Fear and Phobias: How to Face Them and Diffuse Them

Don’t drive into the tunnel ... The dog’s going to bite ... Patients have described their phobias to me as walking around with the devil on their shoulder or a voice inside their head that just won’t stop. Wheth­er temporarily self-defeating or utterly crippling, phobias can get hold of us and seem to take over.

We make meaning in the world around us by taking a limited number of external facts and interpreting them. Our interpretations are based on the frames of personal experience, the roles we play, and family dynamics.

At the end of May 2019, it happened again. A mass shooter killed 12 people, this time at a municipal center in Virginia Beach.

How can perfectionism be a stumbling block on the path? Having the compulsive need to be perfect can be very hard on anyone. Being a perfectionist creates problems, not only for the individual who suffers from it, but for those around them.

The best way to understand Gandhi's philosophy of nonviolence is to first understand the extent of the violence we practice, consciously or unconsciously, every day of our lives -- name-calling, teasing, insulting, disrespectful behavior. These are passive forms of violence.

We might say there are two types of mind within us -- the mind that is generative and the mind that is receptive. Generative mind keeps us awake at night, playing nonexistent chess games with the circumstances of our lives.

With the awakening in society of the importance of mental health, combined with advances in neuroscience and psychiatry, much needed attention to trauma and childhood trauma is slowly forming.

"There is a gift behind each disappointment and sadness." These are words my mother spoke to me countless times growing up. But we need to trust that a gift will come. This trusting can be difficult though, especially when it appears over time that no gift is coming.

Each moment you cling to trauma or anger after it occurs, you cause the past to generate an entirely new sequence of thoughts, emotions, and actions. Until you can give up your attachment to the past incident, you are cursed to maintain and magnify the pain.

A slowdown in the economy, job losses, business closures, increasing energy bills: it’s not surprising that relentless negative reporting of economic downturns is impacting people’s emotional health.

The important thing to remember with the sample in this study is it’s a healthy group. There’s no pathology or illness, so the study doesn’t tell us about brain disorder.

Hedonism – the pursuit of pleasure, enjoyment, or fun – might sound like a strange way to tackle binge drinking. 

I call the part of me that has feelings of inadequacy "the Scared One". We all have a Scared One inside of us. It's a secret we all share but don't talk about, so we walk around acting as though we know what we're doing. This secret is connected to how we show support, and to how we form relationships.

By the time we are adults, we have so much writing on our walls and we have so many old wounds from unresolved experiences that many of our responses are automatically negative. They perpetuate events that are not the best outcome and instead, they serve only to reinforce our initial learning from a time long ago.

More than one-third of American adults view social media as harmful to their mental health, according to a new survey from the American Psychiatric Association.

It’s easy to see alcohol consumption being a result of thousands of years of ritual and a lifetime of habit.

You don’t have to create adverse circumstances to find a reason to do what you wish to do or avoid what you do not wish to do. Just be honest. If you have a difficult decision before you, ask yourself, “What am I hoping will happen?” In the answer is your guide to your likely best path.

Toward the end of the Renaissance period, a radical epistemological and metaphysical shift overcame the Western psyche.

When Ariana Grande cried on stage recently, following her performance of an emotionally laden song, she later took to Twitter to apologise and thanked her fans for accepting her humaneness.

It’s been more than four years since a magnitude 7.8 earthquake devastated Nepalese cities, claiming thousands of lives.

Albert Einstein said, “We can’t solve our problems with the same thinking that we used to create them.” I wonder what he would say today? My guess is that he would be shouting aloud while pointing to the life-threatening problems our old thinking has produced.

Most people can easily determine when a loved one is feeling sad or anxious. This recognition will often trigger the person to offer a comforting gesture or even have a contagious emotional reaction, causing them to also feel sad or anxious, too.

When we don't express our anger constructively, we go negative with our judgments and feel mad because the world isn't living up to our expectations. Over the years, this becomes the lens through which we view the world. Instead of dealing with our emotions...

