Overcoming Irrational Fears

Description

Many of us harbor fears that we wish didn't rule our lives. Whether it is spiders, heights, or world disasters, we can live more effectively if we aren't always in "fear mode". Here's how to get out.

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Tags: Kenton Whitman,ReWild University,Human Rewilding,personal rewilding,mindfulness,how to,bushcraft,survival,wilderness survival skills,how to survive in the woods

Video Transcription

for many years I was afraid of heights today I'm perched on the edge of a cliff filming this and I wanted to share how I've transformed some of the irrational fears in my life Heights is a common one snakes and spiders another but this also can apply to those fears for instance in today's day and age fear of nuclear war fear of the end of the world a fear of getting cancer these things that can kind of just eat at us slowly but really we don't have that much control over arguably with cancer perhaps we have more control than we think but there's people that do everything right health-wise and still the cancer comes so with these things around us spiders snakes Heights threat of world disaster how can we live in a sense of peace and not be always having our energy taken up by this fear response so in this world of Heights and spiders and snakes and possibilities of world disasters how can we live in a place where we're not always feeling in a fear reaction initially to get over my fear of heights I would try to sit at the edge of something steep like this or I would climb a ladder and I would attempt to sit there and this this can work for some people you just expose yourself to whatever the stimulus is that you're trying to transform and you sit there and you're in a state of fear and eventually

your body learns that it doesn't need to be in that reaction mode however for some things like that threat of world disaster that doesn't work so well we have that stimulus coming in but it's it's here and there and rarely can we sit with it long enough to become accustomed to it and no longer have a fear response from it so it's very important to recognize what is happening when we have that irrational fear reaction and you can feel this inside of you

as I sit here on the edge of the cliff there's essentially two ways that I can be the one is in a state of resistance and I use that term broadly but it means that I am pushing away from this experience and as I sit here I really don't want to be on this edge it's making me nervous there's a physiological reaction going on inside of me my heart rate increases my blood pressure spikes a little bit and respiration increases and I feel that anxiety or that fear that's associated with being right at the edge of the cliff

the other way is to surrender to the experience and in an earlier video I suggested imagining that you're here for the rest of your life that works really really well for me to just settle into this experience and say Here I am and feel myself relax into it as I feel that physiological reaction come up put a half smile on to my face take a deep breath and come back into just feeling this is the place where I'm going to be for the rest of my life I might start to see that it's not such a bad place to be in fact it's beautiful when I'm filled with fear I can't see this

I can't experience this when I surrender to it I can be fully present with it oh and it's incredible snakes and spiders I realize that some of you live in areas of the world where there are highly venomous creatures and that's not the case near me but I also know that for a lot of us we live in areas where there's not that much to fear from snakes or spiders and still we can be paralyzed this keeps a lot of us out of the woods we don't want to go out there because we're afraid we're gonna get bitten or attacked by a snake or a spider settling into that experience here we can do it in their minds this is an important bit because as I lay down on the forest floor to take in the trees above me I can be in that resistance place are there spiders here or I can surrender to it and for me I just imagine the spiders coming up and sinking their fangs into me and releasing their venom and it goes into my system it's fine by surrendering to it I can relax into this experience and I no longer have to be in that fear reaction place this brings us to the world disasters because this is one that haunts a lot of people that I hear from with the threat of nuclear war if I know that that is a fear that eats at me I can simply sit with my family at dinner and I can imagine the flash of light and then everything's gone or I can imagine the very distant explosions and then being there with my family as we all we're all going to die eventually anyway because we all slowly die from radiation poisoning but there we're still there we're still together we still have that love in that connection by surrendering to the thing then I don't have to live in fear of it anymore and those realities may or may not come the spider may or may not bite you that night when you camp out but worrying about it living in fear of it is not going to keep it away that is where we can transform this by simply surrendering to those fears and for me it's given me the ability that I didn't have in my younger years to sit on the edge of this cliff to look down and appreciate LaVista the feeling of the wind feel this rock it's an experience I couldn't have had in earlier years because I would have been gripped by fear if you have irrational fears give this a try and if you found other ways to trance

for some of those irrational fears that can grip us share those in the comments below

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