearsal out loud might sound like: Situation: I’m walking through the front hall of my house, and in front of me I see a spider dangling from a thread from the ceiling. It’s a brown spider, and not a poisonous one. I stop and look at it. Thoughts: I can handle this. I am many times bigger than this creature; it’s not dangerous to me. I could easily kill it if I wanted to. What do I want to do? I want to try to put it outside without harming it. Dealing in a brave yet gentle way with this spider will be a big accomplishment for me. I am relaxing my muscles. Emotions: I’m feeling compassion for the spider. I’m feeling calm and safe. Behavior: I’m getting a tissue; I’m lowering the spider to the floor and trapping him gently in the tissue. I’m opening the front door and putting him outside. I’m wishing him a good life. Celebration: Hooray, I handled this situation well! Here is a generic outline for fantasy rehearsals of courage skills.
Situation: Describe the situation, as if it is happening now. What are the sights and sounds? Thoughts: Here’s an opportunity. It will be an accomplishment if I can tough this out. What bad could happen? How bad is it? How likely is it? How much danger am I in? Let me remember a time when I handled a situation like this well. I want to see and hear it in my mind. I want to relax my muscles. This is not the end of the world; this is not awful. Here are my options:... Here’s the one I want to pick. Emotions: Excited? Brave? Confident? Happy? Relaxed? Having fun? Behavior: I’m doing something that makes sense. I’m doing something that is reasonable. Celebration: Hooray for me! I handled this situation well!
If there are situations that you really want to handle differently, I strongly recommend making a taped or written record of fantasy rehearsals of them. Then listen to the tape or read the words, every day. Experience these patterns over and over until they become second nature. Millions of people are plagued with overly great fears. Very few of those have ever written or taped a fantasy rehearsal to present to themselves over and over. I believe that this powerful technique is vastly underused. Real life exposure and practice are great, if available. But sometimes real life exposure can’t last long enough, as with fears of certain fleeting social situations. Sometimes, as with the fear of nuclear war, going crazy, or death, real life exposure is not practical. With fantasy rehearsals you can engineer the length of exposure and the response you make so that it is best for you. Reinforce Courage, Not FearIt’s often easier to work toward goals if you can rig up some reward for achieving them. Can you find a way of getting rewarded for each step toward success? For example, suppose someone is afraid of public speaking. He sets a goal of successfully giving five speeches. He gives $100 to a friend and the friend gives back $20 for each speech that he gives. This arrangement is called “contingency contracting.” By the same token, it’s important to make sure that you aren’t getting rewarded for the fear itself. Suppose that someone gets to take a paid “sick day” off from work whenever his anxiety gets too high. The holiday is a reinforcer, a reward for most people. It’s hard to get rid of anxiety when you’re getting a powerful reinforcer for it. If you discover any rewards that you are getting for having anxiety, you should try to eliminate them.
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