5 of the most common fears (and how to deal with them)
For as long as I can remember – and maybe because I’ve had such a lucky life so far (can you tell I’m metaphorically touching wood as I write this?) – I’ve lived with a fear of bad things happening to me. Not a debilitating fear, but enough to make me check the front door is locked thrice, or scramble to pick up a call from the nursery before it reaches the second ring (because if I don't, will an important decision about the welfare of my child – who might be being rushed to hospital – be made without me?)
Some may say I’m irrational, but according to psychotherapist Anna Mathur, this kind of anxious behaviour is entirely normal. ‘We all plough energy into trying to control the uncontrollable,’ she says, ‘but the sad fact is it only makes us worried, wired and tired.’
In her latest book, The Uncomfortable Truth: Change Your Life By Taming 10 Of Your Mind’s Greatest Fears, Mathur posits the idea that there are 10 common fears we often find ourselves in thrall to, from a fear of failure, to being disliked, to losing people we love. Some of us manage to live with these fears comfortably (knowing that one day they may come true, but in the meantime embracing life), while others find themselves tethered by negative thoughts, overthinking and anxiety.
Mathur argues that by not confronting the uncomfortable (and often unavoidable) truths of our existence, we risk repercussions for our health and our ability to live fully. ‘When I look back over my own life, I realise that all the difficult things have arisen from my attempts to avoid the uncomfortable truths,’ says Mathur. ‘If I had spent less time running from them, I could have chosen to seek more joy.’
By leaning into our fears and accepting that some of them may be realised, she argues, we can free up our energy to live in the present: ‘My belief is that confronting the truth of these things is actually a better way to live with them.’ Here, she takes five thoughts that plague us, and explains how.
Some people won't like me
People who don’t even know you will have decided they don’t like you, for reasons they can explain and reasons they can’t. Entire subsections of society will ‘dislike’ you for things you absolutely cannot change, like how you look or where you were born. Even people you love will judge you or fail to ‘get’ you, leaving you feeling painfully misunderstood.
Why does this bother us? As humans, we’re innately pack animals – we need to be accepted to be protected, and being liked means we’re more likely to thrive in our communities. And yet, if we’re to live fully, have meaningful relationships and healthy self-esteem, we need to grow in acceptance that people simply don’t – and won’t – think we’re great.
Three steps to accepting this uncomfortable truth:
1. Understand how subjective ‘like’ is
In recognising that we want everyone to like us, we must also be aware that we don’t like everyone ourselves. When we put this into perspective, isn’t it a tall order to always be liked? Next time you catch yourself thinking that you don’t like or approve of something or someone, recognise that this is purely your opinion. How much of the ‘like’ is based upon preferences and narratives that might have little to do with the person?
2. Ask whether you want or ‘need’ to be liked
Wanting to be liked by others and needing to be liked are two different things. When we care about being liked, we’re driven to respond to others with compassion and empathy. Needing to be liked has undertones of fear and desperation. To combat this feeling, consider someone in your life who deeply knows and accepts you, despite your flaws, toxic traits and weaknesses. Then consider someone who doesn’t know you well at all. Who of those two people truly gets to say whether you’re likeable or not?
3. Take note of internal chatter
The narratives and stories we tell ourselves, and have been told, can run deep. Start by addressing how you speak to yourself. What tone does your inner dialogue carry? If it’s impatient and critical, follow it with a kinder alternative. Then rationalise with this: if we don’t dare to shock anyone, move anyone or share enough of ourselves in our lives, aren’t we, in essence, rejecting and abandoning ourselves?
I am going to fail
The reality of life is that you will plough time and energy into something, and all of that work will come to nothing. In fact, it will come to far more than nothing, as you will wade through disappointment and even question your identity, asking, ‘Did I just fail, or am I a failure?’ Some people believe that the fear of failure drives them to work harder and achieve more, but I would ask: how much of that success is tainted by anxiety? Once you put this in perspective, you can understand that it is possible to be driven to achieve without putting yourself through the heart-racing fear of (potential) failure.
Three steps to accepting this uncomfortable truth:
1. Recognise shame
Perhaps our biggest challenge with a fear of failure is the power we give failing to tell us who we are. When we accept failure, we acknowledge that we’ll fail at some things and move on. Next time you fear failing, consider if you’re using shaming statements. Would you say these things to a loved one? And if not, what might you say instead?
2. Take stock of all the times you’ve failed
This may seem counter-intuitive, but take a moment to write a list of three to five failures and the learnings you gained from each. If your skill set failed to match up to the job spec, you may need to develop skills. If you’re finding the end of a relationship tough, you may recognise that you need some support. And so on. Once you have these statements, you can use them as ‘data’ to discover constructive things about life and yourself, instead of fixating on ‘good or bad’, ‘success or failure’.
3. Allow yourself to grieve
We so often avoid failure to avoid pain, and yet we might come to the realisation that an even greater pain is to have limited ourselves through fear of not succeeding. Worrying about failure can stop us embracing new opportunities, so practise healthy ways of responding to the emotions you feel when you fail, such as putting your grief down on paper.
