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What are you most afraid of? We’re not talking about phobias—fear of spiders or heights—nor are we talking about obsessive-compulsive disorder, such as washing your hands to avoid germs. What we are talking about is core fears, anxiety that is always there and acts as an undertow in your life, dragging you down, pulling you away from your goals and the person you really want to be.
Many of us have one or two because anxiety is part and parcel of the human condition. But the effects are multi-layered. There is the fear, and perhaps more importantly, how we cope. And often how we cope inevitably creates a self-fulfilling prophecy: What we do to manage our fear sets us up for perpetuating it.
Here are some of the most common fears:
1. Abandonment
Abandonment is the fear of loss, of being left. Here you worry that your boyfriend is angry with you, and your head goes to thinking that he will break up with you. Or that your boss is unhappy with your work, and it is only a matter of time before you will be fired. Or you made a comment to your friend at lunch, he seemed annoyed or simply perplexed but said little, and now you obsess about your comment, and your mind goes down the rabbit-hole thinking that the friendship is over.
Coping
Because you are so understandably sensitive to abandonment, you now cling to those close to you. Your partner doesn’t answer your text for six hours, and you are texting madly while imaging the worst; you are calling your friend after the lunch incessantly to make sure he is not upset.
Or you get upset about your boyfriend’s pattern of ignoring your texts, and while you’re still obsessing, you bite your tongue, never tell your boyfriend you’re annoyed and tell him not to worry about it. You take the route of accommodation to avoid triggering an adverse reaction that only increases your abandonment fears.
But maybe you do none of the above. Rather than clinging or accommodating, you protect yourself from abandonment by never getting attached. The moral of the story of your parents’ divorce and your father’s abandonment isn’t that you need to hold others tight and not rock the boat, but that others can’t be trusted and depended upon. There’s me… and there’s me, and I take care of me. And so, your relationships are superficial. You don’t show vulnerability; you don’t let anyone in.
Or, you neither cling, accommodate, or detach, but instead, your reaction to possible abandonment is to get angry. When your boyfriend seems angry, your boss unhappy with your work, your friend annoyed by your comment, you go on offense. You counter-attack and blame to show it’s not you but them who has the problem.
Danger
The self-fulfilling prophecy: Your partner eventually does leave, because he is tired of the drama; your boss fires you not because of your work, but because of your aggressive attitude. Your friend pulls away because you seem too high-maintenance, and it always seems to be about you.
2. Rejection
Rejection is the cousin of abandonment. While abandonment is about being left and loss, rejection is a shunning. It comes with an edge of criticism, a judgment, a verdict from others that you are not good enough, not because of what you said or did, but because of who you are.
Coping
Like abandonment, one way of protecting yourself from rejection in closer relationships is being detached, superficial. Or you go on offense, rejecting others before they can reject you. In work relationships, the constant fear of rejection can easily morph into “imposter” syndrome, where you constantly fear that others will see through you, realize you are not as competent or good as you present yourself as being, and like abandonment, it is only a matter a time before you get busted and are rejected.
You wear a mask of competence and pleasantness to cover up your feelings of phoniness. You berate yourself for mistakes and try ever harder.
Danger
Others see only the mask rather than the real you, so your relationships are superficial. Your self-criticism and stress leave you vulnerable to addictive or disordered behaviors. The self-fulfilling prophecy: Others pull away because they never feel they truly get to know you.
3. Failure
Fear of failure is less about others and more about you. Your criteria for success are unreasonably high. Like those fearing rejection, you are self-critical, possibly perfectionistic.
Coping
The life of a workaholic or perfectionist is a tough one. The only way to feel less anxious is to do more, try harder, be more perfect, and so you do. Or you swing the other way: Rather than trying to appease those demanding voices, you just give up. You don’t try. You don’t care, nothing really matters. It’s all-or-nothing thinking.
Danger
The perfectionism runs you into the ground. You get burned out, but you don’t quit. You cope with addictive behaviors. Or if you go the route of not trying, giving up, why bother, you let others run your life, you take what comes, you react, you accommodate to the desires of others, you are a passenger in your own life. You’re at risk for depression. The self-fulfilling prophecy: You can never measure up to your high standards; you never feel you fully succeed in your life and feel like a failure.
