The First Step: Admitting to ourselves we are afraid

People seek help not because they have problems but because their efforts to solve their problems are no longer working for them. We feel demoralized, but something inside us believes that we are capable of being so much more. The first step in recovery is to admit this and open yourself up to new and different possibilities of living with and beyond our fears.

The people we have selected have fears of blushing, anger and conflict, being the center of attention, being exposed or ridiculed by other people. A common theme among all members of the group is a fear of expressing themselves honestly and being themselves with other people. They are afraid to be seen as vulnerable in any way and of being less than others expect them to be. They fear that if others notice their anxieties, they will be ridiculed or humiliated in some way and never recover from this. Over the years they have coped with this terror by avoiding situations they find threatening and increasingly isolating themselves from social contact. In the words of Brendan Kennelly they have ended up "half living in a safe hell".

As they each told us their stories, they described what a relief it was to be able to admit their fears and how "lonely' their suffering had been. Also, how surprised they were that they had actually named their fears and shared them with another.

ExerciseTake some time to identify fears in your life that shape the way you live.

Consider the following questions and how you might answer them:

What am I afraid of? What do I do to make myself safe when I feel afraid? What situations am I avoiding in my life because of fear? What is the worst thing I imagine would happen if I were to admit my fears

to someone I trust? What is the effect of not confronting my fears on my life and the lives of

people around me?

Books to read:Some very useful books to read at this stage about accepting and understanding fear are:

Peace from Nervous Suffering by Claire Weekes Feel the Fear and Do it Anyway by Susan Jeffers Overcoming Shyness and Social Anxiety by Gillian Butler Beyond Fear by Dorothy Rowe Self Help for your Nerves by Claire Weekes

PoemThe Journey by Mary OliverThis poem captures something of the transformation that happens when you dare to take your life seriously enough to move out from hiding and reclaim the life that is your own.

Week Two: Recap on last week

Fear is a perfectly human reaction to any threat that we perceive in our world.

Fear reveals what is human about us, not what is wrong about us. Fear mobilizes us to deal with stresses, challenges, conflicts, threats that

are an unavoidable aspect of living. By facing our fears we grow and develop our potential as human beings.

By avoiding them, our lives become constricted and we feel stuck. The first step we need to take to untie the knots of our fear is to admit to

ourselves and someone else, that we are afraid, and that we need support to get unstuck.

Fear, anxiety, panic, and phobiasFear is a crucial for my survival and is the achievement of millions of years of evolution. It signals to me that there is something in my life I need to confront or walk away from. Its importance to my survival becomes very clear when I am confronted with a situation that is potentially dangerous and which requires an immediate response; a car racing out of control in my direction, a loud noise, close by, in the dead of night; a doctor's appointment where test results will be revealed to me; an exam about to begin, the outcome of which may shape my future…These are situations where I can appreciate the value of fear in my life. It physically energises me to react, it focuses my mind and often helps me find speedy creative solutions to the crisis facing me.

Fear becomes a problem when it persists and unsettles us, particularly when there is no obvious threat or danger we can identify. We refer to this experience of fear that spreads to all or some part of our lives as anxiety. When this anxiety intrudes suddenly into our lives and takes us by surprise, we may imagine something "terrible" is happening to our bodies or minds and so we panic. If our fear becomes focused of a specific activity (e.g. speaking, writing, eating, in public), or situation (being away from home, flying, being confined in some location) or object (snakes, spiders, dogs etc), we refer to it as a phobia and we believe that by avoiding these experiences we can control our anxiety. Fear becomes a problem when it leads to avoidance of something in our life that we have need to deal with on a regular basis. This programme is designed to help you identify areas of your life where you have become paralysed by fear. These fears tend to grow and spread the longer you avoid them.

Exercise - The Fear LadderWhen we become conscious of being afraid in our everyday lives, it can be helpful to make a list of all your fears and then arrange them in order from lesser to greater. Your least fear becomes the starting point for facing a range of fears you currently avoid. When you have confronted your fear of say, walking alone to the local shop, you will feel more confident to take a further step tomorrow, and you might be surprised by where this step-by-step approach eventually leads.

Approaching feared situations gradually and systematically is both wise and compassionate. It is better to set out to climb a small hill and succeed, rather than push ourselves to conquer Everest in one giant leap and fail.

A simple way to approach this exercise is to list off your various fears, in no particular order, writing them down as they come into your mind. When you have completed your personal list, read over each of them and rate how afraid each of these items makes you feel, on a scale of 1-10 (where 1 indicates you feel just a small twitch of fear and 10 indicates the most afraid you've ever felt). It then becomes easier to construct your personal fear ladder, which helps you to see where you need to start to change your life.

Setting a personal goal for the next 12 weeks:As you read over your list of fear you may be surprised. There are a number of ways to view the difficulties you have identified, a number of "mindsets" you can

adopt. On the one hand you could berate yourself, reminding yourself what a pathetic, weak, stupid human being you really are! Of course, this isn't likely to help much. In fact, when you shame yourself for your problems you are more likely to give up ever trying to take control of your life and do anything about them. Self-attacking leads you into depression and helplessness; you've probably been doing this for years so you know exactly what I'm talking about!

Whilst shame locks you into the 'stuck place' you already know so well, a compassionate mindset empowers you to take control and grow. Compassion recognizes that you are in a tough place, probably with many associated feelings of pain, and that you've been avoiding facing certain difficulties because you're deeply afraid of failing and being even more distressed than you already are. Compassion respects that you've probably doing the best you can up to this moment, but it also prompts you to acknowledge that you are never going to achieve peace of mind by avoiding difficult realities. Compassion looks at your list of fears and says "Guess what? What you've written down maps a path for you to grow and mature as a person. Maybe this is the time to do yourself a big favour and make a small but very important change in your life."

When you look over the personal fears that you have listed, can you see where they might point to something you would like to be able do in your life? One way to clarify a goal for yourself is to imagine that you wake up tomorrow and find your feelings of fear and anxiety have vanished. You do not feel any fear and the day ahead is yours to live anyway you like! Think for a moment… What is the first thing you'd like to do with this new found freedom? Maybe your first intuition is pointing to a goal that might be important for you to pursue.

Now, get hold of a sheet of paper and quickly answer the following....

What would it feel like if you were to achieve this goal..? How you would behave if you achieved this goal… ?. If you achieved this goal, would it change the way you think about yourself?

This week, in our group, each participant was asked to set a goal for themselves for the coming twelve weeks. What was striking about this exercise was how hard it was for each of them.. The experience of fear and persistent anxiety had made them "forget" what it was that mattered to them most in their lives. Anxiety had eclipsed their desires. One man said he had given up "dreaming" and preferred to think about "damage limitation". Fear had made them used to "settling", in case the hope of something different would only bring crushing disappointment. So, it took a long time for them to say what they wanted to achieve by being in our group over the next 3 months.

The goals they set eventually were simple and modest, but if achieved would mean a lot to each of them. One woman wanted simply "to be able to tell some one person that I am here." Her fears had become her secret and in her isolation they had taken a firmer grip over the years. Silence and secrecy provide fertile soil for our fears.

For another, the goal was perhaps easier to appreciate: she wanted to spend one day outside of her home without wearing make-up that she had relied on for years to conceal her blushing. Ironically, by controlling her fear of blushing with extensive use of make-up, the problem had deepened and spread.

Remember: Vitality comes from balancing safety and risk, comfort and exploration, in our lives. To live always at the edge of danger is

wearing and destructive, but to live only within our comfort zone means limiting wonderful possibilities in our lives.

Reading for this week:When you stop and examine your life, its not unusual to feel sadness well up inside you. You realize it hasn't been easy living in fear and you become aware of ways you've missed out on life, particularly in your relationships with those you love. Maybe you admit to yourself how lonely its been to keep your soul locked up inside, afraid to let others in because they might see you're not superman or superwoman. It takes courage to admit that to yourself and to feel the pain that is yours. Some of us refuse to acknowledge parts of ourselves where we're 'not right'. Its funny how we cling to ideal images of what we believe we should be and how frightened we are that others would judge us harshly if they knew how fragile we really are.

I'ts fine to feel sad now and then, but for those of you who feel consistently down and upset with your life, it may help to read a book I wrote recently called:Depression, a Commonsense Approach, published by Newleaf (1999). By Tony Bates

Week Three: Recap on last week

Goal setting builds self-confidence and gives direction to our life when we feel stuck.

Ask yourself: "What's one thing I would be doing differently in my life if I wasn't so afraid? Consider making this your goal over the next few months.

Identify one small step you can take that will take you closer this week to reaching your goal… and risk doing it!

Remember: Better to climb a small hill and succeed, than to set out to climb Everest and fail....

Our Group Progress reportAs trust grows between members, it is noticeable that people are feeling more and more safe to be themselves. The level of honesty this week between members was surprising considering we have only met three times. What is striking is the degree of commitment on the part of each person to invest in this programme and change their lives in some significant way.

Most of this session was given over to discussing the strong emotions we can all experience and how scary they can be. Anger was the emotion that was hardest for people. In trying to deny, suppress and keep it under control we can end up irritable and anxious, easily losing our tempers and hitting out at those we care most about. Sadness and hurt were also common feelings that didn't easily find expression and which were experienced as a generalized feeling of being anxious and on edge. It's clear that in coming to terms with anxiety and fear, we need to attend to other strong underlying feelings and understand how they are contributing to making us fearful.

