Receiving a diagnosis of any serious illness can strike fear into the hearts of the bravest of the brave.
But when we’re overwhelmed by fear, we’re not at our best – we can’t think straight, we’re not really present, and we make bad decisions.
Watch my video to discover three tricks that you can use to stop fear in its tracks as soon as it arises.
If you want to learn more about EFT, here’s two great places to start:
- Beginner’s Guide to Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT)
- What Is Tapping And How Can I Start Using It?
And if you know of anyone who would benefit from this video, please share it with them.
Video Transcript
The word “cancer” or diagnosis of any serious illness can be enough to strike fear into the hearts of the bravest of the brave.
But when we’re in fear, we’re not functioning at our best, so today I want to share with you three tricks that you can use to deal with fear as it arises.
Hi, I’m Nikki, the Truth Fairy from ChoosingDifferently.com and I’m here to help you create a life of YOUR choosing.
So when we’re overwhelmed with fear we can’t think straight, we’re not present in our lives and it’s really hard to make good decisions.
So finding ways to deal with fear as it happens can be really powerful in helping you cope with whatever’s going on in your life.
Distract yourself
The first trick that I like to use to deal with fear is what I like to describe as distraction – find something else to focus on – and my favourite way to do this is to find something to appreciate, something to be grateful for, something to feel good about.
Basically finding something that brings up a strong positive emotion.
It doesn’t matter how big or how small, by feeling that positive emotion for a brief moment you’re not feeling the fear.
Because just like I mentioned in a previous video, you can’t be in fight-or-flight and rest-and-repair, similarly, you can’t feel fear and feel love or appreciation or gratitude at the same time.
So find anything, however small, to focus on that makes you feel good.
Maybe it’s something like a favourite memento, like my little frog here.
And just for a moment focus on it and think “I really like this frog, I like how green it is, I like how he feels”.
And as that good feeling moves through you, for a brief moment you’ve given yourself a break from fear.
And when you stop appreciating something, the fear may come back straightaway but you’ve released its really strong grip on you.
Transform fear
The second trick that I like to use is to transform fear.
So when you’re feeling fear, maybe it’s because of a past experience that it reminds you of that’s bringing up those same experiences, making you fearful.
Maybe it’s what thoughts are running through your head that are amplifying that fear.
And one of my favourite ways to transform really strong emotions like this is something called EFT or Emotional Freedom Technique.
And basically, you tap on energy points on the meridians in your body to help release some of the strong emotions that are going through you.
And it allows you to reduce the intensity of that fear.
I’ll put a link in the description of this video to some resources on EFT, but it’s been a really powerful way for me to release some unpleasant emotions when they’ve just been too much for me to deal with.
Embrace fear
The third approach that I like to use is to actually accept and embrace the feeling.
And I use this one when the previous two don’t work.
I might distract myself but it comes back.
I do some work to transform it but it’s still not entirely gone.
And sometimes that’s because we need to actually fully embrace the experience and it can be quite hard to do this.
My favourite way to do this is something that I called “feel the feelings” and it was inspired by the work of Lola Jones and Divine Openings.
And it’s a four-step process.
Step 1
So the first step is to actually experience the feeling in your body.
Where is it in your body? What colour is it? What shape is it?
You’re just using your imagination to identify the feeling in whatever way suits you, to figure out where it is and how it feels to you.
Step 2
Once you’ve identified it then you allow it to get bigger, and this can be really hard with something like fear that you don’t want to feel.
But part of the issue is when we push negative emotions away they aren’t able to shift.
We aren’t able to experience them fully and they get stuck and we just end up repeating the same emotion over and over.
So by feeling that feeling and then allowing it to get bigger we’re accepting it.
It’s a way of symbolically accepting that feeling into ourselves.
And we allow it to grow, as big as you can but preferably until it’s at least as big as you, if you can handle that.
Just let it grow it as much as you can manage.
Step 3
And the third step is to breathe, through that feeling.
So whatever shape or colour or size or location, you’ve allowed it to get bigger, start breathing through that experience.
By breathing through that experience you’re starting to relax your body a little bit which allows you to accept and embrace that feeling and it’s somehow not quite as overwhelming as it was.
Step 4
The fourth step is to actually understand that this emotion is just simply an experience that you’re having or as I like to describe it, it’s “pure vibration”.
It’s an energy wave, it’s an emotional wave, it’s a physical, hormonal wave – however you want to see it – moving through you.
And that little bit of objectivity, that little bit of distancing yourself from that experience sometimes is all it needs in combination with the previous three steps to shift that feeling and to release that fear.
Your turn
So that’s three different tricks that you can use when fear arises to deal with it – distract, transform and accept.
I hope you found that video useful.
And now I’d love to hear from you.
What are your favourite ways to deal with fear when it arises? What’s been most effective for you?
Let me know in the comments below.
And catch my next video to continue activating your body’s natural ability to heal.
