Afraid?

What is your greatest fear? If I could hear all the responses, there would likely be a million answers. Another important question is, "why do we even have fear?". Then there are a multitude of other questions such as; "what do I do about my fears?, what happens if my fears are out of control?, why is my fear seemingly irrational?".

I hope to shed some light on these questions so that you may have a better understanding and can be equipped to handle the aftermath of your fears.

To begin, we need to start with the question, "why do we even have fear?". Being a mental health counselor for a decade, I heard from multiple clients how they wished they didn't have fear, and questioning what the benefit of fear is.

I would ask you to imagine yourself in the middle of a meadow or savannah type grassland. You are alone and you have nothing to defend yourself with. All of a sudden there is movement in the tall grass, but you cannot see what is the source of the movement.

Your heart continues to increase in speed, your breathing more rapid and shallow, and you feel bursts of adrenaline. You find yourself crouched and ready to run which is an automatic reaction. Then you hear a low growl and then a roar and see a saber-toothed cat leaping at you. You explode into a run and find a tree.

You scramble up that tree with more agility than you knew you had. The beast can't get you and eventually moves on. Your heart and breathing finally slow to normal. You climb down and breathe a sigh of relief; you have survived.

So, there is your answer to why we have fear; survival. Without that fear, humans would have gone extinct eons ago. We would stand there not aware we were being stalked by a predator, and we would ultimately succumb to an attack.

Now, humans in 2018 are significantly different from ancient man in that we look at our world differently. We don't have animals stalking us constantly, and we generally don't have the fear of finding food or shelter.

Many of the dangers that plagued early man no longer plague the majority of us. On Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs we have achieved a place where we are able to focus on deeper emotions and psychic pain. This has brought on a whole slew of new issues with fear.

So the next question we need to ask is, "does fear ever fail?". The answer is, yes. If I were to just leave it at that, there would be much confusion. Allow me to elaborate by first defining what a fail-safe is.

A fail-safe is fairly self-explanatory; something that fails in a safe way thus not creating any auxiliary problems. An example would be your standard washing machine. When the power in your house goes out, it doesn't shut the water off. Why then doesn't your house flood? The answer is because of the fail-safe. When the power goes out, a gate in the pipe shuts, blocking the flow of water.

So, like the washing machine, our emotions have fail-safes. When it comes specifically to fear when it fails, it needs to fail safely and so it overcompensates. When fear fails you tend to see mental health disorders such as generalized anxiety disorder, OCD, and PTSD to name a few.

So, rather than fear disappearing completely when fear fails, it goes into overdrive. Instead of being scared of nothing, you are afraid of everything no matter how irrational it may seem. It can be exhausting, but luckily there are ways to mitigate the emotional fallout.

So, what are our major fears as a collective human species? Dr. Irvin Yalom identified four major existential fears all humans seem to have in common and worry about constantly without consciously realizing it.

He posits inevitability of death, responsibility after death, isolation, and meaningfulness. When it comes to death, it's not just the fear of dying, but who will take care of things, what is my legacy, will I be remembered, and what meaning does my life have? Ultimately all the existential fears stem from the fear of death.

That fear really becomes background music that becomes your soundtrack. Of course, you're not constantly thinking about your demise, but you will define things based on your mortality. These defining moments are intensified if you have had a near-death experience or extreme trauma where you thought you could be killed.

Often, people who have had these experiences tend to have "a new lease on life" and will do things with more meaning because they have a more conscious realization about the frailty of life.

Now we are brought to what we do when our fear fails. What happens if we have developed an anxiety disorder such as OCD or PTSD? Over my years with clients I have learned some tried and true methods that I have used myself. You see, I suffer from generalized anxiety disorder, OCD, and PTSD.

First and foremost, you need to find healthy ways to approach your fear. Our inclination is to run from it, but that is the opposite of what needs to be done. You need to ask questions; deep questions that require some reflection.

Examples could be "who am I?", and "what is my purpose?". These type of questions will likely create additional anxiety but work through the discomfort to help with meaning-making of your life.

Next, it is important to ask what your fear is trying to tell you. Just like the saber-toothed cat example, the human fear is for survival. Be curious about your fear and listen to what it is telling you. Address the underlying issues with proactive steps.

While you continue to contemplate your fears, reflect more to help determine how your fears directly relate to your current life. Again, this may increase your anxiety, but it will allow you to put meaning to your fears and put proactive steps in place.

One of the most important things you can always do in a multitude of situations is to take responsibility. Too often we go along in our lives doing the same routine and we can often feel stuck in a rut. We start to ask things like, "why me?", or "this is the hand I have been dealt and there's nothing I can do about it.".

It's time to do away with that kind of thinking. If you engage in that type of thinking, you are giving the universe too much power. Here is where you take responsibility for the outcome of your life. You ultimately have the choice, so take responsibility and make a choice that feels more harmonious.