Each person desires to change and find an inner peace with themselves, but this healthy impulse to grow and mature struggles against longstanding habits of avoiding memories that hurt and those feelings that scare us.

One Group Member's Description At the end of the first night we asked each person to go home and write out what it had been like for them to come into this group for the first time. This was one woman's description:

"Got home about 10pm after collecting the kids. Feeling very tired. Head is thumping. I also feel very proud of myself for attending. Which is the first time in ages that I can remember feeling anything positive about myself. I feel very honored to be part of this group of people who like me felt the same emotions as we entered this room tonight, fear shyness, sick, nervous. I have a feeling that the next 11 weeks will be the most enjoyable and probably the most tiring weeks of my life… something that will make me realize how important everyday is and not to be wasting everyday away, being cross and angry with myself and everyone around me. I want to wake up in the morning and be thankful and grateful that I am alive…to start to live life and be happy for the precious wonderful people who are part of it and without whose support I wouldn't have made it this far...."

Understanding our moods:Fundamental to changing how we feel is the need to create a calm space where we can get to know the components of our moods. Each mood is a complex of physical sensations, feelings, thoughts and/or images. By taking time to focus on these interacting components, we can see more clearly that our moods make sense and that they are trying to tell us something important about our lives. Our moods are messengers which reveal hidden parts of our personalities, and which direct us in how we need to act if we are to get beyond the distress of anxiety, fear, anger or sadness.

Each week in our group we begin with a relaxation exercise to "gather" ourselves and check in with what we are feeling. Each group member is encouraged to practice this daily. Bringing our attention deliberately to our moods allows us to get to know them before they become so raw and inflamed that we feel overwhelmed by them. This simple practice of becoming mindful of our feelings allows us to name them and deal with them gently and effectively.

There are many ways to bring your attention calmly into the present moment and check in with yourself. One method I often employ I call the "ABC pocket relaxer". Clear a space for yourself now and try it out. If it suits you, you will find it is a technique you can employ anywhere, anytime, which very simply reduces your level of stress and fearfulness within a few short minutes, and prepares for observing and exploring your emotional reactions.

The ABC Pocket RelaxerThis method of relaxation works by bringing your attention systematically to your anatomy (A) and your breathing (B) and focusing your attention on the present moment and relaxing even more deeply through repetition of the word "calm" (C) with each out breath.

Step 1: A Sit comfortably and allow your attention to move from the world outside you to your body in the chair. Without changing anything, notice how you are feeling in your feet, legs, thighs, belly and upwards into your chest, arms, hands shoulders, face and head. Take time to notice each of these areas and ask yourself: "what is my body feeling here?", "am I calm or tense?" If you are particularly tense in some part of your body, accept gently that this is what's happening in this moment. Don't worry about "why' you feel the way you do, your body will gradually reveal this to you. This is a moment just to let yourself be and notice what feelings and tensions your body is experiencing....

Step 2: B After a minute or two, gently bring your attention to your breathing. Notice the rhythm of your breath as it moves in and out of your nose. Let your awareness remain with your breath and notice how with each out breath you can relax a little bit more, without making any effort. Enjoy the experience of letting your body relax "a little bit more" each time you breathe out....

Step 3: C Finally, simply say the word "Calm" to yourself with each out breath, and let the word last as long as your breath. This focuses your mind and returns your attention to your breathing whenever your thoughts start to stray.

This exercise calms you down, creates a secure base for you, and allows you to begin to explore what you are feeling in any particular moment. Awareness enables you to observe your moods without being overwhelmed by them. By identifying and describing what you are feeling, you are able to contain and own your negative feelings instead of being made feel helpless and demoralized by their frequent recurrence.

This next exercise "The Mood Diary" is to help focus your mind more analytically on what you are feeling and to help you to "read" your moods more accurately. Knowing where you are in any given moment, taking time to identify and describe your different feelings, enables you to identify what you need to do next. Understanding what they are revealing to you about your relationship with the world at this particular moment, allows you to consider what might be the most appropriate effective next step for you to take if you are to respond to them responsibly.

The Mood DiaryI have written about this in my book -"Depression, a common sense approach", in the chapter entitled "It's the thought that counts". What I'm suggesting you do is to begin to observe your moods and keep a diary of when you start to feel anxious or upset in any way over the next week.

To help you organize your observations I have devised a simple form with each section representing a different aspect of your mood, ie the bodily sensations you experience, the various feelings that you can name which make up your mood, and the thoughts, images or memories that accompany your mood.

Step 1: SituationWhen you become aware of being upset, make a note of the situation where it happens, whether you're alone or in company, occupied or simply daydreaming, under pressure or not, etc. The point of doing this is that naming a specific situation helps anchor you to a particular moment in time and not let you get distracted into other occasions when you felt like this. Also, it can be surprising to look back after a week of keeping mood diaries and notice whether there is a pattern to the situations where you become afraid, or depressed or angry. Maybe some places are especially hard for you, maybe certain times of the day....

Step 2: Bodily sensationsUsing the ABC relaxation exercise, see if you can really pay attention and notice the discreet physical sensations you experience when you're upset. Maybe there are knots of tension in your tummy, a curious soreness in your shoulder, a rising sense of heat in your face, a speeding up of your heart, or a weak feeling in your legs. Note each of the sensations you are experiencing no matter how odd they may seem. There are a number of reasons for attending to sensations. Firstly, they tend to scare people prone to anxiety and fear more than they should. Learning to observe them and record them when they are not overwhelming, creates the possibility of you not being put off by them later when you attempt to confront some particular fear of yours. Also, our muscles and tissues hold an echo experiences that hurt and frightened us. Attending to them increases the chance of us reading them correctly and discovering what hurts from the past we are carrying into the present.

Step 3: FeelingsIn the "Feelings" column, I want you to take time to name the different feelings

you are having that are contributing to this particular bad mood. Stay with whatever physical sensations you are having and hold them in your awareness until a particular word suggests itself that captures the sense of what you are feeling. Generally feelings can be stated in one word, ie down, bored, sad, mad, scared, crappy, lonely etc. You know when you have found a good feeling word for your experience when you say the word to yourself and it seems to fit really well and produces a shift in your experience. A good feeling word resonates well with what I'm feeling and brings a curious sense of relief to me that at least I know what I'm about.

Step 4: Thoughts/images/memoriesHaving recorded your physical sensations and feelings, and taken as much time as you need to do this, read down through you feelings, one at a time and ask yourself "what passed through my mind when I was feeling that?". Sometimes it's a fleeting thought, "god I'm so stupid", or it might be an image" like I'm alone in a tunnel" or it might be a memory, "thought of the time when I tried to speak my mind in school and got red in front of the class". These thoughts tend to pop into our minds quite automatically every time we get distressed and yet it's so easy for them to go unnoticed because they are often gone from our conscious minds before we notice them. Yet they are a critical clue in helping us to understand and make sense of our reactions to life.

Print out the table below as often as you like and follow the instructions above in completing it....

Mood DiaryPlease note: The Mood Diary is presented as a PDF file. You can right click on the image (right) to save the file to a disk as opposed to viewing it as a web page. To Download your Free Copy of Adobe Acrobat Reader please click here

As you look over your completed form, can you begin to see how your thoughts, feelings, and sensations are related to each other. Reading down one column should help you to make sense of the others. For the moment this is as far as we will go with this exercise. Practice this everyday for a week and we will build on it later. If you have any trouble with this (or if you find this exercise particularly helpful!) write to me at marian@rte.ie.

Mood Diary - click on the image to view

This may all seem a little awkward and unfamiliar at this stage but bear with me! The point is that you are building up skills that will be crucial later on when you are confronting whatever fears are blocking you from living your life more freely. These skills of calming, containing, naming and responding to your emotions are essentially the same skills which are offered by a therapist in psychotherapy. They are perhaps more easily learned in the safe, supportive context of a therapeutic relationship, but ultimately your mental health will depend on you making these skills your own. Happiness and well-being are the product of many

factors, but critical to you being able to live well with yourself is how you relate to the many ups and downs you experience. Persistent fear and tension suggests there are aspects to your inner life which are painful, even unbearable, for you at this time. Confronting fear will involve taking risks in both your outer and your inner world. Of the two, the outer world is probably easier! Our emphasis at this stage is on helping to build up your confidence to face your inner demons, gradually and safely.

Recommended reading What you've been introduced to above is derived from an approach in psychotherapy called "Cognitive Therapy". This approach views our beliefs and assumptions about ourselves and others as critical to determining our moods. It shows that how we think deeply impacts on our feelings on a moment by moment basis. For a fuller description of this method of understanding and overcoming negative moods, see The Feeling Good Handbook, by Dr David Burns (1990, Penguin). This is a very readable book, with lots of interactive exercises and a wonderful section on the application of this approach to anxiety disorders.

Good luck in the week ahead. Remember, these are the basic skills you need for what will be a complex but fascinating journey in the weeks ahead. Do take time for yourself and practice these exercises until you find something that really works for you. Talk to you next week....

Factsheet 4

Week Four: Recap on last week

"Mr. Duffy lived a short distance from his body" (from Ulysses, James Joyce)

"I have been too long away from my own soul"Rumi

Taking time to deliberately pay attention to the rhythm of our breathing, IN.... and OUT...., calms us, connects us with our bodies and grounds us in the present moment.

