How do we get free of fear?

Fear has caused us all plenty of suffering in our lives.
We all know the terrible pain of being afraid.

We have all tried to find ways to deal with our fears.
Some things have helped. Many things have not.
Fear is a hard thing to crack.

If you are afraid right now, I am sorry.
I want you to know that I’m with you.

In this letter I will give you insight
that will strengthen you toward getting free of fear.

It’s a long letter…

and may take you a few days to read and digest. :)

But having more freedom in the New Year will be worth it!

Let’s begin with a question

Have you ever asked yourself:
What am I afraid of?

Probably not very often.

Most of us would rather not ask!
We’re too afraid of the answer. :)

Yes, the answer itself scares us.
So, instead of exploring our vulnerabilities
we simply pretend that whatever we fear doesn’t even exist!!!

Ya gotta admit, it is a master stroke.
The psychological term for pulling off
this impressive magic trick is: we are in denial.

Not scared of a dang thing.

We are right up there with MAD Magazine’s What, Me Worry? Kid.

Ah, denial feels wonderful!

But alas,
being in blissful oblivion may buffer us from painful fear,
but it does nothing to help us face and deal with it.

An example of fear in women

Suppose a woman is afraid of breast cancer.

She has friends or relatives who have died of it,
but finds the fear so painful that she puts
the whole subject totally out of her mind.

She does not do monthly breast exams
due to her underlying terror of finding something.

This woman is living in denial.
She is buffered from a painful fear,
but unprotected from the danger itself.

An example of fear in men

Suppose a man is afraid of prostate cancer.

He has friends or relatives who have died of it,
but finds the fear so painful that he puts
the whole subject totally out of his mind.

He does not go to the doctor for regular PSA tests
due to his underlying terror of getting a bad result.

This man is living in denial.
He is buffered from a painful fear,
but unprotected from the danger itself.

A better way

There is a better and far more self-protective way
of dealing with fear than living in denial.

I call it: divide and conquer.

I would love to teach you how to do it.

If you will summon the courage to ask yourself:
What am I afraid of?
and write down your honest answers,
I will show you how you can divide and conquer your fears.

Are you willing to learn?

I don’t promise your fears will disappear.

I do promise they will have less power over you
than they do now.

I am going to show you what fear is made of and how it works.

Once you see through fear,
it will no longer have the same power to frighten you.

Once you realize that fear is like a bully wearing a ghost costume,

that bully will no longer be able to rule you.

You will know what to do.

Are you ready?

Are you with me?

Let’s DO this!

Science class

Did you ever have a class in biology where they had you dissect a frog?

They said if you looked inside the frog and saw how things worked,
you would understand more about the physical life of living things.

Well, achieving that particular understanding never really interested me,
and besides I loved frogs too much to cut one open.

But if the teacher had said:
“Today we are going to dissect fear!” I would have been all in.

I was full of fear and had no idea what to do about it.

Dissecting fear would have given me an understanding of psychological life.
That has always interested me.

Reading Freud

I began reading Freud when I was 13.

I remember sitting down at the beach reading The Interpretation of Dreams.
I had a little notebook and began making a list of my fears.

I wrote. And wrote. And wrote.
My list got so long it was ridiculous.

The only one I remember writing down is spiders,
but my listing experience revealed to me

that I was going to need some work. :)

Dissecting fear

Fast forward twenty years,
and I was a psychology intern in a major cancer clinic
interviewing patients about their fears.

I decided to explore fear in my doctoral research.
Conducted in depth interviews yielding hundreds of pages
of vivid descriptions of fear.

Spent years dissecting and analyzing every sentence, every word,
building my own theory of fear
and testing it with my psychotherapy clients.

This is how I learned what fear is made of and how it works.

This letter is an intro. Let me know if you want to hear more.

I have been applying my insights in my own life ever since,
and have cut that big long list of my fears down to just five.

Hey, nobody’s perfect.
But I’m not full of fear any more, and none of my fears rule me.

So let’s go get ’em!

Divide and conquer

There are thousands of fears.
Thousands of different things or events people are afraid of.

But...

there are actually only two kinds!

There is healthy fear,
and there is unhealthy fear.

However, the key thing to realize is:

Every fear contains some of each.

Another way of saying that is:

If you look at any specific fear you have,
part of that fear is your friend!

And…

part of that fear is your enemy.

Isn’t that interesting?

Let’s take, for example, the fear of failure.