One that I personally have found difficult in my life when it seems I've been slammed repeatedly into the ground is to remain hopeful. The idea behind this is that you may be having the extreme defeated feelings of anxiety and depression which are tiresome and frequently debilitating.

So, feeling hopeful gives the polar opposite feeling because you are just as capable of the positive feeling which in essence reduces anxiety and depression. It is important to identify your strengths and other positive attributes and even physically list them.

Good job! You've made it through those steps, but there are more to consider. Through these existential fears, it is imperative to work on creating meaning in your life. If you can't create meaning, it is detrimental to you now and in the future.

There are a number of things you can do to create more meaning in your life. This is one that all you introverts like me will hesitate at; develop strong relationships. Just the mention of that gives me additional anxiety, but even I will concede, it is highly important. Not having meaningful relationships is mentally and physically harmful.

There is a reason elderly widows and widowers have a higher rate of depression. They generally don't have meaningful relationships around them on a consistent basis. People who have a lack of strong interpersonal relationships have a higher likelihood of dying sooner than their counterparts who do maintain said relationships.

Another important step to take is to live in the here and now. Too often people are either stuck in the past or so Hell bent on the future, they never look at today or what is important right now. That's not to say the past or future is unimportant, but you can't change the past and you haven't yet written the future.

Learning from your past is important so you don't repeat poor decisions, and looking at future goals is important while realizing the here and now is what gets you to those future goals.

Another one that can provoke increased anxiety is to challenge yourself constantly. This means, in a nutshell, that we are all faced with difficult situations that may make us want to run and hide, but it is important to face these situations head-on. This helps increase the meaning in your life.

One thing that is hard for most humans as a whole is judging their self-worth. Most of us are taught to not brag about ourselves, but finding self-worth and finding strengths is not bragging. We need to break down what thought that both are synonymous.

Valuing yourself is so important and if you are feeling depressed or anxious, this can be especially difficult. To truly value yourself, you need to engage in meaning-making and fulfilling activities. Volunteer and service work is one way to help you feel more value and self-worth. Also, expressing yourself creatively will significantly increase your sense of value.

To reiterate, existential fears are worse when you feel stuck. This is why it is imperative to push yourself through your fears and not let them hold you down. If you feel it extremely difficult and anxiety provoking to move through these fears, a good therapist can help you.

A therapist who has been trained in existential psychotherapy will help you to own your responsibility and choices. Make sure you ask potential therapists that you are considering if they have a background in existential therapy.

Medications in conjunction with therapy can be beneficial. I need to be responsible about this one so I won't mention specific medications as I am not a medical professional but a Licensed Clinical Professional Counselor. This would be something to talk with your medical provider or psychiatrist about.

We also need to make sure we are aware when we need to let things go. Holding on to stressors we can't solve will keep us stuck. I once had a client who was worried about the fringe theory of the world ending in December 2012.

For months she was losing functioning because of her intense fear. She was so worried about her children. I finally was able to have her work on what was attainable such as spending more quality time with her kids and having more opportunities for meaning-making in the here and now. Well, 2012 came and went and her fears were relieved and she now has tools for the future.

Remember every person is different and not all of these techniques are going to work the same for every person. If you try to be proactive about your fears you will find something that works and it is worth continuing as you strive to shrink the chaos.

What do you believe?

Quite often I have wondered to myself, "What do I believe, and why?" Many people I have come across have had the same wonderment. It is a universal thought and on a deeper level, an existential dilemma. Too often our beliefs can be questioned; sometimes even shaken. Have you ever wondered why that is?

As I grew up, I did things certain ways and never questioned why I did them that way. A good example in my household, as probably in many households, is that whenever politics came up as a subject, such as an election year, I always looked for the name that had the capital "R" behind the name. Why did I do that? As a child I had no realistic concept of what politics was or what the difference between a democrat and republican was. I just knew, "You always vote for the republican". Many years and a Masters degree later, I finally understood why I held that belief so strongly: my parents.

I would hear my parents year in and year out talk about who was in charge of the town, state and even the country. Obviously, more often than not, they saw more value in the republican candidate. Of course, as years passed, my beliefs became more my own doing rather than automatic reactions to what I saw in my environment. Imagine a more extreme example: a room of 50 people and all are asked to raise their hands if they think murder is wrong. Anyone would expect all 50 hands to shoot into the air; again beliefs learned since childhood. Now if you were to take that same 50 people and ask them to raise their hands if they think sex before marriage is wrong, there would be a division in the room most likely based on different backgrounds of the participants.

