Free Yourself from Fears

Praise for

Free Yourself From Fears

“It has been said that the two great emotions are love and fear, and that they form the foundation for all others. Fear tends to be the source of most of the difficult feelings we experience.

Learning to deal with fear is thus one of the most important life skills a person can learn.

In
Free Yourself From Fears
Joseph O'Connor provides a wealth of knowledge and tools to help people better understand their fears and transform them into positive actions. As with his previous books, Joseph demonstrates his great gift for presenting rich and complex knowledge in a form that is both practical and easy to understand.

I highly recommend this book for anyone who wants to move more easily and confidently through life.”

ROBERT DILTS, AUTHOR OF
FROM COACH TO AWAKENER

&
CHANGING BELIEF SYSTEMS WITH NLP

“This book is an excellent example of Joseph O’Connor's elegant, enriched writing style and conveys pertinent, powerful learning for dealing with the fears of the volatile world in which we live today.”

SUE KNIGHT, AUTHOR OF
NLP AT WORK

“With uncommon knowledge and authority,
Free Yourself From
Fears
gives us a fresh view on our everyday anxieties. In plain language O'Connor combines the analytical with the intuitive and does it with heart. Therapists, managers and communicators in all fields will use his practical exercises for dealing with fear for years to come.”

MICHAEL COLGRASS, PULITZER PRIZE-WINNING COMPOSER AND

NLP TRAINER

Free Yourself From

Fears

To Andrea

Free Yourself From

Fears

Overcoming Anxiety and

Living Without Worry

Joseph O’Connor

First published by

Nicholas Brealey Publishing in 2005

3–5 Spafield Street

100 City Hall Plaza, Suite 501

Clerkenwell, London

Boston

EC1R 4QB, UK

MA 02108, USA

Tel: +44 (0)20 7239 0360

Tel: (888) BREALEY

Fax: +44 (0)20 7239 0370

Fax: (617) 523 3708

http://www.nbrealey-books.com

http://www.lambentdobrasil.com

© Joseph O’Connor 2005

The right of Joseph O’Connor to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

ISBN 1-85788-360-8

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording and/or otherwise without the prior written permission of the publishers.

This book may not be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise disposed of by way of trade in any form, binding or cover other than that in which it is published, without the prior consent of the publishers.

Printed in Finland by WS Bookwell.

Contents

PART I OUR EXPERIENCE OF FEAR

7

The Nine Laws of Fear

8

1

WHAT IS FEAR?

9

The two elements of fear

10

The NLP approach to fear

15

The physiology of fear

17

2

FEAR—FRIEND OR FOE?

21

Positive intention

22

Authentic fear

23

Unreal fear

24

Types of unreal fear

25

Social reactions to fears

30

How
not
to deal with fear

30

Measure your fears

33

3

LEARNING AND UNLEARNING FEAR

35

How we learn unreal fears

37

Children’s fears

38

Enjoyable fear

44

Unlearning fear

48

4

THE LANGUAGE OF FEAR

50

Talking yourself into fear

50

Telling other people

52

Affirmations

52

Is fear compulsory?

53

Our relationship with fear

54

Metaphor

57

PART II UNREAL FEAR—FEAR AS FOE

61

5

FEAR IN TIME

63

The circles test

64

Unreal fear in the past

65

Fears of the future

69

Worry

71

6

COMMON FEARS THAT HOLD US HOSTAGE

73

Fear of flying

74

Fear of authority

76

Fear of success

80

Fear of dentists and doctors

82

Fear of heights

82

Fear of elevators

83

Fear of death

83

7

UNQUIET TIMES AND TURBULENT MINDS

86

Dangerous places

86

Personal safety

87

Laws and safety

87

Danger and the media

89

Social anxiety and stress

90

8

SOCIAL FEARS

93

Change

93

Time pressure

94

Appearances

96

Fear of the future

99

Information 101

Choice

103

9

THE PRESSURE TO ACHIEVE: THE PRICE OF PERFECTIONISM

107

Self-sabotage

108

Excuses

109

Other people’s opinions

109

Blame

110

Beliefs

113

Failure and feedback

115

Fear of failure

116

Performance anxiety

118

Metaphors of failure

121

10

DEALING WITH CHANGE: THE UNCERTAIN FUTURE

124

Changes with no choice

125

The changes we choose

126

External and internal change

126

Tolerance of change

127

Major changes

128

Loss

130

Habits

132

Change and resources

133

Rationalization and procrastination

135

The fear cycle

136

Transition

138

PART III AUTHENTIC FEAR—FEAR AS FRIEND

143

The Nine Laws of Safety

144

11

FEAR AS A SIGN TO TAKE ACTION

145

You need authentic fear

147

The Darwin awards

148

12

How We Assess SAFETY AND RISK

150

How do you know you feel safe?

