Fear : the False Evidence Appearing Real?

When you have any conscious or subconscious fear, chances are that you aren't moving towards the goals and dreams that you want to achieve.

The latest findings in brain research confirm that many common fears prevent the motivational centers in our brains getting us to take action and from reaching your potential.
Here are the fears which potentially keep you stuck :

• Fear of height or falling
• Fear of failure
• Fear of rejection
• Fear of public speaking
• Fear of poverty
• Fear of being unloved
• Fear of disappointment
• Fear of being judged
• Fear of change

... and the list goes on, right?

If you attended one of the Money Conversation Café I already held, you got a sense that I like to keep things as simple as possible.

Rather than keeping this list growing and growing, I will introduce the work of Karl Albrecht around the concept of "feararchy", and reduces the list we just built down to only five basic fears, out of which almost all of our other "so-called fears" are built. These are namely the fears of :

• Extinction - This is what most of us call the "fear of dying". The idea of no longer being arouses a primary existential anxiety in all normal humans.
• Mutilation - The fear of losing any part of any organ, body part, or natural function.
• Loss of Autonomy - The fear of being paralyzed, restricted, overwhelmed or controlled by external circumstances.
• Separation - The fear of abandonment, rejection, of becoming not wanted, or valued by anyone else.
• Ego-death - The fear of humiliation, shame, the fear of the shattering one's sense of lovability, and worthiness.

Visually, we can represent the concept of "feararchy" as follows:

Source: Copyright owned by Karl Albrecht

Think about the various common labels we put on our fears (ie the growing list of fears that we started elaborating earlier) ...

The fear of falling (physically or financially)? It is basically the fear of extinction. Fear of failure? Read it as fear of ego-death. Fear of rejection (because of financial status)? That's fear of separation, and probably also a bit of fear of ego-death too. Fear of intimacy or commitment? That is basically fear of losing one's financial autonomy...

As with anything that has to do with Money, if you cannot name it you cannot tame it. If we look at it from another perspective, the more clearly and calmly we can articulate the origin of the fear, the less our fear controls us.

The worst thing about fear is that when we are experiencing the fear of ego death, separation, loss of autonomy, mutilation, extinction (or a combination of them as we saw above), its effects can destroy our ability to process our emotions.

A popular acronym for FEAR is False Evidence Appearing Real. While this acronym sounds smart, nice and is useful in reminding us that fear is very often based on a misperception, it sadly doesn't show us how to reduce and overcome it.

This is why I prefer the acronym FEAR... with a twist!

The FEAR with a twist

IAs a substitute for "False evidence appearing true", we will use F E A R for Focus, Expose, Approach, Rehearse

F = Focus instead of freaking out

Rather than focusing on the fear, which is often a future-focused by nature, focusing on the present can help you relax. Practicing skills such as body scanning, sitting meditations and breathing (to name a few) will help you become more present-focused and less future-focused... and eventually reduce anxiety.

E = Expose instead of escape

Exposure hierarchies provide an opportunity to break down a feared task into smaller, more achievable steps. Start small and once you are comfortable at that level, increase the level by one notch. If you are into public speaking, you certainly heard of Toastmasters, where you can could start your speech small, by timing and rehearsing your speech to yourself, at home. The next step might be rehearsing it in front of one or two person. Gradually, you could increase the number of people you speak to, until you are speaking to your fellow club members or in a contest. To bring it closer to the topic of Money, filling a tax return can be "divided" in smaller parts, one type of income at a time. The key is to break the task down to small and manageable bits.

A = Approach instead of avoid

Another characteristic of anxiety is the tendency to push us to avoid tasks which are perceived as challenging. The idea here is to aim for high frustration tolerance (doing that which leads to longer term satisfaction) over low frustration tolerance (doing that which is easy in the short term, but brings no longer term satisfaction). A combination of fear and perfectionism led me to procrastinate for a very long time and stay on that "low frustration zone". Beware of it!

R = Rehearse instead of rest on your laurels

Rehearsal involves practicing a behavior again and again until it becomes natural. Think of what it takes actors, athletes and musicians to reach high performance. Repetition, repetition, repetition!

 

 

Fear, like all other emotions, is in a nutshell "information" which leads us to react in a way that does not necessarily work for us. We have the choice to accept it or change it. Do you consider fear as false evidence appearing real? Or will you focus, expose, approach and rehearse instead?