So, how does what you believe tie into "shrinking the chaos"? To answer that, we must realize that each and every one of us, in addition to beliefs that help us, also possess beliefs that can hurt us. In the therapy world, these types of beliefs are labeled faulty or irrational core beliefs. No one is immune from these beliefs, and until they are recognized, they go on creating chaos we do not know how to shrink. Here is a list of the most common thinking errors every human encounters:

1. All-or-Nothing Thinking - Seeing things in black and white, good and bad.

2. Overgeneralizing - Taking one particular event and generalizing it to the rest of our lives, (e.g. if a family member treated you poorly you may think "Everyone in my family is rude".

3. Filtering out the Positive - If nine good things happen and one bad thing, we filter out the good and focus only on the bad.

4. Mind-Reading - Supposing we know what another person is thinking, (e.g. "I know he probably thinks I'm an idiot").

5. Catastrophizing - Sometimes we think things are much worse than they are, (e.g. making a mountain out of a molehill).

6. Emotional Reasoning - Emotions aren't always based in reality but we assume those feelings are rational, (e.g. "I feel like a loser, so I must be a loser").

7. Labeling - Putting a label to something, (e.g. instead of, "He made a mistake", we think "He's an idiot").

8. Fortune Telling - Assuming we know what will happen in the future which can create self-fulfilling prophecies.

9. Personalization - We make everything personal, (e.g. "If she didn't call back on time, she must be mad at me").

10. Unreal Ideal - Making unfair comparisons about ourselves and other people, (e.g. "He's successful; I should have been able to do that").

There are some simple ways we can begin to address these negative beliefs and shrink the chaos.

Step 1: Identify Common Thinking Errors (Again remember, no one is immune to thinking errors). Number your thinking errors from most encountered to least encountered.

Step 2: Challenge Thinking Errors.
Look for exceptions to the rule and gather evidence that your thoughts are 100% real. Through doing this, you can replace faulty thoughts with more realistic and healthy thoughts.

Step 3: Use the Franklin Reality Model.
If you wonder if your thoughts and behaviors are beneficial, run them through this model. The Franklin Reality Model operates on the basis that there are four basic human needs that we all possess; Love (To feel loved and to love others), Survival, Variety (Not having just one mundane thing we always do, but having some other things that interest us), and to Feel Important (What mark are we leaving on this earth and are we valued by others in this world?).

1. Identify your individual need (Love, Survival, Variety, Feeling Important).
 - We all have these needs in our lives and if these needs are unmet, we behave in several ways to hopefully get those needs fulfilled. This is often when you will catch yourself saying things such as "I always get stuck at red lights, they are out to get me" implying that the need you have is to feel important and even the lights do not think you are important enough to give you a break. Let's say that we have a career woman named Jane and she sees on an internal memo that there is a position opening up in her department that would be a promotion for her and she intends on applying for said position. Jane is having a lack in the need of feeling important, and in her mind, this promotion would help to fulfill the need of feeling more important. She believes that if she doesn't get this position, she is not important and that her efforts at her job go unnoticed by everyone,.

2. Ask yourself what you believe and what you need to do to fulfill that need/belief.

3. Then ask yourself "If that is true, then..."

4. Behave based on that belief.

5. Identify the results of your behavior.

6. Ask, "Will this behavior meet my need over time?"

7. If the feedback is that the behavior will not meet the need over time, it is a faulty belief and may need to be changed or altered.

Through these simple steps, which become habit over time, you will effectively create new healthy beliefs, and shrink the chaos.

Secrets

Do you have secrets? Those of you reading this can likely say yes. From childhood we've always had those close friends that swore us to secrecy, and a wrath upon your soul if you told their secret! Thinking of these times brings a comfortable, warm and close feeling with the friendships we built and trusted in enough to share our secrets. We reminisce about these friendships with our fun secrets that we spent hours giggling about with positive, fond memories.

There are some secrets however, that do not bring such positive, fond memories. These secrets can (and usually do) create chaos in our lives. These secrets tend to be damaging and breeds distrust over the course of our lives. Those that have these kinds of secrets and who may be reading this post may be getting that uneasy heaviness in their stomachs all the way to their core through every fiber of their beings. As the years pass, the chaos increases, and likely it isn't always evident that there is a correlation between these secrets and increased chaos.

I had a beautiful moment in my first counseling session today. I have a client and we will call her, The Traveler. I have worked with The Traveler for about three months. Today, The Traveler told me she had disclosed her biggest and darkest secret to her significant other over the last week. When we talk about her biggest and darkest secret, it is the type that nightmares can be built on. The distrust this client has built over the years has been overreaching into all of her relationships. The Traveler felt it was necessary for her significant other to know everything so that she could understand The Traveler better with the mood shifts and the guarded behaviors. This would also lead to more empathy from The Traveler's significant other. The Traveler came away from this experience with another benefit; she was able to shrink the chaos that this burden was causing her.

