If you want to overcome fear, you need courage.
The word courage derives from Middle English corage, from the French coer (heart), from the Latin cor (heart). And without Heart, you don’t get to courage.
Smarts, education, and social intelligence are excellent, and important, but you really can’t get anywhere, or overcome fear, without courage. And Heart is where fear is re-made into courage.
Heart takes your fear and in return shows you your capacity to be unimaginably brave. Brave enough to do or deal with whatever terrifies you. Brave enough to do or stand up for what’s right. Brave enough to simply move forward and overcome fear.
Heart faces down fear with hope.
When things are dark or difficult, Heart is your source of hope. Hope won’t take away the discomfort or pain, but it’s hope that inspires perseverance when you need to just keep going.
Brain has no aptitude for hope, and brain derides what it cannot do. To brain, hope is irrational, illogical, naïve, and pointless. Without Heart and its hopefulness, this is the path to cynicism and loss of motivation. (Deep hopelessness may be a sign of illness requiring professional help.)
In many ways, it’s easier to be cynical, where there’s no point in daring to aspire. Holding on to hope is harder, as it comes with a side of being willing to care and trying to get what you want, despite obstacles. To brain, obstacles are evidence that life is basically unfair. Heart knows obstacles are inevitable but not insurmountable, and treats them as choice points.
Brain then, left to its own devices, gets stuck at life’s hardest parts, and may keep you from even embarking on something that promises to be tough (but good!). This is too scary, too hard, too dangerous, it won’t work out. That’s brain doing its job trying to protect you. But that won’t help you overcome fear
Sometimes, though, you need to leap.
Heart doesn’t deny things are tough, or abandon critical thinking. Rather, Heart affirms good still exists, even as bad does too. Heart doesn’t keep trying the same ineffective things over and over – though brain will, and then catalogue each trial as evidence this is a lost cause.
Hope often means making a change, letting go, and sometimes even accepting defeat. It’s hopelessness that gets mired in the hard things. Heart knows there is always hope, even if it is sometimes hidden from view.
Heart knows that to overcome fear you need connection.
Connecting to the wider world is not easy to do during tough times, especially if you’re only listening to your brain. Heart knows connection is crucial, though, and reaches out rather than isolates.
Being in close relationships helps like nothing else when it comes to coping with difficult things. (Though you do have to be willing to trust a relationship to do so.) Relationships can sustain you while circumstances are going all to hell.
Also powerful is the larger sense of connection to community, humanity, the universe. Brain may balk, but Heart understands big-picture interconnection, and the power of claiming your place within it.
Heart reduces fear by having no attachment to a particular outcome.
A great way to make a bad situation worse is to be attached to one particular outcome. This is a brain specialty. Brain is outcome obsessed, and always latches on to the one way things must turn out. Hence brain lives in constant fear of the that one outcome not happening.
Heart, though, is not especially interested in the subject of outcomes. It may have a preference for an end result, but is never desperate for or invested in a specific one. Heart proceeds more slowly than brain, and is in it for the long haul. Heart takes a more expansive view, and sees many potential paths.
And thank goodness for that. Attachment to a particular outcome is one of the major causes of chronic emotional stress, as my patients prove to me every day. I hear from athletes distraught over a loss and unable to shake it, executives despairing over one job offer that went to someone else, students obsessed over the only college that they’ll be happy at.
When you learn to tap into Heart, you can see valid alternative pathways to meeting the deep inner longings for achievement, recognition, and happiness—which are not conditional on winning every game, getting that job, or getting accepted to that school. Not getting the hoped-for outcome may be disappointing, but it won’t flatten you.
To overcome fear, Heart looks for the good in every situation.
I had a patient who found a lump in her breast while taking a shower. When she told me what she did next, I knew for sure she’d really absorbed our talks about Heart: She decided to stay and relax in the shower for a while, letting her skin enjoy the soothing warm water.
Even when things are bad, one way you get through is by enjoying what is good anyway. Heart knows it’s okay to do that. When everything has gone to hell, you might still be able to enjoy simple pleasures, like a coffee break, a favorite song – or a long shower.
Another patient caregiving for his elderly father described to me the moments of joy he felt walking in the garden with his dad, and spotting a bunch of butterflies flitting around one particular flower-covered bush.
Discovering and appreciating any good things puts you in Heart. When you can’t find them, shifting into Heart will allow you to. When I need an assist with this, I have a phrase I repeat to myself to find my focus: Take in the good.
Heart knows that asking for help is a good way to overcome fear.
When you’re enduring difficulties, ask for or accept help. If this advice makes you balk, you’re definitely in brain. If asking for help is hard, ask anyway: it will put you directly in touch with Heart.
Ours is a culture that glorifies the gritty, resilient, independent individual, and the word “help” has become a pejorative. We think if we ask for help we’ll be seen as inadequate, incapable or otherwise inferior. We think we’ll annoy the person we’re asking, and that we’ll be an inconvenience or a burden.
I had one patient who refused to go see a professor for help – a professor with office hours set up specifically for students seeking help – for fear of being an annoyance. Another refused to call a mentor for advice on switching from fulltime to freelance – a mentor who’d sent work her way before. One patient (okay, many patients) apologized for calling me – her therapist– for assistance.
The one thing that could make the biggest difference in trying times is the one thing the brain-first reflexively avoid.
As a bonus: when you ask for help, you usually get it. I find that most people want to help, and feel good about being asked. I think it’s the acknowledgment that they have something important to give.
Heart reduces fear by offering self-kindness.
When you’re having a tough time, whether it’s brief and annoying (I can’t find my &^% glasses again!) or a bigger trauma (like undergoing cancer treatment), remember to be kind to yourself.
You’re an okay person, even if you lost your glasses. Even if your body grew a tumor. Even if you have to rely on others to take care of you while you deal with the &$^ tumor. Heart knows this, and will remind you.
Practicing self-kindness might mean any kind of self-care, but I’m not satisfied with the take-time-for-a-bubble bath or go-for-a-run approach. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
Accessing Heart, though, means a more fundamental commitment to be gentle with yourself. Heart is a no-judgment zone, most of all for someone going through something.
Heartfelt wishes,
Amy
Photo credit: StockSnap