To consciously breathe out and say quietly the word CALM, gradually increases the feeling of contact with ourselves and helps us to think clearly about what we have to do next...

Paying attention to our experience of anxiety and observing our bodily sensations, feelings and thoughts helps us to understand our reactions when we become afraid.

When we can name our fears we can own them rather than have them own us and constantly take us by surprise....

Group progress reportOne of the greatest moments in this human journey is the experience of being with someone and being able to be yourself, just as you are in that moment. To share honestly what you're feeling, to speak your mind to a friend, to say where you feel stuck, to talk about your dreams and hopes. These moments can happen over a cup of tea at a kitchen counter, a glass of wine after dinner, in the intimacy of a love relationship, or in therapy. They are moments that give us back a sense that we're ok exactly as we are. They nourish the soul and fortify us to deal with the trials and tribulations that certainly await us. These moments of being listened to and accepted are simple but they can be hard enough to come by.

I walked into the building where we meet on Tuesday nights and heard laughter from the kitchen. It was our group, who had arrived before us, having tea. We moved into our meeting room and I noticed that there was an energy in the room I hadn't seen before. Whilst our earlier sessions were characterized by a certain awkwardness, where people relied on myself and Frank to direct conversation, our fourth session was shaped by the group members themselves. Not only were they able to speak more easily, they gave each other feedback quite spontaneously. There was a natural rhythm of people taking turns and saying whatever was happening for them. Gone was the pressure of trying either to say something impressive or to say nothing at all. There was laughter, there was tears, there was trust. One lady had gotten through the week without shouting at the kids, one man had allowed his girlfriend drive the car. Another had been assertive with a difficult neighbour, and one lady had volunteered to lead a meeting at work. Self-confidence was growing through small achievements, hardly noticeable to others but significant markers on their road to recovery.

What happens when we get anxious in a social situation?During the next two weeks, we will be looking closely at what happens when we become anxious in social situations. This week we will explore thoughts we have when we're anxious and the way our attention shifts onto ourselves when we become gripped by self-consciousness.

Social anxiety is born from our desire to belong and be accepted in a group. This concern to belong has played an important role in our evolution as humans, since our survival has been dependent on our inclusion in a social community. Our concern to belong, though, can become complicated by low self-confidence or memories of times when we felt exposed and humiliated. When we think of speaking out in a social encounter, we become distressed by negative thoughts and imagine that we will fall short in some way in the eyes of others and be rejected, yet again, by others.

Negative thoughts activated in social encounters:Members of our group gave examples of negative thoughts that can take hold in our minds when we enter a social situation. They included the following:

"I'll sound stupid""I will start to talk and become stuck""I will look silly""I'll lose control of myself and my anxiety will show""I will blush and others will think I'm weird""I have nothing interesting to say""I must say something interesting or people won't like me"

All of these thoughts have a common theme, the idea that people imagine they are not up to the standards that other people expect of them. They reflect a deep fear that others could reject and ridicule them if they spoke out. The thought of being embarrassed in this way is worse than death and one woman said she would rather die than be seen to blush.

Negative thoughts create self-consciousnessWhen these thoughts or images of ourselves are activated, something curious happens to our focus of attention. What we pay attention to in a social situation has a profound effect on our mood. For the shy, anxious person, their attention shifts from the situation to an image in their minds of how they imagine they appear to others. The self-image that becomes the focus of their attention is generally quite negative and distorted. They imagine themselves as painfully inadequate, as one man said "as a blubbering idiot", or as "weird" in some way. Their attention becomes fixated on this image and they become horribly self-

conscious. The drama of being vulnerable, exposed and ridiculed is played out in their mind and their chief concern becomes not what is actually happening around them, but how to stop the worst happening, how to hide their vulnerability from others. If they could, they would escape the situation, but where this is not possible, they resort to "Safety Behaviours". Safety Behaviours.

Safety behaviours are the things we do to feel safe in situations where we imagine we are in danger of being exposed and ridiculed. For the person prone to blushing, it may be that they "cover their faces with their hands or hair", "look away from others so as not to draw attention to themselves", "sit near the door, so they can make a hasty exit if the going gets too tough". For someone who fears sounding stupid, safety behaviours might include "staying silent", "appearing disinterested in the conversation, so that no one will ask them their opinion" or "avoiding eye contact" when others direct conversation to them. For the person who fears sounding boring, safety behaviours may include trying to sound "terribly interesting" and talking incessantly. The person whose mind is full of images of themselves shaking or trembling, may "grip the chair tightly", "squeeze the stem of their glass" or "tuck their hands under their thighs". There are many strategies a person can adopt to try and make themselves safe and prevent the worst happening. The problem with these coping mechanisms is that they heighten self-consciousness and focus the person's mind even more on that internal image of themselves falling apart. As the mind becomes even more self-focused, symptoms of anxiety increase, safety behaviours are tried with even more determination and negative thoughts about being exposed become more dominant in the individuals mind. This vicious cycle of fear, self-consciousness and safety behaviours becomes a trap for the individual who now feels even more demoralized by their apparent failure to cope with social encounters. Even if the "worst' doesn't happen, they leave that encounter berating themselves for being so anxious and, as they imagine it, 'looking ridiculous' and dread the next time they have to meet, or speak in front of, other people.

Next week, I will continue with this discussion and suggest ways of breaking out of this vicious cycle. For the coming week, I have included another form to allow you to observe more closely what happens to you in social encounters, to allow you pay close attention to the particular fears/images that take hold in your mind, and also the particular behaviours you engage in to feel safe.

Print out the table below as often as you like and follow the instructions above in completing it....

Social Situation DiaryPlease note: The Social Situation Diary is presented as a PDF file. You can right click on the image (right) to save the file to a disk as opposed to viewing it as a web page. To Download your Free Copy of Adobe Acrobat Reader please click here

Recommended ReadingThis approach to understanding why we feel anxious in certain social situations is described in more depth by Gillian Butler in her wonderful book, called Overcoming Social Anxiety and Shyness (published by Robinson, 1999; ISBN 1-85487-703-8). I recommend particularly Chapters 1 to 5 which cover what we have been talking about this week.

Homework

Social Situation Diary - click on the image to view

Take (at least) three minutes each day to do the ABC relaxation exercise. Do it a couple of times a day, so that you find you only need to say the word "CALM" and your body spontaneously relaxes.

With an attitude of compassion and curiosity, observe what happens when you become anxious and write out your observations using the Social Situation Diary provided above (above).

Thank you for keeping in touch with our journey. I am very mindful of yours, and hope that what you read in these fact sheets will encourage you to be a little gentler with yourself and help you to learn from and overcome the fears that hold you back in your journey. Looking forward to talking to you next week.

Tony

Week Five:

"When you move in close to your fears and observe them as they surface in the form of thoughts, feelings and bodily sensations, you will be in a much better position to recognize them for what they are and to know how to respond to them appropriately. Then you will be less prone to becoming overwhelmed or swept away by them or to have to compensate in self-destructive or self-inhibiting ways" Jon Kabat-Zinn (Full Catastrophe Living).

Recap on last week:

We become anxious in social situations because we fear we will do or say something wrong and that others will see us for what we are and reject us.

To protect ourselves from being found out we devise safety behaviours that only serve to maintain our self-consciousness and intensify our feelings of anxiety.

Safety behaviours also turn our attention in upon ourselves and prevent us from noticing what actually is happening in the social encounter.

Progress report on our group:It often happens in social groups that one person carries the group more than the rest; one person seems to be the life and soul of the group, to talk more and to prompt others to talk. This can be a great gift to a group but it can become a problem when the group allows one person to take all responsibility for initiating conversation and relies on him or her to fill awkward silences and save other people from having to take risks. Mary is that person in our group and she brings great energy and atmosphere to our weekly meetings. But this week a funny thing happened and our group learned something important. Mary had had a tough week and arrived feeling quite upset. She had driven alone to Dublin for the first time and sat quietly in the room when we began.

For a while I didn't notice what was happening, but I knew there was a certain strain in the room that hadn't been there before. I commented on this to the group and immediately someone said how they were struck by the fact that Mary wasn't being her usual self. Furthermore, they added that the whole group was "missing her". They admitted how dependent they had become on her to prompt others to talk, and to cheer everyone up. Her upset had them all feeling concerned for her but also a bit at sea. Naming this dynamic broke the tension in the room and people started to take more responsibility for sharing deeper aspects of their own stories. Mary's courage in not pretending she was ok, her willingness to drop some of her safety behaviours (i.e. talking a lot when there

was silence and getting others to talk) had been her greatest gift to the group. And by being honest about her own distress, she was able to get care and support from the others, who were only too happy to help her for a change.

Images of how we come across to others in social situations:Last week we talked about the fears that can become activated in situations where we are at risk of being noticed. Fears of being "stupid", or making a complete mess of trying to get it right in situations where we are called on to speak, or perform in some way. These fears are driven by underlying beliefs we hold about ourselves, beliefs that we are "lacking" in some way, that we don't quite have what it takes and that if we're under pressure we will let ourselves down. We also hold beliefs about other people that get in the way of taking risks and being ourselves. We imagine that others will judge us harshly for our mistakes, our imperfections or for getting it wrong. We don't realize that other people are more like us than they are different. They feel afraid, they take risks that don't work out for them and they get it wrong sometimes. Anxiety comes from feeling we're alone in a world of perfect people who demand we act perfectly at all times. Peace of mind comes when we see we are connected with others, that we share a common humanity with them, that they have the same needs and the same fears as we do.

