Naming and Taming Your Core Fears
In a previous post I wrote about the anxiety that people with obsessive and compulsive personalities face, distinguishing surface fears from deep fears, and suggesting four steps for working through the deeper fears that lead to our most painful struggles.
In this post I will explore in more detail how to identify core fears and how to tame them so that we can lower our anxiety and move toward the healthier end of the compulsive spectrum. Otherwise, we will continue to use our obsessive and compulsive potentials defensively, rather than in pursuit of our passions and fulfillment.
Anxiety forces us to focus our attention on surviving perceived threats rather than pursuing fulfilling goals. Shifting this tendency requires that we face these perceived threats directly, allowing ourselves to experience the very things we fear in order to dissolve their power.
We can see fear at work in the many ways that we try to avoid it, for example, controlling, over-working, people-pleasing, and perfecting. These psychological symptoms, often labelled as defenses, are simply the coping strategies that we use (unsuccessfully) to try to manage our fear.
They are also the barriers to our fulfillment.
Surface Fears, Deep Fears and Core Fears
Surface fears are the ones that we are immediately aware of, such as whether your partner is loading the dishwasher correctly, whether you’ve worked hard enough on that spreadsheet for your boss, whether your guests will be disappointed in the pasta primavera you’ve prepared, or whether you’ve packed enough underwear for your trip to the family reunion. But also more substantial fears such as having a business or relationship fail.
The first step to diminishing anxiety is to identify the deeper fears underneath surface fears. You may not always be aware of deeper fears such as:
* Not being able to control circumstances
* Loss of self-control
* Humiliation or shame
* Vulnerability
* Inadequacy, weakness
* Disapproval, getting in trouble or disappointing others
* Abandonment, isolation, rejection, or separation
* Loss of meaning or purpose, depression, emptiness
* Loss of individual identity or authenticity
* Physical pain, death
If one of these deep fears underlies all of the other fears for you, we would call it a core fear. People typically have one core fear, but you may experience two or three.
Examples of Unknown Core Fears
Let’s imagine some examples of people not realizing their core fear:
* Francis supervises his hires closely. He’s aware of wanting to get good reviews and a raise each year, but he is not aware of his deep fear of shame if things don’t go well at work. He uses control and criticism to keep his workers in line so that he doesn’t experience it.
* Elly spends hours at the gym making sure she’s in great shape. She’s aware of wanting to look good, but she’s not aware of her fear of rejection. As long as she stays in shape she can avoid the fear. No-one would reject her the way she looks. But if she ever fails to get to the gym, she begins to feel a deep dread that she can’t name. She can only avoid it with a tougher workout the next day.
* Peter obsesses and procrastinates about his Ph.D. dissertation. He’s aware of wanting it to be good so that he can spin off some journal articles and increase his chances of getting a teaching position. He’s aware of his fear of not getting a job, but not of his fear that he can’t control the circumstances of a possible job search, and many other things in his life.
* Mary does her best to please people. She’s aware of her fear of isolation and abandonment, and she does everything in her power to prevent it. But she’s not aware of the fear of depression and death that underlie her fear of isolation.
Naming Your Core Fear
In his book Deconstructing Anxiety, psychologist Todd Pressman suggests three questions for identifying our core fear:
- Why is that upsetting you?
- What are you afraid will happen next?
- What are you afraid you will miss or lose?
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The technique, known as “Digging for Gold,” is to continue asking yourself one of these questions over and over until it seems that you’ve reached the deepest answer, your core fear. If you get stuck with one question, try asking the other ones.
Identifying Defenses and Coping Strategies
An essential skill for all of us who want to tame our deepest fears is to recognize and to stop using our avoidance techniques, the defenses or strategies we’ve developed over the years to keep us from experiencing our worst fears.
We get really good at these strategies. Here are some common ones for people with obsessive-compulsive personality:
* controlling
* overworking
* pleasing
* perfecting and being meticulous
* planning
* being over-conscientious
We rely on them as if they were our superpowers. But they become our tormentors. We are no longer driving. They drive us.
The result of using them to avoid what we don’t want, rather than to approach what we do want, is always that we become more afraid over time, rather than less afraid.
Taming the Fear-Do the Opposite
Once you have named your core fear and the ways that you usually defend against it, you can begin taming the fear by exposing yourself to it and doing the opposite of your usual strategy. (This is not to encourage anyone to be reckless by abandoning responsibilities or jeopardizing their well-being. I’m addressing this to the sort of people that can afford to shave off a lot of the extra effort.)
You can use both imaginal techniques and changes in day-to-day behavior, starting with smaller issues and moving toward larger ones.
Imaginal Techniques
We tend to obsess about how we can get away from fear. Instead, we need to do the opposite and use imaginal techniques to experience what we fear the most, by envisioning what happens when our worst fears come true. Expose yourself to the fear in your mind in as much detail as possible and settle into it. Used properly, imagination can be as powerful as action.
Don’t try to be reasonable. Don’t try to solve the problem. Just be with it. Do this when you have privacy. And for many, writing it all out as you go along can help you to maintain focus.
What would happen if this went on for an hour? A day? A month? Even if it seems like nothing is happening, keep asking “What’s happening?” Be as detailed, graphic, and visceral as you can. You are creating an imaginary film of what your worst fear would be like so that you face it in your imagination.
The point is to have an emotional experience that changes you-not just an intellectual realization.
Watch for a shift. Usually, confronted this way, our worst fear is eventually tamed.
This takes perseverance, but it can yield effective results. Many people feel some relief the first time they do the exercise, but repeated investigations may be needed. Repetition will also continue to diminish the power of the fears.
If you don’t feel stable it would be best to do this with the support of a therapist.
You might say, but I do this all the time! It hasn’t helped me one bit! Next time you do find yourself in this terrifying place in your imagination, notice if you are trying to get away from it, or you are actually settling into it. Be curious about how you handle it and it will shift with time.
Day-to-Day Behaviors
We can also find opportunities in our day-to-day life to practice doing the opposite in order to face into our fears. Allow yourself to take chances with small tasks first, and build up to larger ones. For instance;
* When you are tempted to exert control by telling others what to do- don’t. Let them make mistakes-without getting resentful about it. Getting past your fear is usually worth the downside of their “mistake.”
* When you feel urgency to work, clean, or fix, slow down or pause. Remember that you are trying to make a significant change in your life.
* When you feel the pressured need to please someone else, don’t. Ask what you need or want instead.
* When you feel the need to plan something out to the smallest detail, don’t. Instead try to remember what you want to happen in a more general way. Let go.
In each case, monitor the fear that arises from not doing it. Allow yourself to experience it. Is it as disabling as you had feared?
Facing Your Fears-Beyond the Overused Trope
The trope “Face your fears!” has been used so much that we don’t take it seriously anymore. We dismiss it as something we’ve heard a thousand times before and therefore it could have no power. But there is a reason it became a trope. There’s a reason why the hero always faces the dragon, and why the heroine goes off on her own to build a new life.
Like anything else in life worth having, getting better at facing anxiety takes practice.
Approaching what you really want
The compelling urges that we describe as compulsions originally had meaning. They were meant to energize us to pursue the things we actually wanted, rather than didn’t want. Replace the fear with the passion and you’ll be driving again, rather than being driven by fear.
Originally published at https://thehealthycompulsive.com on August 17, 2022.