What Happens When We Feel Fear and How to Overcome It

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Imagine for a second that you have to give an important presentation. This presentation can make or break you. Your heart is racing, you’re sweating, and you’re completely scared of giving it. With shaking hands, you give yourself a pep talk while staring in the mirror. In that moment of fear, areas of the brain associated with fear acquisition, fear memory consolidation, and fear expression are activating1. You’re also communicating to other people through your body odor that you are afraid2. With a stronger fear of failure, you are also more likely to have higher anxiety3, more burnout4, and a stronger desire to achieve your goals5.

It’s important to note that fear and anxiety overlap, but are largely different6. People with anxiety tend to generalize fear to situations that are considered safe or novel7,8,9, and this association may be harder to extinguish7. For fear, it doesn’t look like we can be conditioned to fear a situation without us knowing about it10.

The good news is that fear can make us a more open to self-help techniques11. Even just trying to scare someone into changing their behavior, attitude, and intentions is almost always effective12. Here are a few things to do to help manage your fear:

1. Accept the Fear: Particularly with fear of failure, by accepting that the fear is part of the experience, you can find the motivation to keep going. This motivation will help you achieve your goals despite the fear13.
2. Mental Activation: You can rapidly decrease your fear by intentionally activating the prefrontal cortex14. Fear extinction activates with the areas of the brain associated with appraisal and experience, memory15, and the prefrontal cortex, which is executive functions (i.e., planning, decision-making, problem-solving, self-control, and acting with long-term goals in mind)15,16. Other areas are activated to regulate our fear response and cope with the fearful event16. By recognizing that the fear is mental, you have the power to activate these regions and bring the fear down.
3. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy: Cognitive Behavioral Therapy can help with fear. In this type of therapy, the therapist will help you process the fear and teach you effective coping strategies. Skip the mindfulness meditations for fear, though. They seem more suited to treat anxiety disorders17.
4. Exposure Therapy: Even if it’s very brief, exposing yourself repeatedly to the fearful situation will decrease the fear18.
5. Have Courage: Facing our fears requires psychological courage. It takes this strength to face the fear, but having courage is crucial to our well-being19.

Fear is tough, but you are strong and courageous for addressing it.

1.Lange et al. (2015); 2. De Groot and Smeets (2017); 3. Correia and Rosado (2018); 4. Gustafsson, Sagar, and Stenling (2017); 5. Bartels and Ryan (2013); 6. Sylvers, Lilienfel, and LaPraier (2011); 7. Duits et al., (2015); 8. Lissek et al., (2014); 9. Sep, Steenmeijer, and Kennis (2019); 10. Mertens and Engelhand (2020); 11. Gould and Clum (1993); 12. Tannenbaum et al. (2015); 13. Lowe (2019); 14. Klumpers et al., (2010); 15 Fulana et al., (2018); 16. Diekhof, Geier, Falkai, and Gruber (2011); 17. Abreu Costa, D’Alò de Oliveira, Tatton-Ramos, Manfro, and Salum (2018); 18. Siegel, Warren, Jacobson, and Merritt (2018); 19. Putman (1997)