Fear Is A Thief
Let’s be honest. Everyone experiences fear, the “strong emotion caused by anticipation or awareness of danger”. In fact, some fear is normal, and maybe even healthy.
What is NOT normal is overwhelming, constant, debilitating fear! That level of fear, more commonly referred to as anxiety, occurs in varying degrees, all of which interfere with daily life. Indicators of fear and anxiety can be mental and/or physical and, unchecked, all of them will steal things from you that might never be recovered.
What Makes Fear So Powerful?
Fear is connected to uncertainty and, in a world focused on comparison and perfectionism, the voice of fear gets louder as we understand all the things we cannot control. In young people, fear can be attributed to lack of confidence, immaturity, lack of experience, and constant input about tragedy, injustice, and violence in the world. When you add all these things to young people whose brains are not fully developed, fear is a reasonable output.
For people of any age, fear can be the result of trust that has been abused or misplaced. Right now, trust in our institutions and values seems to be very low, which leads to uncertainty and confusion. Stories of change, violence, and instability are constantly in our news cycle and confidence in our leaders is low so it stands to reason that fear is more prevalent, and more powerful, than ever.
What Is Fear Taking From Me?
Most noticeably, fear is showing up as delayed transition to adulthood more frequently than ever. Milestones like getting a driver’s license, moving out of parents’ homes, getting married and starting families are happening later than previous generations because of anxiety, fear of failure, and lack of coping mechanisms for the “real world”.
In many cases, fear is stealing motivation through “analysis paralysis”, the process of thinking, re-thinking, and overthinking a situation to the point that it becomes impossible to make decisions related to it. It’s making young people unsure about everything from what to choose as a college major to what job to take and whether or not to get married.
On a more practical note, fear is stealing skills. While young adults are quite proficient in anything related to screens, they are struggling to engage in face to face interactions, phone conversations, critical thinking and daily activities. They are struggling with executive functioning skills and avoiding anything that feels hard or challenging. Products of the “everyone gets a trophy” philosophy, they have rarely experienced risk and/or failure. So much so that the potential of facing either makes them more likely to shut down than to act.
I could name LOTS of things that fear is stealing, but I’ll end with this…Fear is a thief and it’s stealing time and opportunity from at least one generation (and more, if we’re not careful). Far from rising to overcome their personal challenges, our young people are cowering in corners, stumbling through what should be some of the best years of their lives content to barely make ends meet instead of building the life they dream of. At what cost?
What Can I Do To Neutralize Fear?
Yes, fear is a thief, but that’s not the whole story!
It’s very unlikely that all fear can be eliminated from all situations. It’s influence, though, can be neutralized with practice and intentionality. Here are some ways to do that:
Get Out Of Your Head - Remind yourself that most fears are exaggerated. While some things that we fear do happen, most of them do NOT. That means that you are losing time and peace over things that, more than likely, will never happen. You are making decisions about things that, more than likely, will never happen. And you are taking action (OR NOT!) based on the unlikely potential of something bad happening. You don’t have to live like that! Your brain will believe what you tell it, so start talking about the possibilities ahead and not the pitfalls!
Cultivate GRIT & Resiliance - You can do hard things! If you have never done them before, make a decision that hard things are going to be new lessons to learn. Be determined that you won’t stop trying, even when you are frustrated and unsure. Ask for help when you need it and keep showing up. Don’t accept anything less than finishing what you start, even when its hard. Especially when its hard!
Accept Good Enough - 99.99999% of the time, perfect isn’t possible, so stop undermining your confidence when everything you do falls short of something that isn’t possible. Use all your skills, all your effort, and all the resources you can gather to do the best job possible in the time frame available. Then, trust that it’s good enough and move on.
Reframe Failure As A Learning Experience - When you have a minute, Google “famous failures before success” and read about some of the people that failed MANY MORE TIMES than they succeeded. Failure isn’t fatal! In fact, when you decide to view it as learning experience, it has the potential to motivate and empower. Not to mention, failure helps you cultivate GRIT & Resiliance (see #2).
What’s stopping you?
I work with students and young adults that are ready to start overcoming fear every day. If you need help with recognizing, reframing and retraining your fear, I’d love to talk to you. Let’s connect!
