Manage your fears | The RIA method

In the next article we want to talk to you about controlling your fears. Fear is something destructive that, although it exists to keep us alert to possible dangers, often has less beneficial consequences. The fear to speak in public, to a first appointment to a job interview, and many other situations in which fear is our worst enemy because it usually blocks us.

So the next time you have to control your fears, you should follow the advice of fear researcher Mary Poffenroth and her RIA method that we explain below.

RIA method to manage your fears

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control your fears

When we talk about controlling your fears We do not always refer to the sensation that can be had when being on the edge of a precipice or in front of a wild beast. Researcher Poffenroth explains in her research that fear occurs basically in two ways; real and fictional fear. The real fear comes from a real threat, a threat to your life, as we said before, a precipice, a wild beast threatening us, a thief who sneaks into your house ... fear is real because danger is too.

However, fictitious fear, although based on reality, has a large percentage of inventiveness, which comes from your mind; fear that you do not get all the words consistently in the speech of your wedding, or in an important meeting of work, fear that your partner will leave you for another person, etc. This type of fear, moreover, can also be divided into two other categories: the fear of not being able and the fear of not being in control. How you feel? Overwhelmed? ¿ Stressed ? Be unable? These words only describe your fear.

The problem is that the emotional center of your brain, the amygdala, tends to react in the same way to real fears as opposed to fictitious ones. With this problem, you should know that if you spend your days stressed or insecure, with fictitious fears, you are putting your body in a constant alert situation. That is what Poffenroth is based on when he exposes:

"How can we change our story with our fictitious fears so they do not shoot the amygdala so much and we are not in this total stress response?"

RIA method

The initials of the RIA method to control your fears correspond to: Recognize, Identify and Stop. In other words; Recognize what your fear is, identify it and then find a way to stop it. It seems simple but it takes some practice.

control your fears 1

Recognize: Learn to know yourself. Are you heart racing? Do you sweat excessively? Do you have a dry mouth or some digestive discomfort? All these, and some more, are clear symptoms of a response to fear and recognize it is the first step to know that this situation, whatever it is, causes you fear.

Identify: Poffenroth suggests "give it a name to identify it". Naming fear can give you some power over it. By identifying it you can also know if it is a real or fictitious fear, we have already explained the difference.

"When you name fear, the simple act of identifying that something is happening can be enough to calm it down and limit the fear response itself"

"It also makes us not feel so alone in the face of fear. We are human and we must understand that these types of fears are the result of the work of our brain "

Tackle: Once you've got the first two steps, and if you still feel that fear, it's time to face him. Maybe it is the most difficult of the steps but the one that will help you the most. If you have concluded that your fear has a real origin, at this point you should take measures to protect yourself depending on the nature of that fear. However, if the fear has a fictitious origin, there are a series of strategies to fight it and overcome it successfully.

One of those strategies to control your fears is to breathe for 4 seconds, keeping the air in those 4 seconds, then exhale for 4 more seconds and repeat the process as necessary to get your body physically calm.

Once relaxed , try to get to the root of that fear to configure a tailored response. For example, if your fear is that your partner abandons you, talk to her about that fear. If your fear is to speak in public, in any situation, think: what is it but what could happen? You will probably realize that there is nothing serious enough to let that fear progress.

Surely you will come up with concrete answers to each type of fear, knowing how you know yourself. If your problem is that you can not get to fulfill all the tasks you have, make a list of priorities and you can know that the important thing, you can postpone some and even delegate others. In any case, they will free you from the stress and the feeling of not reaching everything.

Of all this that we have explained in this article, the most important and we want you to remember is that if you pretend that your fear does not exist, your body will continue to fight against it, whether you are aware or not and that can lead to serious problems of health. Put remedy with the RIA method to control your fears!


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