Fear can seem huge and intimidating, almost like it’s ten feet tall, until the moment you start to poke at it. The trick isn’t heroics — it’s to overcome fear in small steps, the sort of tiny moves that look ridiculous to anyone else, but quietly add up to freedom.

Scared? Good. You’re in the club.

Okay, this is going to sound like a really silly question, but do you ever feel scared?
Of course you do.

Everybody does.

Even those you would consider brave who do jobs that require a lot of courage will still admit that they still feel scared. It just doesn’t prevent them from doing the task that they have to do.

I see fear as being on a kind of sliding scale, with mild apprehension at one end and being absolutely terrified, with shit in your kecks, at the other, with lots of levels of fear in between. I’m not here to talk about anxiety disorders. Although it is common these days for people to assume they have a condition merely because they experience some fear, in many cases, it is just a lack of confidence and/or resilience. We can strengthen these capacities to overcome this kind of fear by exposing ourselves to them in manageable chunks.

If you genuinely have one of the diagnosable anxiety disorders, then you want to see a doctor or therapist at your earliest opportunity. If you are suffering like this, you may already be thinking of yourself as a useless cause, but let me assure you, you are not. There will be something available somewhere that can improve things. It just may take some trial and error to find what works for you specifically.

So that those who actually need support can get it quicker, I’d like to point out the difference between people who need professional help and those who just need to sort their own shit out instead of clogging up the waiting list.

When a “phobia” isn’t really a phobia (and when it bloody well is)

Here’s a quick way to tell if you’ve got a fear or a phobia:

The term phobia has been used a lot over recent years as a substitute for prejudice, but that’s a topic for another day.

But to give a quick example, we have homophobia. We could write an entire article on what’s really going on here, but to really simplify it in a single sentence and aspect:

Homophobia is the crazy notion that a complete stranger of the same sex wants to rape you, but with a deeper fear that you may actually enjoy it!

Did he just say “Enjoy it”?!

Yes, he did, and the more upset a person may get over that statement, the more likely it is to have hit a repressed nerve, but I digress.

Simply put, a phobia is an irrational fear.

When listed, many people would laugh at what appears to be some ridiculous fears, but if you were to be a sufferer of that particular phobia, it would be far from amusing. A fear of buttons on clothing may sound silly to you, but I know someone who was afflicted with koumpounophobia.

In my days as a therapist, I helped many people to overcome some bizarre ones as well as the traditional ones, such as arachnophobia, claustrophobia, etc.

Sometimes fear makes sense, especially if it’s got fangs

Not all fears are irrational, though, are they?

Just because you have a fear of spiders, for example, it doesn’t mean it’s a phobia.

I would say it’s quite reasonable and natural to freak out if you live somewhere where they have huge ass spiders, which are capable of causing you harm. Or as is often cited, there’s Australia, where they don’t have to be big, and everything there is capable of fucking you up.

In the U.K., we don’t have to worry about deadly spiders, unless they have crossed borders hidden in food crates. This doesn’t prevent lots of people from being scared of the ones we do have, like the big fuckers we often find in the bath. This fear is likely to have been passed down from our ancestors, when the UK undoubtedly had some.

If you see a picture, or even some footage of spiders, you may still be squeamish or possibly even scream like a child, like my 30-year-old brother does.
To be fair, I used to, too!

However, a true arachnophobe would have a full panic attack as if the mother of all killer spiders were actually in the room with them. We’re talking the likes of Shelob, Aragog, or even the monster from The Incredible Shrinking Man that nearly had Scott Carey (Grant Williams) for lunch.

If your fear is that intense, it’s best to get some professional help with it.

On that note, I’d best throw in a disclaimer to cover my arse:
The advice I’m giving is no substitute for the advice from your therapist, physician, etc. What I’m about to share is just food for thought for you to contemplate and decide whether you, as a responsible adult, are prepared to have a go at it.

Baby steps, ladders, and other ways to laugh at yourself while facing fear

Now that’s out of the way, let’s get on with this.
To keep things as brief as possible, which may not be that brief, I’m not going to go into theory or any other nonsense which you can easily search for, if that’s your thing.