When social fears are activated our attention turns inward and becomes fixed on a picture of ourselves as we imagine others see us. The image we construct in our minds very often dates back to one of our first really embarrassing moments, where we may have been bullied or ridiculed by others. Susan would blush easily in situations where she was the center of attention, and see herself as she was when she was 16 years old and teased by her aunt and uncle and parents for liking a singer in a pop group. They had accused her of having fantasies about this boy which were not true but which made her feel ashamed nevertheless. Her blushing seemed to betray her and to confirm in her relative's mind their accusations. Now, in her mid-20's, she avoided situations where she might blush, imagining she would look as shameful and guilty as she had as a child. She never left home without heavy make-up and kept well out of the way of customers in the store where she worked.

These images are troubling for lots of reasons but mostly because they cause us to become caught up in a cycle of negative thoughts, inward self-focusing and safety behaviours. This is social anxiety and unless the cycle can be broken we will remain prone to avoiding social situations at all costs or enduring them only with great difficulty. A number of strategies can help to break this cycle:

1. Drop some or all your safety behaviours. They simply fuel your anxiety and keep your attention self-focused. So, if you notice yourself tensing up, be mindful of this and relax those muscles; If you find yourself looking away from the company you are with, see if you can engage in eye contact and show interest in what they are saying;

2. Shift your focus from your inner distorted images of yourself and your symptoms to the people you are with or the activity in which are engaged, e.g., writing, speaking, performing. Count how many people there are in the room; move towards, not away, from them and pay attention to what they are talking about. Focus on the content of what you are saying, the song you are singing, the piece of music you are playing and let go the image you have of how you think you look to others.

3. Pay attention to the feedback you are getting from others and begin to construct a more realistic and accurate picture of how you are coming across. Ask for feedback from a friend if you're not sure how you came across. How did I sound?, Did I look very red? Was I coherent?

4. Refuse to entertain post-mortems. Notice how you get caught up in picking on yourself after these events for some little error you may, or may not,

have made. We call these inner conversations "post-mortems". They serve no good purpose except to reinforce false ideas you have clung to for years. Let them go, they are like bad advisers whose only intention is to make you feel bad about yourself.

Another lady in our group, Mairead, had to lead a meeting at work and described how she dreaded it. Theory is fine but there's a time for practical action, so I suggested we set up a role-play. Mairead would play herself and the other members of the group would play her associates at work. Her mission was to lead them in a discussion about marketing a new product.

She started out as she normally would, speaking to the group in a low voice, avoiding eye contact in so far as she could, and sitting quite stooped in the chair. There was very little command in her leadership of the group although she seemed pleasant and had some good ideas. After a while I asked the group to give her feedback. The general verdict was that she was doing something wrong and failing to make a strong impression. It wasn't so much that she seemed anxious, more like she was disinterested. What the group observed were Mairead's safety behaviours and the negative impression she made was simply because she was employing them deliberately to hide her anxiety.

I suggested she did the role play a second time, this time dropping consciously her safety behaviours and taking the huge risk of being herself in the role-play. She was reluctant but with encouragement she accepted the challenge. She sat up straight, unfolded her arms, looked at each of the group, and focused on what she needed to get across. The difference was amazing. She looked so much more authoritative and her voice sounded strong and clear. Everyone was drawn into the task and she carried it off brilliantly. The group gave her very positive feedback and she discovered that she was well able to do the task, but had been doing herself no favours trying to hide behind her safety behaviours. By dropping her defenses, shifting her focus onto the task and receiving positive feedback from the group she had begun to build a new more accurate image of herself in social situations. With lots of practice in real life situations, this new image of herself would have a chance to be strengthened. Her underlying belief that she lacked the wherewithal to lead others could eventually be seen for the lie that it was and she could move beyond her social phobia.

Recommended reading: The above material is covered in much more detail in Gillian Butler's book, "Overcoming Social Anxiety and Shyness" (Robinson, 1999). Another really good read on the general topic of stress reduction in Jon Kabat-Zinn's book, "Full Catastrophe Living". This book describes in a clear and sensible way the importance of managing stress in our day-to-day lives. It particularly introduces the practice of "mindfulness" as the basic strategy for stress management.

Homework:How did you get on with your homework in the past week? Did you become aware of your particular safety behaviours? Did you notice how they kept your attention self-focused rather than focused on the situations you had to deal with?

This week practice dropping your safety behaviours and shifting your attention towards rather than away from situations you find threatening. It may sound easier than it is, but you may be surprised by how dropping what you believe to be critical to control difficult situations actually liberates your energy to deal more effectively with them.

Try dropping one key safety behaviour and notice how you feel in the situation. Relax muscles that you might habitually tense up, lift your shoulders if you find yourself stooping, look someone in the eye rather than avoid eye contact.

I wish you well. Do let us know if this helps you feel less anxious and more confident. We can be contacted through marian@rte.ie

Warmly,

Tony Bates

Week Six:

"No one ever tells us to stop running away from fear. We are rarely told to move closer, to just be there, to become familiar with fear"(Pema Chodron)

"When you're walking through the graveyard at nightand you see a boogeyman, run at it,and it will go away" (Rumi)

Recap on last week:

Our fears are very often driven by beliefs we hold about ourselves that we don't have what it takes to confront some aspect of our outer or inner lives. These beliefs stem from times where we were confronted with painful experiences that were more than we could bear. Over time these beliefs were reinforced and congealed into an image of ourselves as weak, inadequate, stupid, or even crazy.

In situations we face that threaten us, our negative image of ourselves is activated and we become convinced we will be exposed as the weak person we are and once again be traumatized by life.

Anxiety is maintained when our attention becomes focused on our most negative image of ourselves and when we back away from whatever frightens us.

To protect ourselves and prevent the worst from happening, we take refuge in safety behaviours. These are all the ways we try to hide, from our own feelings, or from the gaze of others whom we believe will surely reject us. As long as we hide behind safety behaviours and avoid our fears, we will never discover how capable and resilient we really are.

Progress report on our groupIt's hard to face your fears. You need to feel secure and supported. A group of people who are working together to achieve this goal is a great help. Don't be hard on yourself if you've been finding this hard to do on your own. You've spent many years avoiding whatever you fear and doing the very best you could to try not to get hurt. Maybe you're not even clear what it is you're afraid of because you've been afraid to look at your boogeyman, afraid to walk towards your fear and discover what really happens when you do.

These pages are written to encourage you get to know your fear, to name what it is exactly that makes you want to run and hide, or to immerse yourself in distraction and stay within your comfort zone. The problem with what you're doing is that you could be building a prison for yourself without realising it. We tend to grow into our fears, not out of them. Our aim in this group programme is not to stop people feeling anxious, but to give them a confidence in themselves

so that anxiety no longer stops them from living their lives and becoming all they can be.

Frank, who is co-conducting this group with me, had been part of the very first programme which was held in 1997. This week he read out something he had written following that experience to our group:

My fear was like a wave that got bigger with each year that passed, but it was always behind me. Here at last were others whom I sensed knew what that fear was like. I was willing to turn around and face it if they were. It was like slowly wading out on to Bana strand into the big Atlantic waves, only this time there were others with me and I trusted to hold someone's hand. I allowed myself to experience the fear in its fullest intensity for the first time in my life, and we laughed and cried together as we fell down and helped each other back up again.

Making friends with our fear:This week we reached the half-way point of our 12 week programme. People shared more deeply about the origins of their fears and moved closer to naming what exactly frightens them now in their lives. It takes time to name your fears but it helps enormously to do so. When people start to talk about themselves they are unclear about their feelings. As they relax a little they become aware of sensations in their bodies, emotions that seem to come out of nowhere, and fragments of memories and images from their past. Healing comes from move towards, not away from those parts of ourselves that scare us. As we gently make friends with our pain and put our sorrow into words, we find we can see more clearly why we're afraid and we're able to think about our lives in a new way.

John had always believed he was stupid. He'd grown up hearing that message over and over again and built his life around making sure others never found him out. His memories of his early life were associated with a lot of pain and he was never really able to think clearly about why he felt so inadequate. He left jobs where he had to work closely with others even though he was well capable of fulfilling his duties. He set up his own business eventually to avoid working with others, but in spite of making a success of this he remained convinced he was inferior and his social interactions became more and more limited. He had tried to solve his problems by walking away from the boogeyman in his life, but as he did, the grip his fears had over him only grew tighter. In our group he talked honestly about himself for the first time. He had to struggle with a lot of hurt but as he confronted himself he began to realise he was capable and intelligent and had been buying into a very negative twisted image of himself all of his life. He was helped greatly by the group who gave him honest accurate feedback about his positive impact on them and how much he gave to others. The physical change in him as he began to hear and let in the truth about himself was striking. The icy grip of fear left him as he began to own within himself finally that he was intelligent, warm and immensely caring with a great sense of humour.

Many people find in group therapy that not only do they find the strength to face their fears about themselves, but they get enormous help from the feedback they receive from others. Research has shown over and over that what people most value in group therapy is this feedback. This is rated ahead of anything the leaders might say to them because it is seen to be honest and sincere (the group leaders are often seen as 'caring professionals', who of course would say kind things). Our group has been able to create a feeling of trust and cohesiveness remarkably quickly. This trust makes it possible for people to stay with their fears and pain and get to know their personal 'boogeyman'. To stay with our shakiness - to stay with a broken heart, a churning tummy, a painful sense of being inadequate - and to learn to relax with this and get to know what's it all about, that is the path of recovery.

