How to Quickly Get Out of Fear Mode
Fear is a response to a threat.
A threat may be real and immediate, such as a person coming out of the bushes at you with a machete.
In our modern world, these real, immediate threats are rare.
The source of most of the fears we experience is invented in our minds.
For example, while walking in a dark part of the city by some bushes, you may imagine someone coming at you with a machete.
Fear is the feeling we get as a result of the physical response to these real or imagined threats.
So long as we tell ourselves fear stories, we think fear is a real thing, something to run away from. We tend to react by telling ourselves more stories.
Here is a mundane example.
My husband was late coming home one night when he was off cycling. A torrential rain had started. I started worrying about him.
What could happen in the dark, in the pouring rain? He could have skidded and fallen, injuring himself. Maybe he'd forgotten to bring his lights and he'd been struck by a car. One fear story led to another.
The sense of anxiety I was manufacturing was the precursor to fear.
I was creating it myself from an anomaly (late husband) and some evidence (rainstorm).
I told myself that this was a silly daydream I had created, but a part of me still thought of it as a possibility. So, my emotional state was one of concern.
The mind isn't able to get itself out of fear mode all by itself.
That's because fear is physiological.
When you feel fear, the autonomic nervous system kicks in by elevating the heart rate, dilating blood vessels, and increasing breathing rate.
The way to get out of fear is to change your physiological response.
Of all the things the autonomic nervous system does, there is one thing that we can control.
The breath.
Breathing is both consciously and unconsciously controlled. When we change our physiology, we change how we feel.
The breath is a lever to do that.
We breathe differently in a fearful state than in a calm, resting state. This happens automatically and unconsciously.
Knowing this, we can intentionally use it to our benefit.
So, to change from fear mode to calm, we mimic what the body does when it is calm. And we even have a built-in mechanism that we do without thinking to calm ourselves down.
The sigh.
We sigh automatically when we feel a pent-up sense of anxiety or sadness.
This is a way of stimulating the part of the autonomic nervous system that causes relaxation. (It’s called the parasympathetic nervous system).
What the sigh does is gives us a long, slow out-breath. The out-breath is what stimulates the mechanism to relax.
So, if you are feeling anxious, worried, stressed or fearful, sigh.
Sigh intentionally. Let yourself breathe out long and slow.
Take charge of your physiology with the magic of breath.