We can define manipulation as "getting people to do what you want without giving them something they value in return". How does manipulation work? When someone says to you, "If you don't help me clean my house I'm going to be mad at you," that person is attempting to manipulate you. He is not offering you anything...

Are you constantly checking your phone when you’re out and about? Do you have trouble resisting the lure of ever more screen time?

New research digs into how augmented reality affects people’s behavior—in both the physical world and a digitally enhanced one.

Many adults have a history of childhood abuse. As harmful as these early experiences can be to our psyche, an accompanying form of abuse frequently compounds them. This is the abuse we give ourselves. This form is even more widespread and affects most of us in one way or another.

Having a positive attitude about math is connected to better function of the hippocampus, an important memory center in the brain, during performance of arithmetic problems, a new study of elementary school students suggests.

What are some of the differences between panic and anxiety? In panic, a person believes their life is threatened and that escape from the threat is impossible. With anxiety, the threat is not life-threatening. Escape is possible, but it has drawbacks: it may involve compromise or some kind of cost or loss.

We are bombarded with potential triggers all the time. It can be as simple as someone not holding a door for us or the perceived negative tone of an email. It can happen when a loved one speaks insensitively or curtly. A few careless words can easily spark a flash of anger and a desire to verbally retaliate.

In the last five years, I’ve become quite anxious during flights – especially when turbulence hits. 

Don't let yourself become a victim of your emotions. When you are scared, it isn't the real you that is scared, it is your personality interpreting circumstances that may be adverse. You are not these emotions; they don't own you...

Many of us have been holding back and storing unfelt emotions. What's the purpose? Unfortunately, the reason behind suppressed emotions is self-defeating. Holding back from "feeling your feelings" is usually how we try to protect ourselves from being hurt. However...

A new study analyzes the tricks of the trade that may contribute to impulse buying.

There are vast differences in early child-rearing environments across cultures.

Not all negative emotions are necessarily bad. In fact, they can direct your behaviour in useful ways. 

One of the most important aspects of educating future teachers is teaching them how to manage a classroom.

Mass shootings are a tragic new normal in American life. They happen too often, as evidenced

Freedom is such a powerful word, yet do we really know what it means? For years freedom was tied to the experience of slavery... having the right to not be 'owned' by someone. Then as the women's movement got into swing, freedom also included the right of women to make their own choices. Then we had gay rights, which further promoted the freedom to be yourself.

We’re squandering increasing amounts of time distracted by our phones. And that’s taking a serious toll on our mental and physical well-being.

Most of us have some corner where we cannot forgive ourselves. Our hearts ache for the choices made or denied, and we bury that ache beneath a blanket of guilt or high-minded justifications.

For the nearly 20 million college students in the U.S., one of the most stressful times of the year comes at the end of the semester, as they prepare for final exams, graduation and – for many seniors – yet another life transition.

Resistance not only creates physical stress but is also the determining factor in whether a person feels negative emotions. Experiencing anger, sadness, fear, guilt or grief is only possible if you resist something in your past, present or future.

Volunteering with animal rescue and shelter organizations in Detroit brought me face to face with many manifestations of animal cruelty

I'm officially coming out of the closet! Here goes: I, Barry Vissell, besides being a counselor, author, doctor, and workshop leader, am also a musician!  There, that wasn't so hard. So what makes me hesitate to announce this beautiful, musical part of me?

High-conflict personalities possesses 4 qualities that may encourage them to become politicians. - Overly emotional communication suits high-conflict personalities and drives the media to cover them.

It’s fair to say going to the dentists is few people’s favourite thing to do. In fact, over 45% of British people say they get anxious about a visit to the dentist and almost 12% have such high levels of anxiety that they would avoid a visit for a long time unless it was an emergency. 

Bad outcomes get criticized as evidence of bad decisions, but that's not necessarily so. - Here, poker pro Annie Duke desribes a simple thought experiment that separates decisions from outcomes.

