Wow! This was so helpful. Breathing through anxiety, remembering a time
when I had survived similar feelings, giving time to shift and being amazed that things weren’t as dire as perceived. I like the concept of naming it “fearless heart.”
I love you, Tara.
The comment you made about the man speaking up in meetings story, “I am allowed to be here” or “it’s okay to be here” really helped me.
I am stuck in a mind battle … get the job or dont get the the jab. I feel like fear and coercion are the driving force behind getting it – as, I believe in a more natural, alternative way of health and wellness. BUT, I am being forced to get it or I become “the enemy”. This fear driven narrative doesn’t sit well with me and is sparking a lot of fear … “if I don’t get it, I’m going to be driven out of society. I don’t have a choice, so I have to give away my freewill.”
I am really torn on this issue and no one can give me an answer .. cause the answer must come from within.
Prayer, meditation, dance, breath practice, reading/expanding my knowledge, chatting with friends who love me no matter what, eating plant based, snuggling with my cats, walks in nature, lot’s of stretching, shaking exercises … are all part of my healing practice.
Bobbi L. B., Health Education, Santa rosa, CA, USAsays
Sharing/Speaking my fear to a trusted friend who also practices mindfulness. And who won’t try to talk me out if the fear but who knows how to be present with accepting awareness.
I acknowledge my anxiety and fear and sit with it. I explore the physical sensations that come with anxiety and fear. I try to recognize it and face it. Deep, mindful breathing also helps.
I am debilitated by fear. It gets worse as I age. I used to be pretty fearless. I have tried breathing, diversion, meditation…. Nothing works. The shame is the worst. I can’t function very well outside my home. While your talk is soothing and kind, it does not tell me anything I don’t already know. Thank you for asking.
I can’t say I have found anything concrete helping me face fear but the more I learn from you Tara the more I find refuge in knowing that I have to accept my fear and say this too. Then I proceed by trying to deal with the source of fear such as if I don’t check up on mom every day she can develop depression and suffer from loneliness.
Turning negative thoughts into positive thoughts – observing thoughts instead of being driven irrationally into the 3 modes – flight, fight or freeze.
Using the power of the breath and mindful meditation exercises.
Thinking of my father who I lost recently. Knowing that he would like to help me and soothe me – that gives me strength. Knowing that he would wish me well no matter what. It also helps when I can be kind to myself and recognise the insecurity behind a fear- like will i get a job as a foreigner , will my loved ones stay safe etc.
I recognise that a lot of my fears are related to repeated, ruminating thoughts . Once I am aware of them, I distract myself by reciting the alphabet backwards. Thank you Tara. Your words show such wisdom and knowledge of the dynamics of fear, particularly when it becomes out of proportion with the facts.
It helps me to face fear by just being with it. To feel it completely in my body and to distance myself from the stories in my head. Also saying to myself, “Of course you’re afraid.” Saying to my fear, “Thank you fear, thank you for trying to protect me” and embracing it.
It also helps if I can recognize my fearful self as a frightened little child. And I can reassure that little child that we have the resources to get through whatever challenge we are facing.
Affirmations that I/we are enough and that we are doing the best we can with what he have. Reminders that our best on some days may be getting out of bed, and that’s ok. And normalising fear, in what is a scary and often unpredictable world. Reminding people that we were not meant to go through this ‘life’ thing alone, and that navigating it amidst a sea of faces but without connection is not their individual failing. And instilling (and believing in) the hope that there are avenues for connection with others experiencing these things.
An urge to be courageous and/or the necessity of circumstances, i.e., I picked up my baby brother and walked past the scary barking dog in spite of feeling afraid.
What I find helpful is when I am able to remember to “just stand” shoulder to shoulder with it. No words, no naming. Simply with an intent to embody a “just stand” state of being. Increasingly able to engage in the “stand” more readily through time.
Jill Guttman, Another Field, Kremmling, CO, USAsays
In my worst moments of fear, I try to acknowledge what is happening and be with it. My practice gets me through, I tell myself to breathe and breathe again, I lengthen my outbreaths if possible.
Julien Mensonge, Psychology, San Francisco, CA, USAsays
You our message is sadly based on wrong premises and is clearly conceived and promoted by individual(s) who have not known fear, REAL FEAR, ever, first hand. I’d like to invite you to place yourself in a situation where you can get to experience fear and not just treat it inside your imagination or project a notion that has no correspondence to reality. Take a trip to a conflict zone anywhere in the world where you stand to lose everything. Feel the fear in your body and allow those seconds and minutes of terror to go to work in your body, to find a nest and take root. Live with terror for days and weeks. Only then will you have any idea or right to preach fearlessness. Your efforts be they motivated by money or fame or whatever it may be, is most disingenuous, and sadly, clearly brought on by episodes of mental forgery.