Part of the fear of failure is healthy.
It motivates you to work hard so that you will be less likely to fail.
Thus it is protecting you from the pain of not succeeding.

At the same time...

Part of the fear of failure is unhealthy.
It is paralyzing you and stopping you from attempting new challenges.

Can you see how this one fear contains both elements?

Divide it accurately

To dissect any fear, we must divide it into its two parts:

healthy and unhealthy.

To be able to get free of a fear, we must first divide it accurately.

This is so that we will realize what we are dealing with.

Is this fear of ours mostly healthy?

Or is it almost entirely unhealthy?

How we divide it makes a huge difference.

Why?

Because healthy and unhealthy fear are completely different.

And we need to deal with them completely differently.

So…
how do we tell the one kind of fear from the other?

We shall know them by their purpose.

Healthy and unhealthy fear have completely different purposes!!!

By the time you finish reading this letter,
you will already be able to recognize each kind!

And you will be able to separate the one kind from the other!

How cool is THAT!?!?

OK--

Let’s first look at healthy fear

Healthy fear is a gift.

The purpose of healthy fear is entirely constructive.

It is there only to serve us.

Keep us well and safe and alive.

Healthy fear is there to warn us of actual danger
or of a painful event that may be coming up on the horizon.

It is there to wake us up!

Its purpose is to prompt us to do all in our power
to prevent that real danger or painful event from occurring.

Or, if we cannot prevent it,
to come through it with the least damage possible
to our body, mind, soul, relationships and belongings.

Healthy fear is there to protect us.

How do we deal with healthy fear?

We act on it!

To get free of healthy fear, we heed the warning. NOW.

Suppose this morning you read about a terrible house fire that killed a whole family.
Somebody fell asleep while they were smoking.

You get really scared thinking: “That could happen to ME! And to MY family!”

This is healthy fear, warning you.

Instead of lying awake all night
imagining your house burning down and you all dying in it
(this is unhealthy fear, torturing and paralyzing you)
you check to see if your smoke detectors are functioning.

Whoa! There’s only one! And it’s out of date!!!

You google to learn how many you need and where they should be installed.
You go buy them and you install them right away.
You also figure out your best and fastest way out of your house.

Your healthy fear has served its purpose: to protect you.

In sum,
to deal with our healthy fear and get free of it,
we take effective action...in time.

We do all in our power to protect ourselves and others.
We take actions that reduce the need for further warnings.

That is,
we look ahead and take protective measures before it is too late.

Now let’s look at unhealthy fear

Unhealthy fear is completely different.

It has no constructive purpose whatsoever.

It is entirely destructive.

Its only purpose is to torture us.

Unfortunately, we all have a destructive part of our minds.
Psychoanalysts (like me) call it the sadistic superego.

Unhealthy fear is the destructive part of our mind
attacking our healthy ego with dreadful images of anticipated suffering.

Painful images and memories shown over and over in our minds
like a third rate horror movie on constant rewind–
making us feel terrified, weak, helpless and defeated.

This is the same way the sadistic superego operates in PTSD.
Memories of traumatic events are launched as ambush attacks.
Recurring stealth assaults aimed at demolishing our healthy ego.

How do we deal with unhealthy fear?

We deal with unhealthy fear by exposing its destructive purpose as ridiculous.

We expose it as nothing but a pathetic impotent attempt to torment us.

It is like the neighborhood bully wearing a ghost costume.

We look down and see his pant cuffs and scuffy shoes
and we laugh:

“And we are supposed to be scared of THIS creep???”

To get free of the creep
(that is, to get free of the sadistic superego)
we challenge our own surrender to it.

We take back the energy we have made available to it,
which it is using against us.

Here’s how we do that:

We challenge ourselves with some really good questions:

Why would I surrender to a bully in a ghost costume?

Why would I allow my own energies to be used against me in self torment?

Why would I allow the fear of ____ to be used as a weapon to paralyze me?

Go ahead—be brave.

Challenge yourself every day with these questions.

Confront your healthy ego regarding its surrender.

The more you ask yourself WHY
the less likely you are to surrender to the sadistic superego.

You will begin to see its torment subside
because the inner bully’s tactics aren’t working any more.

You will begin to get free of the fear that is causing you to suffer.

Call to action

So…
can you think of one small fear of yours

that would be a good one to practice on?

Go ahead—take hold of it.

Divide and conquer it.

Give it the bizness, and set yourself free!

Let me know how it goes.

Dr. Hall