As the social and economic divides between groups grow ever wider, and social mobility declines, the bonds that tie people together, within families or communities, have weakened over time.

Many if not most Americans have never crossed the U.S. border with Mexico by land or spent any time in that region.

When false and malicious speech roils the body politic, when racism and violence surge, the right and role of freedom of speech in society comes into crisis.

Pema Chödrön describes a liberating way to become intimate with our fears, instead of trying to get rid of or cast them out.

Anxiety is a common experience. It is entirely normal to feel anxious in certain circumstances or when imagining possible misfortunes. However, for some people it gets out of hand and severely affects their lives; and a useful, normal emotion becomes pathological.

Medieval monks had a terrible time concentrating. And concentration was their lifelong work! Their tech was obviously different from ours. But their anxiety about distraction was not.

Sometimes it seems as if life is passing us by. When we are children, time ambles by, with endless car journeys and summer holidays which seem to last forever.

Although the term itself is not new, fake news presents a growing threat for societies across the world.

We hear a lot about tolerance these days.Tolerance is a moral virtue best placed within the moral domain

Facebook recently announced it’s banning a number of Canadian far-right figures and groups from its platform.

The three constructive Ultimate Attitudes are universal concepts that are at the root of every major religion and philosophy. I believe that to be "enlightened" means that we truly and deeply live by these three principles.

Choice is perhaps our most vital freedom. We sometimes start sentences with “Given a choice . . .” In reality, almost every waking moment offers myriad choices. Many are small and inconsequential, whereas others are life changing.

Whoever truly understands and deeply feels an inner relationship with and a shared responsibility for fellow creatures can never subscribe to the cult of indifference. In a world crisis like the present one...

It is telling that the greatest early modern philosophical defender of tolerance was a refugee.

It’s time to get comfortable with being uncomfortable. “What?” you might exclaim. “I don’t want to be uncomfortable. Isn’t the whole point of this journey to find a way to be peaceful and stress-free all the time? Isn’t being comfortable the whole point?” Yes and no.

A deficit in the development of the teenage brain has been blamed for teens’ behavior in recent years, but it may be time to lay the stereotype of the wild teenage brain to rest. 

How can you be happy in this moment if you continue to choose to be angry and resentful? Thoughts of bitterness can't create joy. You can never be free of bitterness as long as you continue to think unforgiving thoughts. Forgiving yourself and others will release you from the prison of the past...

In Denmark, you might walk in the door and call out for your “skat” or your “treasure” as a greeting to your family.

There are hundreds of things we do – repeatedly, routinely – every day. We wake up, check our phones, eat our meals, brush our teeth, do our jobs, satisfy our addictions.

I bless the amazing divine order in nature, from the tiniest molecule to the rolling of the galaxies in our stupendous universe. I bless the divine order in my life and that of my neighbor, even when to  the  human  sense of  things  this  order is  all  but apparent …

A visionary activist understands that their every thought, feeling, word, and action generates a ripple effect throughout the field of consciousness, unlimited by space and time. He/she is committed to focusing their energy towards positive change in world. They are obsessed with achieving one impossible goal, from the inside out.

Rather than focusing on ways to lift your own anxiety, focus on wishing others well. New research suggests that could do the trick.

There has been a 45-percent increase in people tweeting about embarrassment since President Donald Trump took office, according to a new study.

A man sits in a doctor’s office after months of his wife’s increasingly desperate pleas for him to seek professional help for his constant coughing. In the end, she was the one who booked his appointment and even drove him there.

The great paradox of our human existence is that while we yearn for and strive after freedom, in whatever way each of us may seek to define that word, we find that we are no closer to that elusive element than were our ancestors.

Over the past two weeks, two students who survived the school shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida have died by suicide, amplifying the tragedy that community has experienced.

Have you ever noticed that when you are impatient, frazzled, and upset, things go worse, and when you are relaxed, patient, and trusting, things go better. Thinking and acting with faith changes the results you get. When you find yourself in a situation in which you seem to have no control, point your thoughts toward peace, and the universe responds.

