Fear Street

Fear Street

When I was a teenager, I devoured book after book of the R.L. Stine thriller series, Fear Street. The front cover images invited me to imagine what troubled fate awaited the characters, wondering if they would make it out alive. My heart would pound with each suspenseful turn of the page. Any abrupt noise from beyond my bedroom door, instantly sending me on high alert.  

It is one thing to read these stories for entertainment, underneath the comfort of a cozy blanket. Feeling accomplished for the healthy dose of hypervigilance that allowed for you to predict the impending doom awaiting at the end of the proverbial dark alleyway. It is another to have prolonged experiences of intense fear and jolts of adrenaline that seem to creep up out of nowhere and keep you continuously on edge. 

I fine-tuned my skills of preventing and preparing through reading these books. Screaming at the characters, “No!!! Turn back, it’s a trap!” Foreseeing what was going to happen, trying to redirect them out of harm's way. While simultaneously realizing that I fail countless times at diverting the danger of my own scary thoughts when they start to take over my mind. 

After years of suffering from anxiety, I’ve been able to uncover some key points of knowledge explaining what is happening behind the scenes of fear, worry, hypervigilance, and anxiety. This understanding has played a huge role in my own pathway to healing. 

Fear

First, on a very basic level, I had to truly get in touch with fear and understand its purpose. Fear is an emotion that arises when imminent danger is detected. Fear’s primary function is survival. When a threat to our safety is detected, we must elicit a response to ensure our survival.

The possible actions activated within the body in response to fear are fight, flight, or freeze.

Fear initiates our body to assess the situation and engage in the best option in an effort to overcome the threat and survive. Chemicals are released in our body as a result. When adrenaline is released, our heart begins to pound, our limbs may begin to tingle, our stomach will make us feel the need to eliminate in an effort to use all of our resources to fight or flee. Or when there is no way out, our pulse may slow and all unnecessary body functions shut down when it is determined the only safe option is to freeze and “play dead,” until the threat is removed.

When the fear cycle is completed, the body begins to relax, experiencing cues of safety, the heart rate begins to slow, breaths become longer, and the nervous system returns to its parasympathetic state of rest and digestion. 

In our world today, we have largely overcome the primal fears of being faced with predators in the woods where we physically need to fight for our lives. The challenges we face in our daily lives come from being unable to complete this cycle, leaving us in an activated state. 

“The reason for our fight or flight reactions is usually not about a threat to our physical safety. In our modern world, it is much more often about a threat to our emotional safety.” - Dr. Russel Kennedy, Anxiety Rx.

Hiding out

In my early years, I learned a widely fear-based view of the world— that it’s a scary place. I gathered data in my developing brain, connecting the dots between what I was told and the consequence that could come. If I let go of an adult's hand in a crowd, I would instantly be snatched up by a stranger. If I ate a piece of Halloween candy without it being checked first, I’d be crunching on razor blades. Unable to gain traction in my personal ability to safely explore, I began to heavily rely outwardly for a sense of security in the midst of an underlying mistrust of the world based on borrowed fears.

I took each of these tactics that were meant to divert me from harm and allowed them to root deeply within my emotional landscape. I was essentially scared into compliance in order to prevent unfavorable, imagined outcomes.

I also learned to fear my own body and its reactions to my fears. I went to doctors and was told there was nothing wrong so I continued to feel scared and confused trying to convince myself that nothing was. I reluctantly forced myself to buy into what was repeatedly drilled into me, that it was all in my head.

While the rapid pounding of my heart, knotted stomach, and the relentless shaking in my limbs, told a completely different story. I believed my body was a mystery that I could not begin to unravel. The sensations were so overwhelming, I felt largely alone with them, unable to make sense of what was happening to my nervous system at the time. So I did everything I could to prevent them from taking me over. This led to frequent escapes into my head. 

Worry

My mind was geared towards worry. Worry is a place we go to when it is too scary or painful to be present in our bodies. Worrying is an attempt to gain a sense of control. We rationalize, over-analyze, and conclude to our own detriment. When my own worry and imagination teamed up, the results were stellar horror shows of the worst-scenarios possible. 

While fear is intended to protect us from real threats, worry’s primary function is to protect us from imagined threats. “All worries are about the future, but in a way, worries are a way of preparing and protecting you from something that has happened in the past.” - Dr. Russell Kennedy, Anxiety Rx. 

The way out of worry is returning to the present moment. It is a practice of activating your senses and grounding into the body.

Becoming aware of your feet touching the floor, your back pressed against the chair, the feel of your clothing against your skin. It involves looking around and naming things you can see, here and now. Learning to ask yourself, Am I safe in this moment?

