You are a thinking organism which means that when approaching any new situation, you are going to anticipate possible outcomes of the situation. Like any other organism, fear is triggered for a few of the possible universes that you build. Since you are a human, you have the ability to build many different universes in a split second based on any situation you find yourself. When a majority of the universes that you build trigger fear, we call that anxiety.
Let’s look at an example to clarify: walking into a shop. You walk in and see a few customers and the staff. You immediately begin building universes with these people as characters. If you aren’t comfortable with talking to new people, many of the universes that you build will not be pleasant for you.
When you focus on the universes that trigger fear, you tend to create more extreme fears. With enough stimulation of fear, the motor center can be stimulated to cause a stress reaction. However, while you’re in the shop, the stress might manifest itself as a panic attack. Anyone who has ever had a panic attack knows that, once it starts, the more you think about it, the worse it gets.
Fear is a good thing for keeping an organism safe from danger, but in our nearly danger-free society, fear is mainly triggered by uncertainty. This presents a problem since everything in the future is technically unknown, meaning everything can potentially trigger fear. Some people with very bad anxiety experience this feeling, and it is often debilitating. The best way to calm your anxiety is to build different universes. It sounds simple because it is, but that doesn’t mean it will be easy.
When you spend your time building universes that trigger fear, you solidify the connections to the neural cluster of fear. With constant stimulation and solidification, fear is readily accessible by the consciousness when it’s anticipating. If you work on building universes with stories that work out well for you, the fear will not be stimulated as much.
Anyone with anxiety knows that when someone tells you, “It will all be okay,” your first thought is “But what if it isn’t?” You will always be able to create scenarios where things go badly. The more time you spend doing it, the better you become at it.
When it comes to the brain, it’s use it or lose it. Enough time without the stimulation of fear will shift the conscious away from it. As the consciousness shifts away from fear, it will be stimulated less and some of the synapses will be forgotten. Eventually, you will find that building fearless universes becomes easier since your fear is not as accessible by your consciousness.
Even if everything goes wrong, you must trust yourself to solve any problem that comes your way. Anticipating success is your first step, but you cannot give up hope if the first attempt fails.
Calming your anxiety is a matter of shifting your mindset away from your fear but that cannot happen until you address why it was stimulated in the first place. Take some time to think about why your fear is activated and you can discover methods by which to calm it.
Look at yourself from an outside perspective and treat your fears like they are someone else’s. You should be willing to laugh at some of your more ridiculous fears. When we compare ourselves with other people, we can put our own fears in perspective. If another person can do something without fear, so can you. Face your fears and practice active optimism for a calmer, stress-free life.