5 Questions to Help You Think Through Your Biggest Fears

What’s your biggest fear?

Losing your job? Getting divorced? That flight back home the holidays?

When the major stress of life hits, what is your first reaction? Anger?  Fear? Withdraw? Escape?

If you really sit down and think through what’s happening, do you have a dialog in your head that plays out?

Charles H. Elliott and Laura L. Smith, PhDs and co-authors of “Overcoming Anxiety for Dummies” (Wiley, $21.99, 2010, ISBN 978-0-470-57441-6) present five questions to ask yourself when you have a strong worry about a specific issue:

• Have I ever dealt with anything like this in the past? – gives you a frame of reference of things like this that have happened to you before
• How much will this affect my life a year from now? – helps you understand how long the effects are if your fear occurs
• Do I know people who’ve coped with something like this, and how did they do it? – helps you think of people you can model from and think what their outcome was
• Do I know anyone I could turn to for help or support? – if you need financial help, support, a place to live, who can help?
• Can I think of a creative new possibility that could result from this challenge? – what door is opening to you if another one is closing? What new skill or life lesson will this help you learn?

By asking these questions of yourself, you can start thinking about the magnitude of your fear and how far-reaching this really is for your life.

While answering these questions may not make your fear completely disappear, they can help you tackle the issues and start to make a plan to help you cope.

Of course, these questions may not help at all. In cases of true disaster, these questions become a little irrelevant. According to the book, the worst-case scenarios include “severe illness, death, terror, natural disasters, disfigurement, major disabilities and the loss of a loved one.”

The example the doctors give in the book is dying in a plane crash. When you run through the five coping questions, all the answers are “no” – never dealt with it, the year from now doesn’t affect me because I’d be dead, don’t know anyone who’s been in a crash, no one can help you deal with the crash, no new opportunities because I’d be gone.

So, Elliott and Smith give what they call the “Ultimate Coping Questions”:

• What is it about this eventuality that makes you think you absolutely could not cope and could not possibly stand it? – in the plane crash scenario, the answers they give are: maybe it would explode and I wouldn’t know what happened but if it’s plummeting to the ground, then I’ll know it and that’s what I truly fear (now you know what the real fear is)
• Is it possible that you really could deal with it? If you really think through the crash itself, it would be over quickly and you know your family would be ok even if you were gone. You would have to deal with it in that case.

So now, after thinking through the real fear and the real outcome, you have at least brought yourself to that point of acceptance of the fear. You still may have the fear and you certainly don’t like the outcome but you will know you can deal with it.

Elliott and Smith say to try not to block out fears but think through them. Their recommendation is that if you have obsessive thoughts or paralyzing anxiety, you should seek professional help.

About Charles H. Elliott and Laura L. Smith

Charles H. Elliott, PhD, is a clinical psychologist and founding fellow of the Academy of Cognitive Therapy. His specialties include children, adolescents and adults with obsessive-compulsive disorder, anxiety, anger, depression and personality disorders.

Laura L. Smith, PhD, is a clinical psychologist and adjunct faculty member at Fielding Graduate University. Her specialties include assessing and treating individuals with obsessive-compulsive disorder, personality disorders, depression, anxiety, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder and learning disorders.

Both doctors have written many books and articles together. Their website is www.psychology4people.com and their blog is http://blogs.psychcentral.com/anxiety.