How to Overcome Fear: Practical Techniques for Dealing with Anxiety

Have you ever wanted to do something so badly that it loomed large in your mind and imagination, and you just couldn’t shake it? Has it ever happened to you that the way to the thing you want so badly is barred by a deep fear you have? You want to ask someone out, but you’re afraid of being rejected. Or you want to try out for the football team, but you’re afraid of looking foolish and failing. You need to know how to overcome fear.

Fear can stand in the way of your deepest and most cherished dreams. It can make you let go of job opportunities, refrain from pursuing deeper relationships, and hold you back from developing yourself into the person God called you to become. It might be a fear of failure that’s holding you back or a fear of the unknown and uncertain future. All of these can leave you feeling stuck and unable to move forward toward accomplishing the things you desire.

While fear can feel so large, it’s possible to overcome it. One of the things that God has promised His people is that He is with them, and He does not intend for them to be governed or led by fear. The apostle Paul wrote these words to his young protégé Timothy: “for God did not give us a spirit of fear, but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.” (2 Timothy 1:7, YLT).

How not to deal with your fears.

All of us have things that we are afraid of, and those fears may be mild, or so intense that they prevent us from living our lives well in service of God and others. When your fears are debilitating, it might be what is known as an anxiety disorder, or a phobia. This is when you have an extreme and specific fear about a situation, person, or object. That situation can have you feeling nauseous, dizzy, lightheaded, tense, sweaty, and like you have a pit in your stomach.

When you’re faced with something that you dread, there are a few instinctive responses that you might default to. However, these may ultimately backfire, making your fears deepen or even introducing a whole new set of fears that you didn’t have before. The last thing you need when dealing with your fear is to deal with it ineffectively so that you remain fearful and don’t live your life to the full.

One of the ways not to deal with your fear is by avoiding it. Your first instinct with the things you fear is to steer clear of them. If you’re afraid of dogs, for example, you are unlikely to be found going to a dog show or easily interacting with your neighbor’s German shepherd. We typically avoid what we fear, but that makes our fear of that thing all the scarier.

Another ineffective way of addressing your fear is by pretending it doesn’t exist. Burying your head in the sand about the things you fear doesn’t make it go away. It can make you reckless of a situation you might need to be wary of. Fear has a purpose, and while we shouldn’t give in to it without examining it, pretending it’s not there might set you up for a rude awakening if you’re not being circumspect.

Lastly, another unhelpful way to deal with your fear is to try numbing yourself or self-medicating. Using alcohol or drugs to numb your fears and treat your feelings of anxiety can have some short-term benefits. However, in the long run, those options will undermine your health and leave you worse off than when you started.

Some techniques to help overcome fear.

Emotion is energy in the body. Most of us have an over-regulated primitive brain – wired to react early and often because of childhood trauma. Job one in overcoming fear is “down-regulating.” If you can think of “Fear” as “Over-regulation” then you can approach it as an “adjustment to bleed off surplus emotional energy,” rather than trying to “calm down.” When fear or anxiety comes your way, it affects you physiologically, emotionally, and mentally.

One of the ways to counteract these effects of fear includes learning relaxation techniques. Taking the time to just stop, drop your shoulders, and breathe comfortably in through your nose and out through pursed lips a few times can help you to calm down and face the situation with a fresh perspective.

Locate yourself in the here and now. Imagine there’s a door to the past. Now close it. Imagine there’s a door to the future. Now close it as well. The sadness and anger of the past, and the fear of the future, do not have to exist in this moment. All we have is this moment right now.

Be in this moment as you are breathing, and as you continue, repeat to yourself, “I don’t have anywhere else to be, I don’t have anything else to do, and I don’t have anything I’m responsible for.” At this moment, that is a true statement. Repeat it several times while you breathe.

If you have negative intrusive cycling thoughts, you can interrupt them by making a tight fist then DECIDE how to open it (pinky or index first), then open it. In that moment the only thing in your brain is that decision, then you can choose to do something else besides focusing on negative possible futures, none of which are happening NOW.

Other techniques that can help include visualizing or imagining yourself in a place that you find serene and relaxing. These, in combination with other techniques such as being mindful or meditating on Bible verses that help you address your fears, make a difference.

Sometimes, taking a simple step like stepping out from the situation to just breathe can help you to calm down and reduce the physical symptoms of fear and anxiety. Try leaving the outcome in God’s capable hands. Find some helpful thought to replace the negative one, “In the grand scheme of things, this isn’t a crisis.”

These techniques for relaxing can help you deal with fear when it crops up, or when it’s threatening you in the moment. However, to deal with fear effectively, it’s good to try to get at the root of it, and to understand the patterns of thought that might feed your fears so that they affect you significantly. You can address and overcome your fear in the following ways:

Name your fear.

When you’re not quite sure what you’re afraid of, you can carry that fear with you everywhere you go. You’ll feel empowered to address your fears when they have a shape you can confront.

Change how you see your fear.

This can involve, for instance, seeing the positive role fear plays in our lives by helping to keep us safe and warn us of dangerous situations. The fight-or-flight response, while it’s helpful, can be overactive and oversensitive, leading to it being triggered in objectively non-threatening situations like speaking in public or being on the subway.

When you see your fear for what it is, you can take small steps to gradually expose yourself to what you’re afraid of to overcome it.

Allow yourself to feel your fear.

Instead of shying away from the things you fear, you can face them head-on to show yourself that you can do hard things and that you can cope with your fears. Instead of facing your fears while distracting yourself by retreating into your phone or relying on the presence of others to reassure you, choose to face your fears squarely.

Learn to sit with your fear without needing to silence it through food or drink. Learning to simply sit with your fear can help you immensely if you lean into it well. You can ask yourself key questions like what the root of your fear is, and why that fear has such a hold on you. Such self-understanding can help you get to the root of your fear and empower you to deal with it effectively.

Face your fear with facts.

It often helps to challenge fearful thoughts and not allow them to stand unquestioned. For example, you may have a fear of being trapped in an elevator and suffocating; take the time to ask yourself if you have ever heard of anyone that this has happened to, and what it means that this kind of thing doesn’t happen. If you had a friend with a fear like yours, what would you say to them?

Self-care matters.

Instead of resorting to self-medicating or using food to soothe feelings of fear, making use of simple, everyday things like going for a walk, having a good night’s sleep, or taking the time to make and enjoy a wholesome meal is often the best cure for fear and anxiety.

Have a growth mindset.

Fear can keep you rooted to the spot, afraid to move forward because things might not work out as hoped or planned. You don’t need to be perfect or get things right the first time or all the time. Making mistakes is part of life, and having a growth mindset can allow you to be comfortable with failure and see it as a setback leading on to better things.

Talk with someone about your fears.

Fear can keep you trapped and immobilized. Talking with someone about your fears can help to put them into perspective. Additionally, talking with a professional such as a trained and licensed therapist can help you understand if your fear needs a treatment plan that includes medication. Anxiety disorders, for instance, are often treated with medications in addition to talk therapy.

There’s a saying, “You can’t keep bats out of your bell tower, but you can keep them from building nests.” So too, we can’t keep anxiety from sometimes grabbing our emotional steering wheel, but we don’t have to leave it in the driver’s seat.

Learn how to overcome fear.

Because our early anxiety is an existential crisis (since we don’t have a neocortex to process trauma as young children), our anxieties can feel overwhelming and intractable against the tools mentioned above. If your anxiety feels intractable, don’t despair. Find a licensed mental health professional to help you. We don’t know what’s possible until we try.