Recommended readingOne book I would certainly take to a desert island to help me with my own journey, would be "When things fall apart" by Pema Chodron (1997, Shambhala Publications, Inc.; www.shambhala.com). This is a remarkable book for the way it describes how to face fear. Pema Chodron is a Buddhist nun and director of the first Tibetan monastery in the North America. She is gifted in being able to write with wisdom and clarity, combining the best of eastern philosophy with sound psychology. What makes her book so refreshing, is that while she sees happiness and freedom from fear being within all our reach, she sees our very attempts to avoid inevitable pain and suffering as the basis of much of our unhappiness. Her view is entirely consistent with the research in clinical psychology which has highlighted the way our safety behaviours, which we cling to for protection, only serve to imprison us in our distress. She provides simple guidance in mindfulness training and leads the reader, with compassion and humour, to an appreciation and respect for their particular journey.

Homework

GIVE YOURSELF A BREAK!Notice where you tend to attack and bully yourself when you feel distressed or frightened. Try giving yourself a break this week. Practice speaking to yourself as you might to a good friend in the same situation. This is one of the ways to develop a compassionate attitude towards your suffering. Notice how you soften inside when you extend warmth and kindness to yourself and compare this with the way you tense up and harden into resentment, when you persist in attacking yourself. And if you can't silence the inner bully, be compassionate about that and lighten up. It's hard to break old habits!

MAKE FRIENDS WITH YOUR FEARTake some time each day (start with a discipline of 3 minutes morning and evening) to practice relaxation and being mindful of yourself in the present moment. Notice what feelings come up and allow yourself move towards them. See if you can get to know them, name them and make friends with them, rather than run from them. If you find yourself becoming very upset doing this exercise, bring your attention back to your breathing and tuning in to the rhythm of your inbreath and your outbreath, say to yourself: "Breathing in, I'm aware I feel upset... Breathing out, it's ok to feel upset". Continuing to follow the rhythm of your breathing, you might also want to try saying "Breathing in I am aware I am frightened...breathing out, I know I have courage". Breathe in to whatever upsetting emotion you are experiencing and breathe out to some quality you know to be true about yourself that indicates strength (eg breathing out I know.. "I care" "I don't give up" "I'm doing the best that I can"). This practice of being aware of the pain we feel and of reminding ourselves also that we are resilient, grounds us, and allows us to face our feelings without being overwhelmed by them. When our distress is cradled in compassionate awareness, the intensity of our feelings gradually reduces and our experience becomes bearable.

Do take care of yourself this week. I will let you know what happens in the group this week, and include information on some resources you might want to consider for support. These will include information on groups around Ireland which offer support and education that may be relevant to your particular difficulties. May I wish you well in the coming week and peace of mind....

Factsheet 7

Week Seven - Resources: This week's factsheet is briefer than usual as I have been away on vacation. After a short update on the progress of the group I have mainly focused this factsheet on informing you of mental support groups and professionals who might be a resource for you.

Progress Report" Fear is a natural reaction to moving closer to the truth"- Pema Chodron

The theme this week concerned fear confronting what is most painful and true in their life and how they numb themselves to this reality. Susan described how she has focused enormous attention on concealing her tendency to blush in social situations. This provided a focus for her fears but the real problem was not so much her blushing. This week she became very frightened within the group as she talked about how acutely she was beginning to feel her feelings. As one member put it "the anesthetic was wearing off" in the safe environment of the group. She had noticed during the week that while at home alone she had begun to cry for no apparent reason at all. Facing oneself and being open to oneself means welcoming with respect whatever feelings arise, no matter how surprising and unexpected they are.

Mary had described becoming very sad after talking about herself at last week's session. However, she also reported that she woke the next day feeling "calm and more together" than she had in a long, long time. Situations and behaviours that had irritated and upset her in the previous months didn't bother her this week. She laughed rather the shouted at her children as they threw cereal at each other across the table.

Finally, Paul had appeared on the show to describe his growth in self-confidence in the first six weeks of the group. His willingness to speak openly about his experience of being part of the group was greatly appreciated by the others and they were very proud of the way he represented "their programme." He felt very happy to have undertaken the challenge of speaking live on the radio and was remarkable in how he described his own experience of fear as a child and how it had limited his life since. His decision to come on this course was largely as a result of coming to a realization that "enough was enough" and it was "time to take the bull by the horns." Recovery begins in that moment where we acknowledge a particular difficulty and take responsibility for it, rather than avoid it, resign ourselves to it or seek to blame others for the difficulties we now face.

Fear frozen in time, Time frozen in fear.I now realise that I had numbed the experience of my fear and anxiety and avoided every situation that could remind me of it. But in the very act of avoidance, my fears became more entrenched and my existence more restricted. I noticed after a number of group meetings a great sadness come over me, as the full extent of what had happened to me began to register. I felt as vulnerable and as frightened as that teenager in the classroom, but I was now 34, not 14. It was like the anesthetic was beginning to wear off. The pain of the past rushed to the fore as the uncried tears of so long ago and so recent found safe expression within the group. To deal with the past in the present was difficult enough for me, but what really frightened me was dealing with the future. If only I could have seen then that that was exactly what I, and the others, were doing in the group. Through acknowledging and understanding our past, we were creating a different future, and through that process, the group had given back to me what I had taken from myself. Frank

ResourcesMental Health Support Groups

Out and About Association140 St. Lawrence's RoadClontarf, Dublin(01) 833 8252Out and About is a national self-help organisation that helps sufferers of agoraphobia and panic attacks.

Grow Community Mental Health Movement167 Capel Street, Dublin 1(01) 873 4029 GROW has offices nationwide.

Recovery Inc.c/o Tallaght Welfare Society1 Main Street, Tallaght, Dublin(01) 451 5911Recovery Inc is a self-help mental health programme for people suffering from anxiety, phobias, depression, panic attacks, and nervous symptoms.

Counselling/Therapy

Group Analytic Practice Ltd.Therapy Consultancy29 Lower Abbey St, Dublin 1(01) 878 6486

Clanwilliam Institute18 Clanwilliam TerraceGrand Canal Quay, Dublin 2(01) 676 1363www.clanwilliam.ie/office@clanwilliam.ie

Dubhlinn Institute16 Prospect Road, Dublin 9(01) 830 2358

Arduna Counselling & Psychotherapy54 Clontarf Road, Dublin 3(01) 833 2733

Miriam UhlemannAnalytic Psychotherapy and Counselling Office 187 High Street, Kilkenny City(087) 2871706

Eileen KavanaghGroup PsychotherapistFairview Therapy Centre10 Fairview Strand, Dublin 3(01) 856 1289

Irish Association for Counselling and Therapy8 Cumberland Street, Dun Laoghaire, Co. Dublin(01) 230 0061www.irish-counselling.ie iact@irish-counselling.ie This is the professional body for counselling and therapy in Ireland.

Psychological Society of IrelandCX House2A Corn Exchange PlacePoolbeg Street, Dublin 2(01) 671 7122This is the professional body for psychologists in Ireland.

Irish Council for Psychotherapy73 Quinns Road, Shankill, Co. Dublin

(01) 272 2105www.icpty.ie info@icpty.ie

Other Organisations

AWARE72, Lower Leeson StreetDublin 2Helpline 1890 303 302www.aware.ieinfo@aware.ie

Alcoholics Anonymous109 South Circular Rd, Dublin 8(01) 453 8998www.alcoholicsanonymous.ie

The Samaritans112 Marlborough Street, Dublin 1Helpline 1850 60 90 90

HomeworkThis week the group is reading chapters 1-3 of Pema Chodron's book "When Things Fall Apart" which you can access directly through www.shambhala.com

Facing our Fears - Week Eight:

Slaying the Dragon

We have not even to risk the journey alone,for the heroes of all times have gone before us.The labyrinth is thoroughly known,we have only to follow the thread of the path of the hero,And where we thought to find abomination, we shall find a god,And where we thought to slay another, we shall slay ourselves,And where we thought to travel outwards, we shall come to the center of our own existence,And where we thought ourselves to be alone, we shall be one with all the world.

Joseph Campbell

This week's theme concerns change. Life inevitably and continually draws us into opportunities to change and transform our lives. We are challenged to move beyond the comfort of what is immediately familiar and safe, to let go of attachments to images of ourselves as inadequate, and to open ourselves to a larger field of human experience. Joseph Campbell, philosopher of myth and cultural stories, uses the metaphor of life being a 'journey'. He sees each of us as having a responsibility to ourselves and to others, to venture as heroes into the unknown and bring home our triumphs and our discoveries to the community in which we live. In the passage of moving from what is known to what we yet need to discover, we define our identity

Our courage in facing some potential threat reveals resources in our personalities that we've denied. As we set forth on our journey there are trials to be undertaken, dragons to be slain. These trials may be subtle, barely noticeable to others, but they are giant steps to us. We may choose to speak at a meeting instead of remaining silent for fear of not making sense; we may practice trying to be present to others and what they are saying, rather than being preoccupied

with the impression we are making on them; we may risk dropping a safety behaviour upon which we have relied to hide our vulnerability from others. The dragons to be confronted are our beliefs and assumptions ('I'm not good enough, brave enough, loveable enough, etc'; 'to be acceptable, I must hide my vulnerabilities, cover up my fears, maintain an acceptable front in all social encounters, etc') that must be named and challenged if we are to expose their negative impact on our lives. Otherwise, as Campbell says:

We remain fixated to the unexorcised images of our infancy, and hence disinclined to the necessary passages of our adulthood.

