Anxiety Is Fear-Based – Part 6

Video Transcript

Anxiety Is Fear-Based – Part 6

In previous episodes of our “Anxiety Is Fear-Based” series, we talked about anxiety being fear-based and why we can overcome anxiety by overcoming our fears.

We also talked about Innate and Secondary fears, and how eliminating the Innate fears will eliminate all Secondary fears, too. If you haven’t watched the previous episodes, you might want to do that to get caught up.

In this episode, we explain the three conditions that must come together before we can become afraid. Essentially, there are only THREE conditions that create fear.

In chapters 6 and 29 in the Recovery Support area, we explain these three conditions as:

1. When we believe something can cause physical, psychological, emotional, or spiritual pain, suffering, hardship, or unpleasantness.
2. When we believe the threat is imminent.
3. When we believe we don’t have the resources or ability to protect ourselves from the threat or cope with the consequences caused by the threat.

You’ll see that all three conditions exist if you analyze your fears.

For instance, if you drill down through the fears of social anxiety, you’ll find the fears of rejection, ridicule, and ultimately being abandoned, which is the innate fear of abandonment. In this case, the conditions are:

1. You believe rejection, ridicule, and abandonment can cause pain, suffering, unpleasantness, or hardship.
2. You believe the threat is imminent.
3. You believe you can’t prevent being rejected, ridiculed, or abandoned or cope with the consequences of being rejected, ridiculed, or abandoned.

Since fear is based on three conditions occurring together, we can reduce or eliminate fear by reducing or eliminating any ONE of those conditions.

For instance, if you believe abandonment won’t cause pain, suffering, or hardship, you won’t be afraid despite the threat being imminent or that you can’t prevent the threat from occurring. Eliminating the first condition of fear eliminates the entire fear, even if the other two conditions exist.

Or, if you believe the event that could cause abandonment is far off into the future, like a few years, while you might mildly fear that event, the threat isn’t significant even if the other two conditions exist.

Or, if you believe you can prevent being rejected, ridiculed, or abandoned, you still won’t be afraid even if the other two conditions exist.

You can try this out for yourself. Identify one of your main fears. Then, drill down to the core innate fear. Once you’ve identified the core innate fear, remove one of the conditions that supports fear.

For instance, would you still feel afraid if you weren’t afraid of the innate fear?

Or, if the threat is several years away, would you still be as afraid?

Or, if you could prevent the core fear from occurring or if it didn’t matter if the core threat occurred, would you still be afraid?

Have you noticed your fear lessened when addressing any of the three conditions that create fear? If you’ve done this correctly, you should have.

Understanding our fears and the three conditions that drive them gives us the power to overcome them and, ultimately, all our anxieties. The more deeply we overcome our fears, the more profound the relief from fear and anxiety.

Recovery Support members can learn more about this in chapters 6, 14, 15, and 29.

In the next video in this series, we provide examples of how this knowledge can be applied to overcome two common fears: the fear of fear, and the strong feelings of anxiety.

Until next time, God bless!