It doesn’t matter what the fear is; you can use these steps.
Firstly, consider what is the smallest thing you can do to face that fear and do it safely.

Example 1: A fear of heights

If you can relate to this kind of anxiety, I’m assuming your fear of heights isn’t severe enough to cause vertigo; you’re simply not very comfortable with heights, right?

I think I’m a bit of both. I actually suffered vertigo my first few times in a VR headset, and yet I’ve done a tandem skydive.

Put a ladder at the side of your house, or maybe use a stepladder inside if you prefer.

This will depend on whether you care what other people might think of you. You certainly do not want to be bringing additional fears to this task. If you genuinely do not give a fuck what anyone thinks, then go outside.

So the first step would be, quite literally, to get on the first step of the ladder.
If you are OK there, move on to the next step.
See how you feel there.
Then you might go up another couple of rungs or steps on the ladder.
If you feel a little unsure, then you can always come back down a rung.
You want to go just outside your comfort zone and stay there as long as you can.

All this time, you will no doubt be analysing your emotions and feelings and having an inner dialogue about what’s going on.

When you get to the point of “this isn’t so bad”, you’re making progress.
After a while, you’ll get to “why the hell was I that worried?!”
That’s when it’s time to move up another rung.

Then it’s just rinse and repeat as you keep pushing yourself to do a little bit more to get higher and higher up the ladder.
After the ladder, think about what your next challenge will be and go for it. Perhaps it will be rock climbing or scaling a wall in a gym with a safety rope. If you are not ready for that quite yet, VR has some realistic experiences that can get you really high in the sky while your feet are still actually on terra firma.

Example 2: Agoraphobia

Using exposure to overcome a fear about going out of the house, or being in crowded spaces, but as I have previously said, not to the point of full-blown panic.

So what’s the smallest thing that you could do?
Maybe a walk around the block, or simply just a walk to your gate and back?

Simply walk to the gate, open the gate, and walk around the block when you’re ready.

When you’re ready, go somewhere where there’s only a small crowd, for example, going to the supermarket.

Tip: If you go to the supermarket late in the evening, there are way less people there.

If you get to the shop and you realise that it’s too much for you, just remember, you’re still doing well to get to the point you have.
Congratulate yourself and challenge yourself to go a little bit further next time.

Overcome fear in small steps

No matter what flavour it is, you need to expose yourself to the fear in what is often called “bite-sized chunks” or “baby steps”. No need to go too far, just to the point where you’re starting to feel slightly uneasy.

You want to be experiencing a tiny bit more fear than the apprehension you’re going to feel just before you start attempting this exercise. This will probably be a little less uncomfortable than the kind you get while you’re just contemplating it.

It’s a bizarre quirk of being human that for every second of fear we have in the actual situation, we will experience 1000 seconds of it purely in our imagination, and our bodies can’t tell the difference.

“Is that true?” you may be asking.

Mostly!

I just made the statistic up, as I have no fucking idea of the actual ratio. But it serves my point, which can’t be denied. You’ve probably heard another statistic, which is probably made up too, that 80% of the things we worry about never happen.

In fact, there is a genuine study on people with Generalised Anxiety Disorder that found 91.4% of their worries never came true. So yes, most of the figures you see thrown around online are bollocks, including mine just now, but at least I’m telling you when I’m making it up.

What is true, though, is that our bodies exhibit the same reactions whether an event is real or simply imagined.

Through repetition of exposure to a fear, but on your terms, you will develop confidence, and hopefully, before long, you will have conquered the fear. At worst, it may simply be less debilitating, and you will worry about less.

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Fear’s never going away, but it doesn’t have to run the show either. If you want more no-B.S. takes on mental health, blame game culture, and why we’re all a bit more bent out of shape than we admit, you’ll find plenty of that in my book, It’s Not OK to Be Not OK.

And if this piece hit a nerve, that’s good. Don’t just sit on it — drop a comment, share it with someone who needs a shove, or at the very least admit you’ve screamed at a spider in the bath. We’ve all been there.