Dragons represent in European mythology those tendencies of humans to become attached to, bound up in, fear, mistrust and small-mindedness. Slaying the dragon means becoming aware of those ways our minds imprison our lives and choosing to act in a way that exposes the lies with which we have deluded ourselves.

The great myths handed down in every culture serve to symbolize the journey each of us has to take in our particular lives, and supply us with a kind of map to alert us to what we might well expect. Below, we will suggest some concrete ways you can move beyond wherever you may be stuck, or needing encouragement, in your journey

Progress report on our group:This was a painful week for our group, a week when they were required to make a short journey. After allowing them to become safe and secure in our usual group room, where they had been meeting for the first seven weeks of the programme, we moved them to a nearby video studio and had them sit in a strange environment, beneath the gaze of two fixed cameras. This was necessary if we were to employ video feedback as a way of correcting distorted images they held of how they came across to other people. We invited them to just take time to feel what it was like to have cameras observing their discussion and they reported these having quite a dramatic impact on their felt sense of security. Some welcomed the challenge and spoke more assertively than ever before. Most of the group, however, were seized with anxiety. Somehow, they felt the camera would 'find them out' in ways that even others in the group never could. They sat uneasily trying to hide their faces and their inner turmoil. One lady became very angry with me for exposing her vulnerability in this way. Another behaved bravely in trying to put on a strong front, but she couldn't sustain this and soon became more openly anxious than she had ever appeared previously. Whilst this was difficult for them, the great advantage of introducing video was that it brought them to a place where they had the precise feelings they felt in normal everyday social encounters. Their personal dragons had been lured out into the open.

Their concern for each other began to take precedence over their own fears and there was an even deeper level of honesty and supportive feedback in the group than previously. During the coming weeks we will be setting up particular scenarios, or behavioural experiments, where each person in the group will try out different ways of managing their anxiety under stressful conditions which embody their worst fears. As well as feedback from the group the introduction of video technology means they will have the opportunity to watch themselves afterwards and check out the accuracy of their image of themselves as they confront a personal fear with others.

Confronting our dragon: dropping safety behavioursSafety behaviours are those strategies we come to rely on to keep us safe from anticipated disasters that rarely, if ever, happen. Perhaps one time we were traumatized and now we live with a terror of ever revisiting a similar experience. We believe we will not be able to bear it but we never move beyond that fear to

discover if there is something to be scared of. Instead we cling to our defenses, convinced that to let go of them would bring a kind of annihilation. Whilst they appear to protect us, they are in reality part of the engine that creates and maintains our fearful relationship with the world. Our only hope of seeing this for ourselves is to drop them and these exercises are to help you do this in a systematic way....

Gillian Butler outlines four steps which we will follow in giving up safety behaviours:

1. Identify what you do to protect yourself. Because we have incorporated our safety behaviours into our lives in such a consistent way, they have become automatic and we may well have very little awareness that we do them. We don't notice ourselves rehearsing in advance what we're going to say, or choosing the 'right' sort of clothes. Becoming aware of these behaviours is essential if we are to risk letting them go. Think about a recent social situation which you found difficult and ask yourself, 'What did I do to hide my nervousness?'; 'What steps did I take to prevent bad things happening?'; 'What kind of things do I do generally to stop other people seeing I may not be all they might expect me to be?'.... Write down as many safety behaviours as you can and keep adding to the list as you become aware of them in the next couple of days.

2. Make a prediction. This step involves trying to think about what you believe would happen if you were to give up your safety behaviours. Think about an event which may be happening very soon in your life, something that is causing you anxiety, and focus on the following question carefully: What is the worst thing that could happen to you?.. This may be hard to think about and require you to walk down the labyrinth in your mind until you can see and name the dragon that lurks there. Then write it down. One of the members in our group described the terror of taking off her makeup in the group, which she agreed was clearly a safety behaviour she needed to drop. It was hard to answer the above question but she was gradually able to describe her image of herself walking in to the room and everyone seeing her as a completely different person. She would look redder than we could ever imagine and she would be so distressed and anxious that she would make others really uncomfortable. In fact it was this prediction that she would make others uncomfortable that made her particularly reluctant to give up her make-up. Notice that her predicted disaster wasn't simply that she would go red, but that something really frightening would happen.. When you write down your prediction, make it as concrete and specific as possible, so that it can be tested out when you drop your safety behaviours.

3. Find out what happens if you give up using your safety behaviours. Choose a situation that is likely to be difficult for you and decide to drop one of the safety behaviours you have identified earlier. Here is where you choose to walk unguarded into the labyrinth and see how dangerous this dragon really is. You might decide to look people in the eye and not engage in avoiding eye contact like you usually do. Or you may choose to sit in the middle of a social occasion rather than hide yourself in the bookshelves near the door, ready for a speedy escape if things get too hot. In the words of Gillian Butler, 'The aim is to find out if the danger you fear is real, and in order to do this you need to drop your armour and see if the disaster you fear comes to pass'. This is a tough step and one where you may have to dig deep into the well of your own courage and determination. The truth is that the worst seldom happens, but lots of negative things do happen as long as we live our lives clinging to our safety behaviours.

4. Evaluate what happens.. When you follow though with this experiment watch and evaluate what happens. Don't be confused that the worst has happened just because you feel anxious. The effort it has taken and the

intense emotion you've aroused in yourself by taking such a personal risk, is bound to leave you feeling exhausted. But this doesn't mean the worst has happened. With repeated practice this won't be such an emotionally draining experience. Take a good look at the situation in which you have dropped your safety behaviour and watch carefully how other people around you are behaving. Having allowed yourself go through this exercise, ask yourself what it has revealed about your fearful predictions? Did what you expected happen, or did something else happen? What does this experience suggest about your negative thoughts? Are they valid, or have they just been like bad advisors in your head for year filling you with mistrust in yourself and keeping you a prisoner of your fear? It may be hard for you to draw firm conclusions from this one experiment; clarity and comfort will only come by repeating the above as often as you get the chance, deliberately, on purpose and with full awareness of what happens around you when you do.

HomeworkThe exercises above detail a number of very practical steps you may be ready to take to break the grip of fear over aspects of your life. If you would like also to reflect on a couple of specific issues which we will be elaborating on next week, write a short account in response to each of the following questions....

A. Identify something that my anxiety stops me from doing in my everyday life?

B. What are some key beliefs I hold about myself, that contribute to my being fearful?

C. To what extent have I allowed my fears to influence my sense of who I am? D. Who would I be if I didn't have this problem of anxiety?

Recommended reading The material this week is elaborated in detail in chapter 8 of Gillian Butler's book, 'Overcoming Social Anxiety and Shyness' (Robinson, 1999). There are exercise forms on p 254 which can be copied and used in completing the Safety Behaviour experiment.

For background reading and inspiration, the book of Joseph Campbell's book, "The Hero with a thousand faces" (Princeton University Press, 1973) is a fascinating classic in the field of mythology. It is clearly written, well researched and describes from a psychological perspective, the significance of different cultural myths, for the inner journey we are all called to undertake.

Facing our Fears - Week Nine:

Were the diver to think of the jaws of the shark he would never lay hands on the pearl... (Sa'di)

The years of putting a calm exterior on what was absolute inner turmoil were coming to an end. The group had literally turned me inside out, through their respectful acknowledgement of my fears and failures. I found within myself an acceptance of my own anxiety and for the first time in my life I felt compassion for all I had been through alone. The cry for help had been answered and the reward was beyond anything I could ever have imagined.(Frank)

Progress Report

This week the group had its first night of video experiments. This required them to drop key safety behaviors which they had relied on for years and face their worst fear in the supportive environment of the group. The courage this required should not be under-estimated. To let go of those strategies that you have believed for years have been your only protection against unbearable exposure and ridicule is not easy.

Mary, who had spent up to two hours daily putting on layers of make-up to hide her vulnerabilities from the world, left the room, took off all her make-up and returned to the group. She tested out her belief that the others would be shocked if they saw her and feel deeply upset on her behalf. What happened was simply that she was welcomed and given enormous warmth and encouragement for her bravery. Her worst fear did not happen. She became quite upset, partly because she was so moved by the acceptance she received, partly from the equally painful realization that she had been misguided by her fear for all these years. Whatever we subscribe to by way of our beliefs and our chosen way of living in this world is our way. It generally reflects the best we can do in a given set of circumstances. So it's not easy to discover that perhaps we might have been freer in lots of important ways had we only confronted the voice of fear in our minds earlier in our life.

Lisa had been on the radio earlier in the day with Marian, which was a very liberating experience for her. She never believed she could do this and she well and truly proved herself wrong. She spoke openly and genuinely about her struggle of 23 years with blushing. For the past 19 years she had been to every kind of therapy to learn to stop blushing and her most recent attempt was to undergo surgery to eliminate it. All her attempts had failed. Over the course of the group, she has developed a very different relationship with herself, based on a deep acceptance of her blushing. She found a new freedom by realizing she didn't have to hide this aspect of herself from the world anymore. She is more confident, more assertive and more at ease with those close to her. No doubt, Lisa's courage in talking on the show had helped Mary to face her fear.

