Fear - do we need it?

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about fear because, well, it’s everywhere in our current world. As one of our basic core emotions and part of our survival instinct, fear is an important player in our emotional worlds. Very important. Essential. Inevitable. Adaptive. However, it is not always necessary to stay with fear for as long as we do. 

I’ve noticed that fear is one of the easiest emotions for us to experience unconsciously; we are often in a fear response without knowing it. Then we can end up stuck in fear response for hours, days, or weeks, unaware that we have the power to get out. My hope is to remind all of  us — myself included — why fear shows up, how we can recognize it, and what we can do with it. 

A great place to start is with understanding the different types of fear and how to recognize them.

Awareness first, then action! 

The fear response – also known as the stress response, trauma response, and/or activation of the sympathetic nervous system – is the body’s response to a perceived threat.

It is important to highlight the use of the word perceived. Sometimes our body/nervous system perceives objective threats, things that could be immediately life threatening such as a car pulling in front of us suddenly or a dog running toward us with bared teeth. Other times our body/nervous system perceives subjective threats based on past learning, such as a partner raising their voice, receiving a passive-aggressive text, or reading the headlines. These subjective threats may not be of immediate danger to our life or limb however our powerful brains may label something as a threat in milliseconds based on it’s link to past experiences of emotional pain or overwhelm, throwing our bodies into the same response we might have if confronted with a bear or a hurricane.

Our nervous system doesn’t necessarily know the difference between objective and subjective threats, it simply codes whatever it is noticing as a THREAT.

Once our brain has registered a threat, we typically respond in one of four ways: fight, flee, freeze, or fawn/faint. The Hendricks Institute has this great chart of the fear responses. 

Here’s a basic overview of the 4 Fear Responses: 

Fight: 

• Our body prepares to fight the perceived threat

• Heart rate and breathing are faster

• Our hands and arms may get tight, our weight may shift forward

• We feel aggressive, argumentative, or defensive

• We may have urges to lash out or see others as the enemy

Flee (also known as flight): 

• Our body prepares to run away from the perceived threat

• Heart rate and breathing are faster

• Our weight may move backward

•  We feel avoidant, trapped, or claustrophobic

• We may flee into our thoughts, finding ourself in a spiral of worry, or into unhelpful coping strategies to numb

Freeze: 

• Our body perceives that fight or flee will not work, therefore it opts into shutting down the activated energy to avoid provoking the threat and to protect self

• Our breathing is shallow and our body is stiff, tight, and hard to move

• We feel dissociated, frozen, overwhelmed, or paralyzed

• We may have trouble thinking or we may feel spacey

Fawn/Faint: 

• Our body perceives that the best course of action is to try to placate the threat through people pleasing or simply "disappear" by disconnecting from our own experience

• Noticing what is happening in our body is challenging

• We feel disconnected and dissociated from ourselves and focus on others/things outside of ourselves

• We may have fuzzy thoughts or do things we don’t actually want to do, apologize excessively, and be overly nice

Each of these fear responses looks different for each person. Also, we often have “go-tos” that we tend toward based on conscious and unconscious learning from past experiences. 

What do fight, flee, freeze, and fawn/faint look like for you?

What do they feel like in your body? 

Which ones happen for you first? Most often?

 Once we have awareness of being in a fear response, what do we do?

Let’s remember that fear is an adaptive response, it’s there because of nervous system is perceiving a threat. Whether or not the perceived threat is an immediate danger, the information from the fear is important. Like any emotion, fear is trying to tell us something.

Before shifting out of the fear I invite you to listen for the message by asking yourself: 

“What is the perceived threat, danger, or risk?”

Try asking your body rather than your mind. 

Then, it’s time to shift out of the fear!

Our bodies are not meant to stay in a fear response. The fear has a message and then wants to move through. With practice we can let it move and then go back to living from a calmer nervous system…at least until the next time our body perceives a threat and needs our attention to calm down.

I find it helpful to separate the fear responses into two categories:

• mobilized fear (fight and flight) and

• immobilized fear (freeze and fawn/faint).

Mobilized fear propels the body toward action while immobilized fear depresses that activated energy, thus our responses to each look slightly different. 

Strategies for shifting out of mobilized fear: 

Moving the activated energy: 

• Letting yourself freak out (run around the room yelling “freak out” and “ahhhh” until things shift!)

• Screaming (maybe into a pillow or in your car if others are around)

• Wiggling, shaking, oozing, 

• Running, walking, dancing, etc

• Anything that safely moves the mobilized energy out of the body

Reminding your body you are safe: 

• Connecting to your senses

• Visualizing a safe/calm place

• Grounding by imagining your feet have roots

• Deep breathing

• Stating facts

• Connecting with another nervous system, human or animal

• Other resourcing skills that connect you to a sense of calm and safety

Strategies for shifting out of immobilized fear: 

Reminding your body that you can move and that it is safe: 

• Wiggling fingers and toes

• Stretching or yoga

• Deep breathing

• Visualizing a calm or safe place

• Seeking comfort from another human or from an animal

• Giving yourself a hug

• Imagining scooping love onto yourself

• Connecting to nature

• Other self-care and resourcing skills that support you in feeling safe and calm

These strategies are by no means an exhaustive list. I’d love to know what you’ve learned from fear and how you shift!

What have you found works for you? 

What supports you to be with fear and then shift out of it? 

Overall it doesn’t really matter if you can identify what type of fear you are experiencing and/or which corresponding tool to use. If you can notice you are in a fear response of any kind and then choose to shift your nervous system into a calmer state, you’re doing great!

As always, I’d love to hear from you! I know that I’m not alone in navigating fear responses on the daily. Neither are you. Let’s connect.