The intense fear related to trauma is not what Brach is addressing here in my interpretation of her material. Maybe it would be less confusing to label the behavioral construct as chronic anxiety.
I agree with you (and Brach does speak to this), that real fear exists for a reason and may actually help people survive deadly situations. But, too, there can be carry over effects once the danger is removed (trauma). Whether trauma or anxiety, self talk and breathing exercises can help change behavior, though for trauma other tools are needed.
Frank Jaffe, Another Field, Emeryville, CA, USAsays
First, I don’t think someone needs to be in a war zone to know what “real fear” is like. Don’t you think a young child who is subject to physical or sexual abuse understands “real fear”? Don’t you think a young child who has experienced abandonment or the threat of abandonment understands “real fear.”?
As a student of psychology, certainly you must be familiar with the long list psychological and physical traumas that young children can experience and which embed themselves in the mind and body.
Certainly the horrors of war are among the most brutal traumatizing experiences that one can live through; but they are not the only ones, and the trauma of war can be passed on from those who have directly experienced it through the generations. Placing judgment on how one person’s fear is somehow more authentic than another’s it’s not particularly helpful.
What can be helpful in my opinion is understanding the important role that fear plays in our lives and how we perceive and react or respond to the world. Often times, we can experience great fear from imagined threats, and fear from imagined threats can often lead us to do horrible things including killing each other on a massive scale.
I believe that one of the goals of the practice that Tara is offering is to learn to distinguish between real and imagined threats as well as developing skills to deal with the very real of experience of fear in the body, with the goal of responding appropriately to whatever we are facing rather than being driven to react by unconscious forces born out of our biology and early childhood experiences.
As far as I can see, Tara is not offering any kind of quick fix or magic pill but rather a practice, a way of training to learn skills to better address the challenges we all face as human beings. A skillful way of being can only lead to a better quality of life for all of us, to a world with less conflict and Anger and hate. I believe that is a good thing.
To know that I am loved and I am not alone. To try to accept change as part of what I need to learn and grow. To be in a place surrounded by nature. Flowing water calm me.
If I were free of this fear that haunts me, I feel I would be able to appreciate and enjoy life. Hope that it would free me to relate to and help others. Being free of fear would help me find peace and accept myself.
Gratitude for the blessings in my life and living in the present moment thru breathwork. That said, Im immensely grateful to your gifts and teachings, Tara.
Lori Martinez, Health Education, Rochester, NY, USAsays
I try to challenge negative thoughts with the “real but not true” techniques. I tell myself that the fear may feel real but ask if the thoughts behind it are true. That helps me stop catastrophizing so I can discover what I am truly afraid of and take steps to face this fear. For instance, I may fear abandonment or feel unworthy of love.
Accepting the emotion of fear and not trying to resist or run from it. Identifying where and how it is being felt in my physical body and focusing on that sensation. Letting it move through and out of me.
Developing daily practices that calm the nervous system.
Journaling and walking in nature reminds me that I am a part of something greater than the thoughts and emotions of fear that grip me. This helps me stay grounded and present even when the fear is intense.
I also find that practicing sincere gratitude in EVERY situation actually seems to ignite a healing energy for me physically and emotionally, even in the midst of fear and anxiety.
Prayer – but not prayer for the removal of fear or for the situation to change. But prayer that the eyes of my heart will be open to see the Divine Love present in the midst of it all and which dwells in me. Awakening to that Divine Love and tapping into it has been a stabilizing foundation for me over the years. It is an ongoing process and transformation for sure.
Investigating fear helps me. I wrote a letter to fear when I was going through a divorce. I found myself thanking fear for the ways it was seeking to protect me from actual harm, but I also released it, letting fear know I didn’t need the level of protection it was aiming for—that I didn’t need to isolate and that I was going to be okay. I drew and journaled and just danced with fear basically, and it helped me move past a stuck (frozen) place.
Fredlee Kaplan, Psychotherapy, New York, NY, USAsays
Slowing down and breathing
Also knowing they are not alone in the therapeutic relationship and that there is a way or many ways to be with fear in their bodies and not collapse
When I feel overwhelmed I find thinking about the vastness of space helps. When you try to envision ‘everything’ the scary thing that loomed so large is put into perspective and seems smaller.