The realization of this session is another way to help shrink the chaos. I implore anyone who is holding any damaging secrets inside to go to someone you trust, or seek counseling/therapy and release this cancer of the soul. Find a way through sharing these secrets to...shrink the chaos.

Inside Out

I often find myself in the conundrum of feeling inside out. Just like the movie, "Inside Out", that feeling of being conflicted with what the world is throwing at me, and what I have control on. How do you see your world, your existence? Are you inside out?

In my years of working with hundreds of clients, I have seen both ends of this spectrum played out marvelously. I, myself wasn't truly aware of where I was on this spectrum initially, because it isn't one of those things that a person brings to the forefront of their mind on a regular basis. It was only working with people that I learned exactly how I viewed my world.

There is a client I see and we will call her Short-Round. Working with Short-Round over a three and a half year span of time allowed me to see where she is on this spectrum, and solidify where I am on the spectrum. Short-Round is a single mother of two and just barely thirty, in a constant financial struggle, and has constant relational struggles. You see, Short-Round views her world very externally and is in a constant state of chaos.

In virtually every session with Short-Round, she states how she had a plan for life when she was barely twenty and things didn't go according to plan and now there is no use trying to do anything to change that. She is constantly depressed and all her actions are for everyone else in her life but her. She seeks the validation from people who have been critical of her all her life and she is never getting that validation and continues to try harder to hopefully, magically obtain that validation she so desperately wants. She has difficulty in romantic relationships because she doesn't view herself as good enough because obviously the fathers of her children didn't want her. She is so afraid that she is "cursed" because of these failed relationships that she won't allow anyone in and more often than not uses the phrase "I can't let them in". These are all examples of viewing the world externally, hoping something will change, but doing nothing to change it herself.

Internal viewpoints are of course the opposite. When I see an area of my life that I think is less than adequate or acceptable, or that makes me feel downright miserable, I ask myself "what control do I have in this situation". 99% of the time, I have control to alter the situation at hand, if not change it all together. I often have an extreme example I share with my clients to illustrate the point of where control lies in a person; their accountability if you will.

If I am in a crosswalk and I have the little man saying it's my turn to cross I start walking, but I am not looking to either side because it's my rightful turn. All of a sudden a bus hits me dead on as if I had a target painted on me. Now, assuming I survived (I mean it's a bus after all), I could blame that bus for running the red light and hitting me. But did I not have some accountability? I didn't look both ways before I decided to cross and therefore I have some of the accountability for being hit. I could have exercised control in that situation and looked as I was crossing and noticed that said bus wasn't slowing down and stopped before it could hit me. This is not to say that there are things that are 100% out of our control. I could be sitting in my living room (typing this exact blog post) and a meteorite slams through my roof and kills me instantly. I can honestly say in that moment, I had absolutely no control or accountability.

Many times in my life I have defaulted to the external, as I'm sure we all have. Some examples of mine are, "All the red lights are out to get me", "Why do bad things always happen to me", etc. Those of you reading are likely guilty of the same or similar sayings as negative things happen in life. It is important to learn to live as internally as possible and realize that we all have more control in our everyday situations than we realize, and the quicker we accept that, the easier and more positive life will be for us. This type of thinking and approach to life will help to shrink the chaos in your life.

Happines, Fulfillment, ...Freedom.

The true measure of success and happiness isn't what you have, what you do, but the journey you took to get there. Anyone can make a substantial amount of money and have more "friends" than can be counted, but at the end of the day, they are alone and feel poor. Sure, monetarily they are on top, but at the cost of their happiness, fulfillment and sense of freedom.

As the world progresses faster into the future, there are many amazing inventions. Having the newest and fastest (sometimes most expensive) gadgets somehow gives us a sense of achievement. Unfortunately, that feeling of achievement is only short lived. What price is actually paid to have the newest and most expensive? Happiness, fulfillment and freedom.

Happiness is more than a mere emotion; it is a state of mind and a state of being. Too often there are those who are hopelessly waiting for that magic moment when they will all of a sudden be happy. Unfortunately, if those who are waiting continue to live in that belief, they will be waiting a long, long time.

Happiness is something that needs to be sought and recognized in the day to day events and interactions. It isn't always an earth shattering moment; its subtleties sometimes barely perceptible. So if you are having difficulty feeling happy, slow down and look at what is right in front of you. Stop being so stubborn and seeing only through tunnel vision; challenge your deepest core beliefs and shrink the chaos.

1. Stop, slow down and see things that on a normal day you would go by and never notice.
2. Find your happiness, don't wait for it to find you.
3. Realize you control your happiness.
4. You are deserving of happiness and you need to seek it.
5. Look at and list all the positives in your life, and stop focusing on the negative.

Only through this opening of your mind and self-exploration can you achieve happiness, fulfillment, ...freedom.