Life isn't fair
Bad things happen to good people, good things happen to bad people. Perhaps a colleague took ownership of your success and got promoted ahead of you, or someone you loved wholeheartedly left you. One thing’s for sure: life’s unfairness will have made you angry at some point. It doesn’t help, of course, that we can go through life being taught that good things will come to us if we try hard enough; that if we‘play fair’, we somehow earn ourselves a protective shield against the world. And yet, nobody is entitled to happiness, security or love, just as nobody is owed loss.
Three steps to accepting this uncomfortable truth:
1. Find your fight
Try to be motivated by unfairness rather than overwhelmed by it. Trust that your awareness of life’s unpredictability and injustice is what keeps you making decisions that better your life, and ensure that the good things within it stay there. When you feel unfairness, ask yourself how you might harness some of that rageful or frustrated energy and turn it into action.
2. Pick your battles
Another way of saving precious headspace is to stop fighting battles you’re unlikely to win; by recognising where to loosen our grip on the fight for fairness, you can make the decision to stop exhausting yourself. Instead, celebrate your own good works – every so often, make an appointment with yourself to write down what went well but was overlooked by others. This will help you to recognise what you are able and not able to influence.
3. Validate your emotions
When I was pregnant with my third child, my friend, who had lost several babies, was going through another pregnancy loss. Of course, this wasn’t fair, but what also wasn’t fair was the toll this could take on our relationship. Instead of backing away, we decided to be honest about our feelings: she told me she felt sad and envious that I was having another baby when she didn’t have any living children, and I told her about the guilt I felt whenever I saw her. In being our authentic selves, we were able to let go of grievances and find other ways to support each other.
I will lose people I love
The stuff of nightmares, this is the uncomfortable truth we dare not think about because it’s so painful, sending waves of anticipatory grief through our core. It’s a fear that sits just below the surface of love, and is easily disturbed or nudged by a story we hear about someone else’s loss. We don’t want to think about it, but we do, and when we do, our fear can almost stop us from being able to completely revel in the love we do have. So, if we’re going to think about it anyway, why not make a little more peace with it?
Three steps to accepting this uncomfortable truth:
1. Know that others have survived loss
Perhaps you haven’t witnessed someone move through the process of grief in a way that feels both honouring of their experience of loss and towards a place of acceptance. This experience can fuel the belief that losing someone you love is too great a pain to live with, and yet people can – and do – thrive after loss. In paying attention to stories of those who have survived and built a life around it, we can take solace from the knowledge that with the right tools and support, we can do the same.
2. Be intentional about your relationships
Accepting there will be loss can prompt intentionality to make the most of the precious relationships in your life. In allowing myself to think more comfortably about loss, I recently came to the conclusion that I see my dad only every four months on average, and that if he lived to the age of 75, I would only see him around another 20 times. A stark moment of awareness like this is always going to be difficult to confront, but the upside was that it prompted my decision to see my dad more.
3. Widen your support network
The thought of losing someone you love and having nobody else to turn to is particularly painful, and as good a reason as any to establish and broaden your support network. This could be opening up to those you know already in order to deepen your friendships, or finding new friends by engaging in group activities. Knowing that people are there for you will serve you well, regardless of what lies ahead.
I am going to die
How old you are and what you’ve been through in life will impact on how you feel about dying. Perhaps you feel like you have your whole life ahead of you, or maybe you’ve nursed someone at the end of their life and the aftershocks of traumatic loss are still rippling through your days. The psychiatrist Irvin Yalom has a quote I always think about: ‘The more unlived your life, the greater your death anxiety.’ Whatever your truth, the benefits of embracing the eventuality you’ll die are that you can be reminded to live life more fully in the present.
Three steps to accepting this uncomfortable truth:
1. Allow yourself to dance in and out of awareness
Accepting the uncomfortable truth of your own death is absolutely to be viewed as a process – one you’ll likely never feel truly comfortable with or deeply accepting of. Don’t pressure yourself: the aim is to not live fully in fear, but find gentle acceptance that leads you to live more authentically and intentionally. I sometimes think of my awareness of death as similar to looking at the sun, its blazing light so blinding it can’t be looked at for more than a moment. At other times, the sun is softened and welcomes your gaze as a stunning, life-affirming sunset.
2. Find your meaning
To discover your own sense of meaning, ask yourself these questions: What motivates you? What would matter most if everything were to be stripped away tomorrow? What do you live for that feeds, calms and drives you to good things and places? Now decide if you are engaging with enough of these activities in your life and write a manifesto. Consider your current worries and concerns and ask yourself, ‘Do I need to be worrying about this when next week it will be just a memory?’
3. Welcome new beginnings
Another way to accept your finite life is to reject the cultural narrative that as we move through life, we become somehow lesser. Our culture worships youth and perfection but each season and stage of life comes with a loss of sorts, and there’s new life and growth to find, too. Don’t wait for ageing to bring more wisdom. Who says you’ll make it to 70? Instead, embrace people-pleasing losing its grip, perfectionism losing its allure and finding confidence in your authenticity in the here and now.
The Uncomfortable Truth: Change Your Life By Taming 10 of Your Mind’s Greatest Fears (Penguin Life) by Anna Mathur is out now
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