DON'T FEEL THE FEAR, DON'T DO IT ANYWAY

Last week I attended an interesting event which addressed the subject of healing accumulated traumas. It was a very informative experience- just one thing did not sit well with me during the event – “Exposure Therapy”.

Let me tell you what happened in sequence.

A young woman had sat quietly throughout the evening and at the end she revealed that she suffered from social anxiety.

What happened next almost knocked me off of my feet.

She was brought into the centre of the group and we were all encouraged to say how beautiful and brave she was. We applauded her and encouraged her to enjoy being in the spotlight.

Then she was slowly turned around her axis so that everyone could see her and appreciate how good and brave she was. She went with the flow exactly of what she was encouraged to do.

Then she was asked to hug somebody. Anybody towards whom she felt drawn.

She said, “I don't give hugs”.

So the leader hugged her and she had to hug her back. She then was asked again to go and hug anybody else from the group. The young woman did not want to do it. So the leader hugged her again.

That was exposure therapy in its simplest form - Feel the fear but do it anyway.

It may work for some. But it certainly doesn't work for everyone.

For many, no matter how many times you go into a social situation with pure willpower, you will generally stumble on the same old same rake – your nervous system will automatically go into high alert: “Danger! Danger!” and you enter either freeze or flight mode.

It's just automatic response. Pure physiology. And it's there to protect you before you even “put your finger in the fire”.

When you put your finger into fire, you quickly learn to pull your finger out of danger. Learning not to put the finger in fire takes only one episode.

Social anxiety is learned over a much longer period of time - from childhood.

If you were rejected a lot, you began to feel that you weren't good enough.

If you were always blamed for everything, you started to believe you were a bad kid.

If you were never acknowledged, or always ignored, you started to believe that you were invisible. Or unimportant. That you don't count.

If you were always criticized, you started to believe there was something wrong with you.

And so on.

These repetitive negative experiences from early childhood combine to create a deep picture of oneself which becomes ingrained in one's psyche and can cause you to feel uncomfortable in your own skin or to lack self-worth.

Or even not to feel safe being who you are.

For many, these feelings cannot be overridden by willpower alone. And in fact, the reason why people seek out various therapies is because of different feelings. They are having feelings they don't like in quantities they can't handle. They can't fix the problem, and they are fed up.

Even more – the reason why for many people willpower does not help much is because a lot of processes for action actually happen outside of our conscious awareness.

Instead of “Feeling the fear and doing it anyway”, first of all, you need to deal with resistance and with a network of different un-named fears and triggers which can cause your nervous system to go a bit haywire before entering a challenging situation.

That is how Health Kinesiology and many other therapies tend to work with people with anxiety.

This may not be as dramatic as simple exposure. It can be a longer journey and a deeper process but usually with much better and more lasting results. You may be surprised how different a situation feels then. And you will feel good about yourself whatever happens.

Otherwise the whole thing about “Feeling the Fear But Doing it Anyway” simply reinforces the idea that one cannot be helped.