150

Assume risk or assume safety?

151

What do you need to feel safe?

152

Risk 157

13

ACTING ON FEAR: WHEN TO HEED THE WARNING

163

Warning signals

164

Denying fear

165

Predicting violence

166

Danger signals

168

The attribution error

170

14

TRUST AND INTUITION: YOUR TWO GUIDES

173

Level of trust

173

Three types of trust

175

Reference experiences

179

Learning from experience

182

Intuition

185

PART IV FINDING FREEDOM—TECHNIQUES TO OVERCOME

YOUR FEARS

195

15

THE VALUE BEHIND THE FEAR

197

The value under the fear

198

Self-esteem

199

The value of respect

201

Fear of looking stupid

202

Fear of commitment

204

16

DEALING WITH FEAR IN THE BODY

208

Controlling your feeling of fear

208

Controlling fear through breathing

209

Controlling fear through feeling

210

Controlling fear through relaxation

211

17

DEALING WITH FEAR IN THE MIND

215

How does this work in practice?

215

Types of resources

220

18

FREEDOM FROM SOCIAL ANXIETY

224

The Hydra of social fears

224

Beheading the Hydra

225

Life in the present moment

227

19

EMOTIONAL FREEDOM: HERE AND NOW

228

Opening doors

230

Courage

230

Appendix I: Thinking about Thinking with NLP

233

Appendix II: Summary of Skills for Freedom 237

References

241

Bibliography

246

About the author

247

ON THE AFTERNOON OF SEPTEMBER 11TH, 2001, I was in England, sitting in a comfortable chair reading the paper. Suddenly my daughter ran into the room, saying she had heard on the radio that the World Trade Center in New York had collapsed. This sounded so strange, I thought she must have made a mistake, and I turned on the television to see what was happening.

The television was full of images that are now part of the nightmares of our collective unconscious. The television endlessly replayed the horrifying airplane crashes, ensuring that they were etched indelibly on everyone’s minds. I felt like I was inside a bad dream, or had entered a parallel universe where the rules of life did not apply any more. It was unbelievable; I must have stared at the television for half an hour, unable to leave, and I was afraid. Then I went away and cried.

The next day I woke up hoping that it really had been a bad dream. It felt like one, one of those times when you wake up feeling relief that of course it was just a dream, how could it have seemed so convincing. And yet the tragedy really happened. For the next couple of days, life was not quite as solid as usual. I felt unreal, as if my head were slightly detached from my body. I needed a little extra concentration to understand what people were saying to me, and a lot of what people said to me didn’t seem to make sense. I was dissociated, suffering from mild shock.

After a week, I looked back on the experience and wondered. How many times did the television news show those ghastly pictures of the World Trade Center towers collapsing? How many times did the media replay that appalling, yet mesmerizing, video of the second plane scything into the tower and burying itself deep in the structure like some huge knife? I don’t know. I decided not to watch the FREE YOURSELF FROM FEARS

collapse of the towers again on the news, and one viewing of the video was enough for me. I will not forget it. This is how fears are made. With the best of intentions, and probably feeling that they had no choice, the news media ground these images into our collective psyche like grit deep into an open wound, with a thoroughness that made them impossible to forget.

A traumatic image repeated so many times can burn its way into the mind and have an effect long after the rubble has been cleared away. The constant replaying ensured that we all took the image of the toppled towers into the future with us and this image said: you are not as secure as you thought you were. Suddenly, the world was less safe.

Those events were real and terrible, and we don’t want to forget them. The consequences will follow us far into the future. Yet
how
we remember them is important. The people who flew the airplanes and those who prepared them to do so killed thousands of people and destroyed buildings. It would be worse if they destroyed our peace of mind too.

Every innocent passenger in those airplanes and every innocent person killed in the attacks is a personal tragedy, a thread in the whole ghastly tapestry of terror, each one immediate and appalling.

The nature of what happened made many people fearful of flying (demand for air travel dropped dramatically after September 11th; some airline companies collapsed, nearly all had difficulties). It made us fearful of tall buildings (the price of high-rise apartments dropped radically). It made some people afraid of Muslims. And many must have looked at their children sleeping and wondered what sort of world they would inherit.