Allow me to begin by apologizing for the dreadful fonts in my last post. I had some trouble getting the settings to stay as I wrote it.
Now, for tonight's subject: Fear. That awful, puke-making, mind-fuzzying, judgement-skewing feeling. I've been thinking about this all day. The more I think about it, the more I'm convinced that it is entirely possible to be afraid out of habit. I think that's where I am. I think that after a while, a person can become so accustomed to being afraid that it becomes his/her default setting, and he/she can end up forgetting what freaked them out in the first place. I think fear is my default. Then, I got wondering why. Why do people develop this default in the first place? Why did I? Why do people persist in making things hard on themselves (why do I?). And then I came to this conclusion: Knowing why is not necessarily important. Recognizing the tendency is. I thought about it a little more and realized that all the time a person spends kowtowing to the fear and all the time he/she spends trying to figure out why/when/where/how/what, is a means of stalling. Why? Fear. Of what? I don't know. The unknown, probably. Maybe because people (and I) fear they don't have the brains/courage/means/strength to handle the unknown. Indolence could be another reason. Being comfortable. It doesn't matter.
I suspect (based on my own experiences) that, if the fear is a vague, unspecified one, the way it starts is a person takes a notion into his/her head but doesn't seek out a way to disprove it. It builds up and builds up and then more and more crap gets piled on top and the original notion is distorted and the individual has a mess on his/her hands. It's hard to say which is worse: a specific fear or a vague, unspecified one. I suppose that, too, does not matter. What matters is recognizing the problem and growing a pair in order to face and overcome it.
This is where I am tonight. The thing to do now is gather courage because time's a-wasting. A round of drinks says that whatever it is that's tripping me up is really no big deal, and facing/overcoming it won't be that big a deal either. Fingers crossed...
4 comments:
Fear or phobias can be caused when we experience whatever the stimulus is, but come to fear or dislike it because something else happens at the same time which naturally instils fear in us. Like if the first time you saw a dog, a gunshot went off right behind you, you'd probably become afraid of dogs. Or you might be afraid to ask someone out, if you'd asked someone else out before, and been rejected.
In this sense, it is important to understand why you have a fear, so you can overcome it properly by understanding that the fear was irrational.
Would you say that, once a person has understood why he/she is afraid, it's o.k. to face/overcome the fear by "jumping right in" to whatever freaks them out? I'm not a shrink but I have a feeling that a person can have all the counseling and treatment possible but in the end, it's still all up to them whether to overcome certain things or continue to be afraid and do nothing.
I'm just wondering what you think, because you're the one studying psychology and eating issues. You definitely know more about this than I do.
I completely agree with you that it has to be up to the person to make the change. Like you said, you could have a whole lot of counselling but if you still are willing to put in any effort to overcome something, I don't think you can just expect a miracle change.
"Jumping right in" is called "Flooding" - where yeah, you just expose yourself to the fear-inducing stimulus straight away, and maintain the exposure to the point where you realise that actually, it's not doing you any harm. I'm not sure what the success rate is but I would assume it's fairly successful for basic phobias. Then there are other treatments like Systematic Desensitisation, where you build up to the stimulus and learn how to relax instead of be afraid. So, you're taught muscle relaxation techniques, then taught to implement them as you're faced with progressively more 'scary' stimuli - say if you had a phobia of spiders, you might start by looking at a photo of one, then at one in a cage, then at the counsellor holding one, then touching it, then holding it yourself. And at each stage, you use the muscle relaxation techniques and eventually that response is conditioned as your 'natural' response instead of fear. Does that make sense?
Also just to clarify, I'm not actually studying eating disorders - it's just something I'm interested in for the future. Right now it's just a general Psychology degree :)
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