4. Being abused, controlled, micromanaged
While abandonment and rejection are about others pulling away, defeat about not measuring up, this fear is about being invaded, trapped. Here you are sensitive to others stepping on your toes, telling you what to do, even if their suggestions come with good intentions. You need space; you need to be in charge; you don’t handle any criticism well. Rather than accommodating or internalizing and becoming self-critical, you see the world as one where people can take advantage of you, can screw you over, can hurt you.
Coping
You are hyper-vigilant about invasion, control, criticism, and when you suspect any of these, you attack in angry, defensive ways. You blame, it’s you against the world. Or you don’t. Instead, like those fearing abandonment, you detach, don’t get close to others, you put up a mask of self-sufficiency. And this is what others see: you as controlling and self-centered, needing always to get your way, or as removed.
Danger
While your isolation may leave you lonely, you don’t fully acknowledge it, and instead, see yourself as a rock. You only trust a few close others but are suspicious even of them. Self-fulfilling prophecy: Your control and isolation cause others to pull away, fueling your view that you can't trust others.
Becoming unafraid
The first steps in conquering your fears are stepping back and looking at the larger landscape of your life. Take a tally of the quality of your relationships, seeing what triggers you most, realizing when you are understandably over-reacting. You need to identify your core fear, your overall coping style, and see what is not working.
Once you have surveyed the landscape, you want to have first-aid tools to help you when your fear and anxieties are being triggered. Some suggestions:
1. Focus not on others, but on the anxiety itself.
Here you look at your reactions and problems as red flags telling you when your anxiety is kicking up. You want to train your attention and brain to catch when your defensiveness or panic or accommodation or perfectionism or critical voice are rising up and taking over your emotional brain.
So, your boyfriend hasn’t answered your text, or your friend seems annoyed, and you’re upset; your boss seems critical, and you are worried about your job; your partner is pushing your buttons by telling you how to clean the kitchen. Your little-kid brain is in full gear. Time to step back, get your rational brain back online.
2. Lower your anxiety.
There are two steps to getting back in control. The first is lowering your anxiety level. Again, your anxious brain will tell you that the solution lies in focusing on the source—the boyfriend, friend, boss, partner, or your mistake. Focus instead on self-regulation. Go for a walk, watch a movie, listen to some music,etc.
3. Solve the problem.
Once you’re calmer, it’s time for the next step. Now look back at the problem and tackle it through a more rational perspective. Have a sane conversation with your boyfriend, boss, or partner about your and their concerns. Mentally push aside those little-kid fears and focus on solving the problem in an adult problem-solving way.
Yes, you will still feel threatened, but your goal is to learn to act in spite of those feelings. If face-to-face seems too threatening to start, send an email in advance of the conversation, or prepare a speech. Your aim is to solve the problem, so it is no longer a source of anxiety, and override your usual little-kid coping style by approaching the problem with an adult perspective.
4. Work on changing your coping style.
These steps are the first-aid to handle emotional crises, but your next step is actively changing your overall coping style in order to heal the underlying wound.
So, if you tend to be perfectionistic or self-critical, make changing this a personal goal in and of itself. Here you experiment with tolerating making mistakes or doing less than a perfect job by deliberately letting go a bit and not trying to do a perfect job. Here you mentally push back against that critical voice and tell yourself that you are doing the best you can, that this is a first-world problem, that it’s OK.
Or you know your style is to get angry and attack, or detach from others, set goals of regulating your anger, or reaching out and opening yourself up to others. If you know that you tend to become passive, accommodating, or clinging, experiment with speaking up when something bothers you or being more independent by doing things on your own.
It doesn’t matter where you start on this—you can do this anywhere, anytime you sense you’re slipping into autopilot, falling into old patterns. You’ll be able to manage your anxiety because you’re the one deciding where and when to experiment with new behaviors. Start slow to ensure success.
5. Take risks.
These planned experiments will help you break old patterns, but any acceptable risk-taking, any approaching your anxiety rather than avoiding it will increase your overall comfort zone, your sense of empowerment and self-confidence.
6. Get help.
Yes, this probably sounds too straight-forward and easy, but it is not. You are literally rewiring your brain and trying to reverse long-held patterns. Here it helps to have a therapist who can walk you through these skills, or a supportive friend, someone who can hear you, help talk you off the emotional ledge, encourage you, and hold you accountable for making behavioral changes.
The keys to conquering your fears start with realizing what is driving you, what you are doing, and then deliberately taking action steps to change those patterns.
It’s not about doing it right, but about practicing doing it differently.