Greetings and thank you for sharing your wisdom on such critical subject. It seems that I have lived with fear and anxiety ever since I was a little girl. The example I want to share is specific to me but probably universal at the same time. Some years ago when I was a working diplomat posted to Brazil, I suddenly developed a dread of flying. Or rather of flying through turbulence. I’m talking about terror not a vague anxiety. Since my job involved frequent air travel and since I wanted to keep my job, I had to confront this fear. My coping mechanism was as follows
* Keeping my feelings to myself because my instinct told me that the situation would get worse if my family knew and added their concerns and worries to my fear
* Working out a protective faith based ritual for air travel; something I still do today though not as obsessively
* Dividing flights into segments, boarding, takeoff, reaching flight altitude, refreshments and/or meals, watching movies or reading, rest, and vice versa. This gave me benchmarks and a sense of achievement when I reached a benchmark.
* Using conscious deep breathing techniques during turbulence..Some airlines actually include such techniques in their flight magazines
* Using aromatherapy ( a drop or two of essential oils on a cottonwool ball) to sniff during the flight for its calming effect
Eventually the terror went away or rather morphed into manageable anxiety. Strangely the incidences of severe turbulence seemed to diminish as well.
In summary, I faced my fear of flying and found ways to cope. Perhaps this changed what I was attracting because I began to generate a different frequency.
Thanks for encouraging me to share this experience. Just the act of writing this down has given me a confidence booster wrt handling current challenges.
Wow! This was so helpful. Breathing through anxiety, remembering a time
when I had survived similar feelings, giving time to shift and being amazed that things weren’t as dire as perceived. I like the concept of naming it “fearless heart.”
I love you, Tara.
The comment you made about the man speaking up in meetings story, “I am allowed to be here” or “it’s okay to be here” really helped me.
I am stuck in a mind battle … get the job or dont get the the jab. I feel like fear and coercion are the driving force behind getting it – as, I believe in a more natural, alternative way of health and wellness. BUT, I am being forced to get it or I become “the enemy”. This fear driven narrative doesn’t sit well with me and is sparking a lot of fear … “if I don’t get it, I’m going to be driven out of society. I don’t have a choice, so I have to give away my freewill.”
I am really torn on this issue and no one can give me an answer .. cause the answer must come from within.
Prayer, meditation, dance, breath practice, reading/expanding my knowledge, chatting with friends who love me no matter what, eating plant based, snuggling with my cats, walks in nature, lot’s of stretching, shaking exercises … are all part of my healing practice.
*get the jab or don’t get the jab
Befriending fear. Taking its hand and cultivating bravery
Sharing/Speaking my fear to a trusted friend who also practices mindfulness. And who won’t try to talk me out if the fear but who knows how to be present with accepting awareness.
I acknowledge my anxiety and fear and sit with it. I explore the physical sensations that come with anxiety and fear. I try to recognize it and face it. Deep, mindful breathing also helps.
slowing down
I am debilitated by fear. It gets worse as I age. I used to be pretty fearless. I have tried breathing, diversion, meditation…. Nothing works. The shame is the worst. I can’t function very well outside my home. While your talk is soothing and kind, it does not tell me anything I don’t already know. Thank you for asking.
Quieting my mind
connecting with my deeper Self and realizing “all is well”
I can’t say I have found anything concrete helping me face fear but the more I learn from you Tara the more I find refuge in knowing that I have to accept my fear and say this too. Then I proceed by trying to deal with the source of fear such as if I don’t check up on mom every day she can develop depression and suffer from loneliness.
Turning negative thoughts into positive thoughts – observing thoughts instead of being driven irrationally into the 3 modes – flight, fight or freeze.
Using the power of the breath and mindful meditation exercises.
What helps me face fear?
Thinking of my father who I lost recently. Knowing that he would like to help me and soothe me – that gives me strength. Knowing that he would wish me well no matter what. It also helps when I can be kind to myself and recognise the insecurity behind a fear- like will i get a job as a foreigner , will my loved ones stay safe etc.
I recognise that a lot of my fears are related to repeated, ruminating thoughts . Once I am aware of them, I distract myself by reciting the alphabet backwards. Thank you Tara. Your words show such wisdom and knowledge of the dynamics of fear, particularly when it becomes out of proportion with the facts.
