To train your brain to stop fear responses, practice mindfulness, deep breathing, and relaxation to calm your body, while gradually facing fears through controlled exposure (exposure therapy) to reprogram your amygdala, using cognitive techniques like challenging negative thoughts and reframing fear as excitement to build confidence and safety in your brain's threat assessment. Consistently practicing these methods, even when calm, helps retrain your neural pathways to respond more calmly to perceived threats.
Stay where you are and let yourself feel the fear, even though it will be uncomfortable. Place the palm of your hand on your stomach and breathe slowly and deeply. The aim is to get your mind get used to coping with panic, which takes away the fear of feeling panicky.
How can I manage fear and anxiety?
A very effective breathing exercise to use when you feel overwhelmed is to take a big deep quick inhale, and then a long slow exhale, and repeat several times. This will help signal to your brain that there is no danger or threat, and can start to bring you back into a more regulated state.
Physical distance (proximity) is one of the most basic stimulus cues to trigger fear. (A) Different adaptive types of fear behaviors can be elicited as a function of distance, ranging from freezing to fleeing to defensive attack.
The 3-3-3 rule is a simple grounding technique for anxiety that brings you to the present moment by engaging your senses: 1) Name three things you can see, 2) Name three sounds you can hear, and 3) Move three parts of your body (like wiggling fingers/toes, rolling shoulders). This helps shift focus from overwhelming thoughts to your immediate environment, offering quick relief during panic or stress.
The universal trigger for fear is the threat of harm, real or imagined. This threat can be for our physical, emotional or psychological well-being. While there are certain things that trigger fear in most of us, we can learn to become afraid of nearly anything.
Practice mindfulness.
Mindfulness trains your mind's attention to be more present without drifting into concerns about the past or future. This mindset helps you not to overreact to fearful thoughts and reduce any stress, depression, or anxiety that accompanies them.
In addition to behavioral tools, healthy eating, and lifestyle choices, drinking tea can also help with stress and anxiety relief.
Once a fear response is locked in one's brain, it resists new information and wants to reinforce itself. Retraining an anxious brain requires giving the limbic system new information. Ways to reduce anxiety include approaching fearful situations in small increments and examining fearful thoughts.
Fight, flight, freeze, and fawn are a broader collection of natural bodily reactions to stressful, frightening, or dangerous events. This sympathetic nervous system response dates back to our ancestors coming face-to-face with dangerous animals.
The difference is that fear is related to the presence, or imminent presence, of the aversive stimulus, while anxiety is considered the more protracted state produced by a sustained expectation that the aversive event is likely to occur.
Use Visualisation and Positive Affirmations
Visualisation rewires your brain to focus on courage rather than fear. Imagine yourself handling stressful situations calmly. Picture success vividly—the more you do this, the more your subconscious mind believes it's possible.
Lists vary, but often include the top 10 plus fears like public speaking, germs, darkness, thunder/lightning, driving, illness, death, being alone, failure, and certain animals/insects.
Fear can be innate or learned. Examples of innate fear include fears that are triggered by predators, pain, heights, rapidly approaching objects, and ancestral threats such as snakes and spiders.
Steps to help you overcome your fears
These foods help to lower cortisol levels in the body, which can help reduce feeling stressed.
Symptoms
Fear is experienced in your mind, but it triggers a strong physical reaction in your body. As soon as you recognize fear, your amygdala (small organ in the middle of your brain) goes to work. It alerts your nervous system, which sets your body's fear response into motion.
1. Social Phobia: Fear of Social Interactions. Also known as Social Anxiety Disorder, social phobias are by far the most common fear or phobia our Talkspace therapists see in their clients.
Fear is a natural emotion we often feel when faced with danger and uncertainty. For believers in Christ, fear can mean “face everything and rise.” 2 Timothy 1:7 says, “For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.” 🙏
Chamomile: Often consumed in tea, chamomile aids in relaxation due to an antioxidant known as apigenin, which binds with specific receptors in the brain to decrease anxiety.
The rule is simple: Commit to doing the task for just five minutes. That's it. Once you get over the initial resistance and begin, even if only briefly, something shifts. Momentum builds, anxiety decreases, and your brain transitions from avoidance to engagement.
What to avoid saying to someone with anxiety?