In a piece on the television show 60 Minutes, Oprah Winfrey discussed childhood trauma — shining a public spotlight on the lasting effects of abuse and adversity in childhood. Oprah herself is a survivor of childhood abuse.

Years ago, I knew someone who used to say "Love is all there is". This was his "mantra" and he repeated it often to whoever was willing to listen. At the time, I was in my twenties and his statement would aggravate me to no end. After all, how could he say that "love s all there is" when there were wars, famine, murders, crimes of all kinds, etc. etc.

Ask a teen today how she communicates with her friends, and she’ll probably hold up her smartphone. Not that she actually calls her friends; it’s more likely that she texts them or messages them on social media.

Social media use is often described as being problematic for mental health and body image. But is all social media use bad?

New research, published in the medical journal JAMA Pediatrics, shows that boys from low-income backgrounds who were inattentive in kindergarten had lower earnings at age 36 while boys who were prosocial earned more.

How many of you have felt stress, anger, resentment, and a range of other emotions when you felt that somebody had not given you what you thought they should have given you. Some of us have a deep-seated belief that...

What would you think was happening to you if out of nowhere your heart started to race, you were drenched in sweat, you found yourself trembling uncontrollably, short of breath, with chest pain and feeling nauseated, dizzy and lightheaded as though you might faint?

Before age 10, children with autism struggle with ability to block out visual distractions and focus on a specific task, research finds, and would benefit from intervention to address this.

As an immigrant to New Zealand, I am saddened and outraged by the events in Christchurch. The apparent innocence of New Zealand has been stripped away by acts of cowardice and evil.

Coyotes can habituate to humans quickly and habituated parents pass this fearlessness on to their offspring, research finds.

No matter how stressful the day might be with six children running around, my mother's always exhibited an optimistic outlook on life. Her spirit lives in me. Her attitude of gratitude is also ingrained within her namesake, my oldest daughter, Sara Malka, who taught me a valuable tool for living an inspired life.

When humans make certain types of mistakes, their pupils change size, according to new research.

Complain? Don't we all? Of course we do, yet do we know how to complain properly? Is there such a thing as complaining properly? Isn't complaining just a "negative" thing? Or is it a necessary way of venting our frustrations? First let's look at what complaining is...

Some 60% of British people believe in at least one conspiracy theory, a recent poll reveals.

Humans love optimism. It’s a no-brainer – optimism makes us feel good and wanting more. This attraction has deep neurological roots that affect both our brain functions and how we process new information.

One of the most powerful ways to pray is to practice gratitude. Practicing gratitude as a form of prayer is very easy and is immediately rewarding. All you need to do is acknowledge and thank the Universe for all your blessings, whether they are...

Panic attacks typically occur when a person is under stress. The stress can be physical, like being run down, or emotional, like a significant life change.

When Americans quote writer and naturalist Henry David Thoreau, they often reach for his assertion that “In Wildness is the preservation of the world.”

Sleep-deprived people feel lonelier and less inclined to engage with others, avoiding close contact in much the same way as people with social anxiety, according to a new study.

One thing is certain about clichés: you wouldn’t be caught dead using them. They are widely scorned as signs of debased thought, a lack of imagination and the absence of creativity.

Our spiritual evolution depends heavily upon our recovery from our worst addiction -- our addiction to the victim archetype, which traps us in the past and saps our life energy.

We have found the primary reason most of us do not make the choice to love more freely and fully is that we feel unsafe and insecure in some way about people, relationships, love or even life itself. We fear whatever might happen if we open ourself to giving and receiving love more readily.

Crabby crab is my four-year-old son Fisher’s imaginary friend. Crabby appeared on a holiday in Norway by scuttling out of his ear after a night of tears from an earache.

Being caught talking to yourself, especially if using your own name in the conversation, is beyond embarrassing.

Abraham Maslow was the 20th-century American psychologist best-known for explaining motivation through his hierarchy of needs, which he represented in a pyramid.