Susan has accomplished the goal she set herself in the first session which was to tell one other person she was attending our programme. During the previous weekend, she had confided in her husband that she was attending, thus transforming something that had been a source of tension in their relationship from a secret that was kept hidden, to an opportunity to understand each others inner struggles more and to grow closer in their marriage. Susan also presented a short talk to the group on video under two different conditions. Firstly, she spoke with her safety behaviours: head down, voice lowered, avoiding eye contact, hiding behind the flip-chart. This was her normal style, and whilst she might not have looked particularly anxious, she certainly appeared distant, uninterested in what she had to say and lacking in self-confidence. Secondly, she dropped these safety strategies and in doing so took on a different demeanour entirely. She stood out in front of the group, kept her focus on her audience, looked them in the eye and spoke with a level of enthusiasm for what she was saying that engaged her listeners and had them sitting up wanting to learn more. This shifting of attention away from oneself and onto the audience is perhaps the most important element in moving beyond fear, connecting with the present moment and concentrating on whatever task at hand.

In our next session, we will play back clips of these experiments and allow each participant to see for themselves how they looked when they elected to drop their safety behaviours and take the risk of letting others see their vulnerability.

Overcoming your fear of social situations

To break the vicious cycle of negative thoughts, feelings and behaviours that characterize social anxiety, the following strategies are critical:

1. Identify your particular safety behaviours and choose to drop them (see Week *8 fact sheet for a detailed account of this step).

2. Shift the focus of your attention away from yourself (your bodily sensations, emotional turmoil and negative predictions about the terrible things that are definitely going to happen) and gently guide it to others with whom you are relating to (or the task in which you are engaged). Self-focused attention keeps you anxious. It prevents you from seeing how others are actually reacting to you and keeps alive in your mind your worst nightmare of how you imagine you appear to others. Maybe other people are not as interested in you as you think they are. Maybe they're looking off into space, worried about issues in their own personal lives. Or maybe they're actually looking at you in a friendly way, curious to hear what you have to contribute and delighted that someone other than themselves is center stage. Safety behaviours are pernicious because they keep your attention on yourself and prevent you from discovering that your fears are ungrounded. Dropping them is the first step to shifting your attention and giving yourself some chance of becoming calm and grounded.

3. If you're upset about something, risk sharing it rather than trying to hide it There is probably very little we could say about our experience of being anxious that would come as a shock to others. The people we are with are more like us than they are different. The great illusion of the socially anxious is that you believe other people are fine, they don't have worries and vulnerabilities like you, and they would be terribly disappointed if they knew you actually felt terrified at times. So you keep your vulnerability a secret. Sometimes it's necessary to deliberately test out your belief by risking telling someone what's bothering you. This might involve doing what Susan in our group did, when she told her husband she was attending a programme for overcoming social anxiety. Or maybe you might find yourself suddenly called upon to speak at a social gathering and want to run. You have the choice in such a moment to hide behind safety behaviours, lock your attention onto your uncomfortable bodily sensations and become paralysed by anxiety. Or you could move your attention back to your audience and say "Now, if you bear with me for a moment while I gather my thoughts, I actually find these situations quite difficult..."

4. Identify your negative beliefs and unreasonable social expectations Many socially anxious people are overly attached to negative beliefs they hold about themselves in respect to what they can and can't do. Because they are never open with others about these insecurities, they never get feedback about whether or not they are true. Take, for example, the person who feels they have nothing interesting to contribute in a conversation. They don't articulate this fear to anyone because they are convinced others will say something like "I'm glad you brought that up because I've been sitting here thinking how seriously uninteresting you are. In fact you are probably the most uninteresting person I have ever met..." If this happened, they would very likely feel shattered. But how are they ever to know how they actually come across to others unless they actually ask for some feedback? A simple question to a friend they trust, for example, "Tom, when you notice me around other people, how do I come across?" might be a revelation and identify some very positive qualities they've never noticed in themselves. Much suffering and anxiety comes from rigid family rules about how one should always behave in social situation if we are to be accepted. Generally, these rules can be summarized as "Don't feel, don't trust, don't tell". They communicate to a young child that acceptance is conditional upon being always seen to be on top of things, never appearing angry, unreasonable, or fearful. The child grows into an adult who carries these 'rules' into every social encounter

and struggles to live up to them to ensure acceptance. Social anxiety is perpetuated by the perception that other people expect far more of us than in fact is the case. It can be important to identify what we believe others expect of us and check out if other people also believe this. The sure way to put the lie to these unrealistic expectations of ourselves is to 'break the rule" and see what happens. If you feel you must always be in good form and the life and soul of the party, allow yourself to be quiet and 'off duty' in certain gatherings and see what happens. If you feel you must sound competent in every aspect of your life, see what happens when you admit to being very incompetent in some specific area of life.

5. Beware post-mortems...

One of the really hurtful and harmful activities that socially anxious people engage in is the habit of replaying any social encounter they have had and picking on themselves for all they did wrong, rather than acknowledging what they did right. They ignore how courageous they were to hang in there, and how much better they are handling certain situations compared to how they were doing a year ago. This cruel habit of putting oneself down with contempt for one's difficulties is guaranteed to keep social anxiety alive. Beware of this voice. Notice how determined it is to stop you taking risks and moving on with your life. Notice how it makes you feel and ask yourself "Do I really want to listen to this destructive voice or do I want to build up my confidence with each social encounter I have?" And then see if you can begin to talk to yourself as you might to a good friend who has just been through an ordeal and needs some recognition and positive constructive feedback.

This approach to helping people overcome social anxiety and shyness is new and has been developed from research we have carried out in St James's Hospital. Results suggest that this is helpful in getting people 'unstuck' and allowing them move on with their lives. Unlike previous attempts to address this problem that had relied on exposure, relaxation training and social skill training, this approach focuses on changing the individual's image of themselves in social encounters, helping them identify and drop safety behaviours and encouraging them to test out beliefs about themselves and others that maintain their fear of letting anyone get close. Breaking out of social anxiety frees a person from a prison of isolation, shame and terror. To find the freedom to be yourself with others opens up possibilities of closeness which can enrich and sustain us in living our lives. Recognising that we are stuck is the first step. Listening to our longing for freedom and encouraging ourselves to try new ways of dealing with age-old problems can sustain us in moving through and beyond our fear.

Exercise

A breathing exercise to ground you and calm you before making a presentation

Breathing in, I accept that I am anxious about this presentation... Breathing out, I can allow myself be anxious... Breathing in, I accept that I have all I need to make this presentation... Breathing out, I

can allow myself to put aside all other concerns and do this well...

Practice this breathing exercise before the talk. Repeat the process until you find your focus shifting away from frightening images of what might/could happen and coming to rest in a belief within yourself that you can do this well. Before your actual presentation, stand up wherever you happen to be (outside in the car park, standing out in the corridor, etc), go through the process above, find your

strength and let it drop to your feet and connect you firmly with where you are standing. When the time comes, imagine your fear as a door before you and decide within yourself to walk through it and trust that you will handle whatever waits for you on the other side...

Facing our Fears - Week Ten:

What fortitude the soul contains,That it can so endure the accent of a coming foot,The opening of a door...Emily Dickenson

Courage and ResilienceWe can easily fill our minds with extraordinary fantasies about dangers that lurk in wait for us. These fears can shape the quality of our lives, holding us in the same place day in day out, never letting us move to that edge where we experience a freshness in our lives, as we respond to the invitation to become more fully the person we are capable of being. To cross over daily from chartered to unchartered territory requires courage. This courage comes from a belief in ourselves and from a recognition of a resilience in our personalities. It took courage to be born, to survive school, the nit and grit of exams, broken friendships and the disappointments and losses we endured. So often we lose sight of the strengths we have and the hardships we have confronted and overcome in our lives. Facing our fears comes from setting aside those fantasies that make us cling to our defenses, but also from connecting with and trusting that part of ourselves that has never given up, that believes we can be more.

Progress ReportOver the past ten weeks our group has addressed fears and anxieties that are familiar to all of us:"Why do I get so worked up?""What do I need to do so that I don't end up like my dad?""Why do I feel so anxious even when there is nothing wrong?""Why do I become so afraid when I'm put on the spot?""What kind of person would I be if I wasn't worried all the time?""Why do I seem to lack confidence in myself at those times when I most need it?"

They have struggled together to put into words the fears they have lived with daily as feelings and tensions in their bodies. Saying them out loud, naming their fears has been important, but doing that in a group setting where others have validated and echoed their pain has allowed a gentle healing to begin to happen. The task for us as facilitators has been to help each of them put some shape on their everyday experience of anxiety and make sense of it. The social anxiety model we have used, which has been so richly developed in Gillian Butler's book, has revealed how our fears are often born out of early life experience and the doubts and insecurities we internalize as a result.

In our work over the past few weeks, we have introduced the concept of 'safety behaviours' to show how we all perpetuate our fears through the very strategies we engage in to protect ourselves from them. We grip the stem of the wine glass ever so tightly, because we are so afraid of being seen to shake. This very act actually increases the likelihood of our hand shaking, but nonetheless we insist on employing this safety strategy to protect us from being exposed and ridiculed.

Not only have we gradually helped each participant identify their safety behaviours, we have invited and encouraged them to drop these strategies and see what actually happens when we name our fears but refuse to buy into them:

Catching yourself getting worked up and taking time out to relax and gently asking yourself what it is you're upset about. What is it your emotions are trying to connect you with?

