A Coaching Power Tool Created by Jenia Al Sbagh
(Business Coach, JORDAN)
Fear
What’s the fear?
In the dictionary, fear is an unpleasant emotion caused by the belief that someone or something is dangerous, likely to cause pain, or a threat. Fear is a feeling, and every single emotion and memory we experience is based on the fear which is ingrained in our brain, and this fear controls us in all our actions and behaviors.
Fear is a common feeling between humans; every single human has a fear that comes from danger or a threat. Are you aware of the impact of this fear on our lives? How many times do you feel a lot of barriers or roadblocks that prevent you from moving forward? Fear traps us like a bird whose trapped in gage, so how can we open this gage and feel free of fear?
There is a study found by Dr. Joseph LeDoux, that calls for how is fear working in our brain and its influence on emotion.
Much of the new information about the neural circuits underlying emotion stems from experiments on animals. Dr. Joseph LeDoux, a professor of neurobiology at New York University and a pioneer in such research, said that a basic emotion like fear and the circuits that support its expression were highly conserved through evolution. Understanding fear mechanisms in animals, he said, shed light on human fears and may help researchers study other emotions. The work is important because many psychiatric disorders, including anxiety, phobias, post-traumatic stress syndrome, and panic attacks involve malfunctions in the brain’s ability to control fear, he said.
Much of the research is centered on the amygdala, a tiny structure deep in the brain that is crucial for the formation of memories about significant emotional experiences. Damage a rat’s amygdala and it “forgets” to be afraid.
To trace the cell networks involved in fear, Dr. LeDoux and his colleagues first conditioned rats by pairing a loud noise with a mild electric shock to their feet. The rats soon showed fear when they heard the noise without the shock. The researchers presume fear conditioning occurs because the shock modifies how neurons in several brain regions interpret the sound of the stimulus.
In time, however, the rats gradually lose their fear of the sound. Some part of the rat’s brain outside the amygdala seems to control the fear response, Dr. LeDoux said. But it does not eliminate it.
In further experiments, in which researchers damaged a small region of the rat forebrain, the rats not only did not lose their fear but remained afraid much longer, indicating that the frontal region helps control emotional memories forged in the amygdala and may prevent responses that are no longer useful.
This finding explains why a person who hears a lion’s roar in a zoo is not afraid, Dr. LeDoux explained. Input from the frontal area of the brain helps override fear. But problems with this circuit may underlie phobias, he said. Some people respond with fear to a stimulus such as a lion’s roar, even though they know there is no danger. “You can tell phobics all day long, ‘This will not hurt you,’ ” Dr. LeDoux said, “but they don’t believe it.”
While animal experiments have helped scientists trace exact pathways for fear, the question of how emotions such as joy, sadness, anger, or shame are wired in the human brain is more difficult to answer. Psychologists and philosophers have long examined emotions and their impact on behavior, but they have done so by observing what people do and say. Few have ventured into the so-called “black box” of the brain.
Types of fear (2 types):
- Rational fear is the fear real on the human such as the fear from the snake or spider so that fear is to consider rational.
- Irrational fear, this fear is unreal but it’s not like the phobia:
Some examples of the irrational fear:
It doesn’t matter the place of the irrational fear, but we have to identify the fear and the cause of this fear and face it, to overcome it, and not allow it to control our lives. Can you imagine every single decision or action or behavior fear stands behind it? That’s the reason for releasing the fear and becoming free.
Symptoms of fear:
Security
What’s the security?
In the dictionary Security: is freedom from risk, safety.
Freedom from care, anxiety, or doubt; well-founded confidence.
Everyone is seeking security to protect ourselves and to be safe and secure; this emotion comes with the human by nature and instinct
So you have to make a choice and make the decision to leave the lie and live the truth when we finally step into the discomfort—stare at the fear face on—we come out lighter and less fearfully attached.
Anyone who feels any type of fear needs to also feel secure and that he is not alone and that there is somebody beside him and that takes his hand and moves forward with him to face this fear and release it. So choose any person who can trust him/her and share with them this feeling and emotion to help you face your fear like your coach.
Self-application
Fear is a lie and we have to make the choice that we live in this lie and faulty thinking and we face it our fear and live the truth it’s an emotion control our life and leave our life unhappy so let’s make a choice and release the fear everyone deserves to live happily.
Face your fear and tell your fear I will not afraid of you anymore I will face it and release it. And live free of fear.
Coaching application
As a coach how you can help your client to demonstrate his fear and face it and trace it and overcome it?
Here are the steps that you can follow, to help your client in tracing his fear and overcome it.
- make a list of his/her fear
- Identify the fear
- Asking powerful questions identify the lie
- Identify the first time he feels this lie
- Address the belief in the lie
- Face this lie and faulty thinking with the truth
- Let the client choose between the lie and the truth
Reflection
- What is fear?
- How can fear control our lives?
- What the fear in your life?
- How can you release your fear?
- As a coach what you do with your client when he has a fear?