Nice presentation. You condensed a lot of info into an easy to apply process. Thank you. Mary Faulkner
It helps me to face fear by just being with it. To feel it completely in my body and to distance myself from the stories in my head. Also saying to myself, “Of course you’re afraid.” Saying to my fear, “Thank you fear, thank you for trying to protect me” and embracing it.
It also helps if I can recognize my fearful self as a frightened little child. And I can reassure that little child that we have the resources to get through whatever challenge we are facing.
Breath in love, breathe out anger
Repeat
grounding, minding the breath, meditation on the fear, letting go of the fear, and surrendering into contemplation
Affirmations that I/we are enough and that we are doing the best we can with what he have. Reminders that our best on some days may be getting out of bed, and that’s ok. And normalising fear, in what is a scary and often unpredictable world. Reminding people that we were not meant to go through this ‘life’ thing alone, and that navigating it amidst a sea of faces but without connection is not their individual failing. And instilling (and believing in) the hope that there are avenues for connection with others experiencing these things.
Remembering all beings suffer, including myself, and naturally extending love and care to all. Somehow it diminishes my fear.
Repeating……My body is strong, I can trust my body.
An urge to be courageous and/or the necessity of circumstances, i.e., I picked up my baby brother and walked past the scary barking dog in spite of feeling afraid.
A talk that’s full of wisdom.
Grateful
What I find helpful is when I am able to remember to “just stand” shoulder to shoulder with it. No words, no naming. Simply with an intent to embody a “just stand” state of being. Increasingly able to engage in the “stand” more readily through time.
One way my clients (and I) face fear is by pausing and breathing into it. A few deep breaths and often the thought stops/shifts.
Deep breathing and walking in nature.
In my worst moments of fear, I try to acknowledge what is happening and be with it. My practice gets me through, I tell myself to breathe and breathe again, I lengthen my outbreaths if possible.
Knowing I have my practice keeps me ok.
You our message is sadly based on wrong premises and is clearly conceived and promoted by individual(s) who have not known fear, REAL FEAR, ever, first hand. I’d like to invite you to place yourself in a situation where you can get to experience fear and not just treat it inside your imagination or project a notion that has no correspondence to reality. Take a trip to a conflict zone anywhere in the world where you stand to lose everything. Feel the fear in your body and allow those seconds and minutes of terror to go to work in your body, to find a nest and take root. Live with terror for days and weeks. Only then will you have any idea or right to preach fearlessness. Your efforts be they motivated by money or fame or whatever it may be, is most disingenuous, and sadly, clearly brought on by episodes of mental forgery.
The intense fear related to trauma is not what Brach is addressing here in my interpretation of her material. Maybe it would be less confusing to label the behavioral construct as chronic anxiety.
I agree with you (and Brach does speak to this), that real fear exists for a reason and may actually help people survive deadly situations. But, too, there can be carry over effects once the danger is removed (trauma). Whether trauma or anxiety, self talk and breathing exercises can help change behavior, though for trauma other tools are needed.
First, I don’t think someone needs to be in a war zone to know what “real fear” is like. Don’t you think a young child who is subject to physical or sexual abuse understands “real fear”? Don’t you think a young child who has experienced abandonment or the threat of abandonment understands “real fear.”?
As a student of psychology, certainly you must be familiar with the long list psychological and physical traumas that young children can experience and which embed themselves in the mind and body.
Certainly the horrors of war are among the most brutal traumatizing experiences that one can live through; but they are not the only ones, and the trauma of war can be passed on from those who have directly experienced it through the generations. Placing judgment on how one person’s fear is somehow more authentic than another’s it’s not particularly helpful.
What can be helpful in my opinion is understanding the important role that fear plays in our lives and how we perceive and react or respond to the world. Often times, we can experience great fear from imagined threats, and fear from imagined threats can often lead us to do horrible things including killing each other on a massive scale.
I believe that one of the goals of the practice that Tara is offering is to learn to distinguish between real and imagined threats as well as developing skills to deal with the very real of experience of fear in the body, with the goal of responding appropriately to whatever we are facing rather than being driven to react by unconscious forces born out of our biology and early childhood experiences.
As far as I can see, Tara is not offering any kind of quick fix or magic pill but rather a practice, a way of training to learn skills to better address the challenges we all face as human beings. A skillful way of being can only lead to a better quality of life for all of us, to a world with less conflict and Anger and hate. I believe that is a good thing.