Acknowledging that we carry aspects of our parents in us and learning to accept and tame these rather than persisting in trying to deny them and to push them away;

Taking time to be mindful of our emotions and to compassionately admit when we feel anxious and allow ourselves to be troubled, even when there is no immediately obvious reason for our distress;

Risking being spontaneous; taking a risk when we might prefer to stay out of the limelight and invest enormous energy in controlling all that happens around us;

Realising that we are not our symptoms of depression or anxiety, they are part of our experience everyday and they reflect in important ways our vulnerabilities and insecurities, but they do not define us. Allowing ourselves to acknowledge our deeper selves and to risk sharing that with others more fully;

Believing there is more to us than was affirmed in us as children, and not being so convinced by the labels and insults we carry from our early lives.

This takes time and over the course of our group people have invested time within sessions and between sessions, to get to know themselves and catch themselves as they get seduced into outdated and jaded forms of dealing with life. This week we took some of the group into difficult territory where they were truly called upon to be spontaneous and interact more openly and honestly with the rest of us. It was amazing to see how the courage of one person evoked deeper levels of care and support form the others. John was exposed to two strangers who were invited into the group to hear him give an unprepared talk about why it has taken him over 10 years to find the courage to face a wedding ceremony. For all his attempts to avoid being put on the spot, he found himself well and truly in the hot seat, and he was fantastic. He openly talked about how hard he has tried to avoid being the center of attention, but he concluded his talk by saying he was actually looking forward to getting married later this year, and after our experiment, he felt he could certainly handle his wedding speech.

We gave each person a 'Recovery Blueprint' exercise to take home and complete for the next session. This has proven a very helpful exercise in allowing people pull together what they have learned and clarifying what strengths and resources they can call on when confronted by challenging situations in the weeks and months ahead. I have included a copy of this form which will be discussed in some depth by our group on the Marian Finucane Show, Tuesday, June 10th. The group has invited Marian and her crew to sit in on our next meeting as they reflect on what value the group has been to each of them, what they've learned about their fears and how they've experienced naming and facing them. This will probably be the first time on radio that people can learn first hand what a group therapy experience is really about, how tough it is, and how transforming it can be... Don't miss it!

Contact me with your feedback.

Writing this website fact sheet each week has been a curious experience, somewhat like sending out messages in a bottle. Not quite sure where they end up, but hoping they find a home with some people. I have tried to present some overview of our programme in the hope that it will speak to your personal struggle with fear and anxiety. I hope some of what you've read has been helpful and

encouraging and it would be great to have some feedback from you. Perhaps you might be good enough to write to me and tell me what, if anything, has been helpful to you in reading these entries. My direct email address is cencogther@eircom.net Even a brief comment would be very much appreciated and I will try to refer to them in a general way (without breaking any confidences or naming names) in my final day on Marian's programme which will Tuesday June 10th. Thank you so much for your interest and for the time you've taken to read these entries. There is one more to go so I will save my goodbyes until next week....

Recovery Blueprint Form....Exercise: Recovery Blueprint

1. What have I learned about what makes me anxious? 2. What negative thoughts do I typically get when I become frightened? 3. What has been most helpful to me in this 'facing your fears' course? 4. How will I (a) act differently (b) think differently, in facing situations I find

challenging? 5. What is next step I need to take to further my recovery? 6. What personal strengths and supports do I have to help me?

Facing our Fears - Week Eleven:

In our final discussion on air with Marian, which featured all of our group, there were three things which seemed to summarise what we had discovered together over the course of our 3-month journey together:

1. Accept what is happening in your life without resentment or shame. Our pain unfolds in a different way when cradled in compassionate awareness (Pema Chodron) Much of our suffering is compounded by the refusal to accept that wherever we are, that's probably where we are meant to be in this moment. Mostly we berate ourselves for not being somewhere else and we shame ourselves with accusations that we are weak or stupid for not having been able to cope better with the trials we encounter or avoid them in the first place. You do yourself a big favour by simply taking time to gently breathe and hold in your awareness the place you find yourself at this time and allow yourself to experience as fully as you can the feelings you have in the present moment...

Breathing in, I recognize that I am sad (or hurt, or afraid, or confused) Breathing out, I allow myself be sad (or hurt, or afraid, or confused)Whatever experience we are caught up in is what is real for us now and requires our attention. Life does not ask of us that we be somewhere else, but rather that we pay attention to the struggle which is upon us and listen to our deepest intuitions of what we need to do by way of a response. The problem with prescriptive psychology books is that what might be good advice for one person caught up in a particular state of distress, might be quite poor advice for someone else in a similar crisis. A more sustainable solution for each of us is to find ways of paying attention to our changing experience of life and to connect with the full richness of our inner strength in responding to each challenge we meet.

What emerged among the people in our group was a realization of how hard they had found it to acknowledge and accept their fears. They felt alone and ashamed for being afraid and worked up in their everyday lives. Your emails have continually mentioned what a relief it is to realize how common it is to feel anxious and you expressed appreciation for not feeling quite so alone in your distress, having heard others share theirs.

In addition to acceptance, it is important to believe that the struggle in

which you are engaged is exactly what you may need to become the person you are capable of being. This kind of faith allows each of us to confront rather than reject our difficulties and to believe there is some meaning and purpose in facing up to them.

2. Identify people and activities that give you courage and drink from that well as often as you need to. You may have noticed how encounters with some people leave you unsettled and unsure of yourself while other encounters seem to lift your spirits and boost your self-confidence. Also, there are activities such as walking by the sea, reading a favorite author or poet, which refresh and empower you, while other activities such as staying too long in bed, drinking too much or isolating yourself for long periods, leave you feeling weak and increasingly afraid. A key to survival is identifying what en-courages you and strengthens your resolve to face up to difficulties and challenges you will inevitably encounter. Trust whatever you have in your life that reminds you of your own dignity and courage and beware people and places which seem to remind you more of what is wrong with you than what is right with you.

3. You only have to do one thing...  A common reason for feeling overwhelmed is that we think of all the problems in our lives, all the many responsibilities we have fulfill, instead of the one thing we have to do next. Life only ever asks of us that we do one thing, one thing at a time.

Our group achieved a lot and we are proud of them. But they didn't by any means solve all the problems in their lives. What they did was to identify some small way each day that they could face their fears and give themselves the opportunity to grow in self-esteem and self-respect. As our group draws to a close, they leave with a better understanding of what happens when they become afraid and what options they have when overcome by panic. Their recovery blueprints help them identify the challenges that still await them and they leave with a calmer sense of what they can do next in their lives, rather than with some formula for ridding their lives of fear forever.

As you become mindful of where you are in your life at this time, and of the resources of friendship, support and inner strength that are available to you, ask yourself, "What is one thing that might be good for me to attend to in the coming days?" It may not seem extraordinary to others or even be noticed, but if it carries you forward instead of leaving you feeling stuck and agitated, then you might owe it to yourself to confront this challenge and see what happens.

Our Journey's endThis fact sheet is the final one in this series. It brings to an end a journey through fear for both our group participants and those of you who have followed our progress through this website. It's been an exciting project which has required the cooperation of many individuals. I would like to thank Marian Finucane and her production team, especially Anne Farrell, series producer of the programme for risking this venture and for their tremendous sensitivity to all those who contacted the show to seek help and advice for themselves or their loved ones. Our participants were always treated with the utmost respect and admiration by the team in their contacts with the show. When they courageously spoke out on the programme about their own struggles with fear and anxiety, their sole aim in doing so was to reach others who felt isolated and confused and to communicate to them that they were not alone.

To Frank, who has been a tremendous group co-facilitator and support to me throughout this project, I extend a warm thanks. His story of overcoming fear and claiming the life denied to him through social anxiety was a key element in

attracting each of our participants to embark on this adventure. His gift is not merely a fine mind which discerns key issues that maintain anxiety, but an informed heart which extends to each individual a recognition of both their pain and their amazing dignity.

We come to an end which is really a new beginning for each of us. There was a sadness in saying goodbye to each other, but also a satisfaction in the feeling of a job well done. Three months is a long time to sustain an effort to change one's life in a fundamental way. It was good to draw a line in the sand and move back into the everyday nit and grit of our lives seeing where newly found self-confidence could translate into small but live-enhancing freedoms. What changed was not that problems disappeared but that a change occurred in the relationship of each participant to their fears. They each reported an increase in self-acceptance and a confidence that would enable them not to allow their fears to dictate the texture of their everyday lives. These achievements were hard won; they had faced down their personal dragons, walked towards the bogeyman, discarded safety behaviours and discovered through each others feedback a new and much truer sense of who they were.

For me it was an extraordinary privilege to journey with them and act as their guide. Therapists don't change people, people change themselves. We simply hold for each client a faith in their ability to assume their true identities and shed their defensive armour. To hear each person in our group describe the subtle but important ways they had grown was all the thanks that both myself and Frank would have ever wished. I wish them, and you our readers, the very best. Don't ever give up on that sense you carry inside you of the person you really are. Face your fears when they threaten to take hold of your life and hold you prisoner. You owe that to yourself and those who look to you for a sense of what life can mean when you welcome all it brings and respond wholeheartedly to the invitation it extends to each of us.

Tony Bates

Email: cencogther@eircom.net