How to Stop Fear From Turning into Anxiety
You may be reading the title of this blog and thinking: fear and anxiety… what’s the difference?! It seems like these two experiences are interchangeable and basically describe the same feeling. Separating them can actually provide us with a moment of pause before full blown anxiety sets in.
Pain vs Suffering
Did you ever notice that when a fear enters your orbit there’s a moment of discomfort. Think about the example of if a friend jumps out from behind a door and scares you. You have that momentary discomfort, or pain, of being afraid, but then it goes away. Unless it doesn’t. If every time we encounter a door we continue to fear that we will be scared again, the pain is prolonged and becomes suffering. It’s no longer contained to one single experience, and instead it projected onto any possible future experiences. Enter suffering: prolonged pain.
Separating the Two
So how can we use this info to decrease anxiety? If we’re able to identify the ways pain and suffering show up differently, we can call them out for what they are and take the wind out of suffering’s sails.
Some refer to these two experiences as First Fear (pain/fear) and Second Fear (suffering/anxiety). First Fear is responding to a present stimulus and saying “woah, that was scary and uncomfortable.” Second Fear is afraid of the future and is saying “What if I get scared again? How can I ever go near doors or my friend again? What if I never feel trusting of doors or my friend?” One noticeable difference is the focus on the present vs the focus on the future. As we’ve learned about tolerating uncertainty, we are able to move on from second fear once we realize it has entered that zone. We can pull back to acknowledging the first fear, that it’s possible to get into second fear, but maybe we don’t have to because first fear will fade on its on just like it would if something scary happened again.
This is another version of tolerating uncertainty and letting ourselves know that we can handle whatever comes up, because we have before. The suffering that comes with anxiety is doing nothing more for us than making us uncomfortable now.
If you need help with this, schedule a consultation! It can be hard to separate these two on our own and sometimes support can make all the difference.
Tina Leboffe, LPC, CCATP, ADHD-CCSP
*Please note that this blog is for your information only and does not constitute clinical advice or establish a client-counselor relationship.