Breathing, talking, journaling, walking
We’re all struggling with it, But deep breathing in the moment for two minutes can sometimes help
Breathing, loving self-compassion
Conversation Meditation. Writing poetry
Qi Gong. Taking a bath. Gardening
Aware of activities/patterns that are numbing
Curling up with a fury friend
Sitting quiet with deep breathing, putting my hands on my heart and speaking to myself: „I’m with you. I don‘t let you alone“.
Knowing that they will do the best they can at that moment, and that our team is there to support them.
Faith
Inner child work
Stillness.
Conscious Breathing
8 hours sleep. Any less and the fear takes hold
To know that I am loved and I am not alone. To try to accept change as part of what I need to learn and grow. To be in a place surrounded by nature. Flowing water calm me.
If I were free of this fear that haunts me, I feel I would be able to appreciate and enjoy life. Hope that it would free me to relate to and help others. Being free of fear would help me find peace and accept myself.
I tend to freeze so what helps me is to get into some sort of action.
Gratitude for the blessings in my life and living in the present moment thru breathwork. That said, Im immensely grateful to your gifts and teachings, Tara.
I try to challenge negative thoughts with the “real but not true” techniques. I tell myself that the fear may feel real but ask if the thoughts behind it are true. That helps me stop catastrophizing so I can discover what I am truly afraid of and take steps to face this fear. For instance, I may fear abandonment or feel unworthy of love.
Accepting the emotion of fear and not trying to resist or run from it. Identifying where and how it is being felt in my physical body and focusing on that sensation. Letting it move through and out of me.
Developing daily practices that calm the nervous system.
Journaling and walking in nature reminds me that I am a part of something greater than the thoughts and emotions of fear that grip me. This helps me stay grounded and present even when the fear is intense.
I also find that practicing sincere gratitude in EVERY situation actually seems to ignite a healing energy for me physically and emotionally, even in the midst of fear and anxiety.
Prayer – but not prayer for the removal of fear or for the situation to change. But prayer that the eyes of my heart will be open to see the Divine Love present in the midst of it all and which dwells in me. Awakening to that Divine Love and tapping into it has been a stabilizing foundation for me over the years. It is an ongoing process and transformation for sure.
Investigating fear helps me. I wrote a letter to fear when I was going through a divorce. I found myself thanking fear for the ways it was seeking to protect me from actual harm, but I also released it, letting fear know I didn’t need the level of protection it was aiming for—that I didn’t need to isolate and that I was going to be okay. I drew and journaled and just danced with fear basically, and it helped me move past a stuck (frozen) place.
I try to rest and sleep . I feel tired all the time.
Slowing down and breathing
Also knowing they are not alone in the therapeutic relationship and that there is a way or many ways to be with fear in their bodies and not collapse
When I feel overwhelmed I find thinking about the vastness of space helps. When you try to envision ‘everything’ the scary thing that loomed so large is put into perspective and seems smaller.
I like that. Just thinking about that helped right away
Letting myself breathe to calm myself, telling myself that the thing I am afraid of hasn’t happened yet and may not ever happen.
Greetings and thank you for sharing your wisdom on such critical subject. It seems that I have lived with fear and anxiety ever since I was a little girl. The example I want to share is specific to me but probably universal at the same time. Some years ago when I was a working diplomat posted to Brazil, I suddenly developed a dread of flying. Or rather of flying through turbulence. I’m talking about terror not a vague anxiety. Since my job involved frequent air travel and since I wanted to keep my job, I had to confront this fear. My coping mechanism was as follows
* Keeping my feelings to myself because my instinct told me that the situation would get worse if my family knew and added their concerns and worries to my fear
* Working out a protective faith based ritual for air travel; something I still do today though not as obsessively
* Dividing flights into segments, boarding, takeoff, reaching flight altitude, refreshments and/or meals, watching movies or reading, rest, and vice versa. This gave me benchmarks and a sense of achievement when I reached a benchmark.
* Using conscious deep breathing techniques during turbulence..Some airlines actually include such techniques in their flight magazines
* Using aromatherapy ( a drop or two of essential oils on a cottonwool ball) to sniff during the flight for its calming effect
Eventually the terror went away or rather morphed into manageable anxiety. Strangely the incidences of severe turbulence seemed to diminish as well.
In summary, I faced my fear of flying and found ways to cope. Perhaps this changed what I was attracting because I began to generate a different frequency.
Thanks for encouraging me to share this experience. Just the act of writing this down has given me a confidence booster wrt handling current challenges.