The challenge for worriers is that many of us never let our guards down enough to feel safe or even know what the experience of safety within our own bodies feels like. 

In the loop

Our brain cannot distinguish the difference between real and imagined threats, which can result in these intense panic episodes. Our bodies will elicit the same physiological response whether we are held at gunpoint or in the middle of a difficult conversation. 

Author, Dr. Russell Kennedy, in his book, Anxiety Rx, states that we can actually become addicted to our own worried thoughts. Since our brains are meaning-making machines and are extremely resistant to uncertainty, we make up stories in our head to help us make sense of what we don’t know. 

This is an extremely effective coping mechanism in childhood. When circumstances are largely out of our control, we go into our heads and develop stories that can help keep us safe. Magically thinking things like “if I get a running start, click the light, and leap onto my bed, the monster underneath won’t get me,” gives us a plan and a sense of control when we believe that the plan we concocted ultimately saved us from harm, shame, or punishment.

This same pattern becomes maladaptive in adulthood. It shows up when a situation or event makes us uneasy. We create a thought or story around the uneasiness. We believe our own story, which usually directly undermines our sense of agency and capability. This creates a distress signal in our bodies and BAM! Adrenaline and cortisol begin releasing and we feel like we want to jump out of our skin.

So when my husband is late coming home from work, my brain almost instantly tells me things like—car crash, which sends my body into instant panic mode from believing that story. Or when I play out a conversation that involves expressing something that I believe may be hard for another person to hear. The worry leads to perspiring profusely with a pounding heart in the midst of my living room, causing me to withhold what is really on my mind in fear of receiving an unfavorable response.

Coming to these conclusions serves an important purpose.

Worry is our attempt to make the uncertain more certain.

It is more painful for worriers to sit in the discomfort of an unknown outcome. Therefore, we create one that allows us a sense of relief from that initial discomfort. We conjure up these dark, grim outcomes, trying to make sense of what we are feeling in the midst of uncertainty. 

When our fears end up not coming true, which is 99% of the time, we release dopamine and feel a rush of calm in the aftermath. So over time, our imaginations must amp up the details and intensity of these worries in order to produce the same level of perceived relief when they do not come to pass. In a much larger sense, worrying is a maladaptive coping mechanism that keeps us in the cycle.

Anxiety

The most powerful way I’ve learned to relate to my own anxiety comes from Dr. Kennedy’s work. He explains anxiety to be a state of alarm in our bodies. This alarm is stored as unresolved trauma and is largely a message coming from a younger version of ourselves, calling us to see, hear, love, and protect them.

Seeing anxiety as an alarm is based on the idea that all anxiety is separation anxiety. On some level and at some point in time, we needed to disconnect from parts of ourselves, when it was too overwhelming for us to stay present within our experience. We’ve been running ever since. 

Anxiety is calling us to reconnect to the parts of ourselves we have disowned out of our own pain and fear.

It is unresolved, stored energy calling for us to pay attention. Each time an uncomfortable sensation arises is an opportunity for us to become curious and observe where in our body it shows up and what it feels like. We can explore even further to determine what triggered us and build awareness around how this present feeling may be coming from our past. It all can be traced back to a previous point in our lives when we didn’t have the skills or support needed to process and manage our experiences.

Breaking out

“I saw the key to emotional peace lay not in my mind, but in my body.” - Dr. Russell Kennedy, Anxiety, Rx. 

Beginning to learn about the mind-body connection allowed me to build knowledge around the inner workings of anxiety. As a result, I’ve been able to begin a practice of meeting uncomfortable sensations with compassion and curiosity instead of fear and worry. 

After years of cognitive therapy, and also years of being told well-meaning things like You’re okay or There’s nothing to be afraid of, I’ve learned that you cannot simply talk your way into feeling safe. And not from a lack of trying! There is a difference between intellectually knowing that you are not in any imminent danger and actually experiencing physical and emotional safety. When your body feels threatened, your thinking brain goes offline.

The way out is through the body.

This is the reason why sending your body cues of safety must be prioritized before higher level coping tools can become available. Gentle yoga stretches, rocking movements, and conscious breathing are ways I have begun to incorporate my body into the healing process. 

Healing anxiety at its root involves the continuous practice of showing up, becoming present, and learning ways to connect with the body in more regulated states, building resilience for leaning into inevitable bouts of discomfort at times. Through hard work, practice, and intention we can receive and utilize both the wisdom of the body and the power of the mind to create a sense of peace and emotional safety within ourselves.  

To learn more about mind-body healing:

Anxiety Rx by Russell Kennedy, M.D.

How To Meet Yourself by Dr. Nicole LePera

©Laura Weston 2023

Related Posts: