The Fog of Fear

Hi Friends: I’ve watched as fear has rolled into all of our lives. I’ve watched my gig economy friends suddenly have zero income. I’ve watched my freelancing, speaking, and training friends lose their livelihoods overnight. I’ve watched friends looking for jobs hearing that company after company is instituting a hiring freeze.

I’ve succumbed to the fear myself. I’ve had clients cancel every single one of my upcoming engagements. I’ve lost nearly all the revenue I’d lined up to carry me through cancer treatments and surgery. And even though I know that when we’re in the grip of fear, our executive functioning goes off-line so we can’t think rationally, I still get hijacked by my amygdala. (I want to send a huge thank you and I’m sorry to the beloveds in my life who stand beside me when I meltdown and freak out.)

Right now, we’re all hijacked by our amygdalas, the fear center of the brain. And when that happens, it’s extremely hard to be creative about the problems you need to solve. We enter a fog of fear that's hard to see through.

Here are three things you can do to ease your amygdala so you can get your thinking brain to come back online.

Breathe. In order to calm the body, breathe in for a count of three and out for a count of six, so the exhale is longer than the inhale. This helps to tell the body it’s not in danger right this second. It can relax so you can begin to figure out your next steps.

Question. I just watched The Hunger Games with my daughter and when Peeta is trying to reverse the fear the bad guys have conditioned into him, he asks out loud, “Real or not real?” It can be extremely helpful to have someone—a friend, a family member, a mental health professional, a career or financial advisor—who can help you clarify your thinking.

Rise. I rode horses when I was a kid and I’ll never forget the spectacular fall I took off a horse, right into a pile of manure. Yep. I was scared, shaken, and bruised but my dad said, “If you don’t get back up on that horse, the horse will own you.” It’s a story I’ve told my daughter. And so after my own fear response when I lost so much work, I got up the next morning and gave my daughter a hug. “I’m ready to get back on the horse now. This is what we all have to learn how to do.” We have to stand up. We have to rise.

If you are really struggling, DM me. I'm offering free 60-minute coaching sessions to anyone who needs one—whether you want to talk about resilience and well-being skills or getting new business or anything else that’s on your mind.

You can also access my entire library of free content at https://www.heartwoodhealing.com/podcast/ by listening to the Heartwood Treehouse Podcast.

This too shall pass. And when it does, we’ll be different. It will mark us. But we can use this to create something good.

Thanks for reading! To get more inspiration, mindfulness and resilience practices, and self-mastery tools, subscribe to my newsletter and get a free video training with some of my favorite—and fastest—stress-busting techniques. And I'd love to connect with you here on LinkedIn.