Name your fears to improve your emotional health

Big White Waller, Jomo, uses the therapy she has received and the help she has been given to look at how we can learn to control our fears by naming them and talking about them. Jomo has no professional qualifications but is able to share her personal experience in the hope that it may help and inform others.

The human body reacts to fear

When we are frightened our body reacts in a primitive way in what is sometimes known as the flight/fight/freeze reaction. This is a normal, healthy, response which is controlled by the release of hormones from our own brains which enable us to run from danger, confront it, or hide from it.

When this happens the body diverts blood away from the internal organs and brain, and into the limbs to stimulate flight, fight or freeze.

Fears form patterns

A ‘danger’ reaction is first set down as a series of disconnected ‘scenes’ in our brain which then form a pattern so that we will know what to do if the danger re-occurs. Someone involved in a car accident, for instance, might have a jumbled recollection of sirens, sudden impact, hospital, horns blaring and screeching brakes, in no particular order. The brain takes these images from the limbic system where they first imprint, passing them through other areas that name and define them, into the neo-cortex, where they become an understandable sequence of events, a memory that can be dealt with and that is useful for our safety.

In the case of severe or repeated trauma, the lack of blood supply to the naming/speech areas in the brain may stop that event from being processed properly and cause it to stick in the limbic system, in a looping sequence of which we cannot make sense.

Every time that screeching brakes are heard, we may panic and be full of a terrible sense of danger without really understanding why. It may not even be as clear as screeching brakes. For example, a person who was looking out of a car window at a white picket fence just before a traffic accident may have a panic reaction whenever they see a white picket fence without knowing why.

These threat patterns are essential for survival. They make us jump out of the way of danger and allow us to ‘judge’ events in order to survive.  When elements get stuck in the limbic system and do not form coherent patterns, however, they may cause unnecessary panic and fear. Something is immediately triggered in us and we become anxious without understanding why.

Giving fears a name

In order to take control of incomprehensible fear it helps to identify, as far as possible, its start point and try to put it into context. This is best done with words, spoken or written, not just “thought about”. Giving voice to the events helps them move through neural pathways, into the neo-cortex, where they can become a useful memory. Sitting and saying to someone, perhaps a counsellor or therapist, what exactly happened when, for example, the car crash happened, shift these events into a different part of the brain to form a tangible memory.

There is a very small window of opportunity in the mind before the threat pattern sends us headfirst into panic mode.  This window can be found with careful examination and used to make sense of traumatic experiences. Looking back at a panic attack, and talking it through, point by point may help us identify when we first felt a threat was present such as the white picket fence before the accident.

Simply talking about it aloud can take the piece of the puzzle you remember and place it where it belongs in the experience to become a full memory. In some cases, it is not possible to recapture the first event that caused the incomplete pattern but talking through the subsequent panic attacks can cause them to subside sufficiently for them to become recognisable and controllable.

Naming trauma is harder

For those with complex or severe histories of trauma the naming of events causing the initial distress may be much harder and can take a great deal longer. Nevertheless, the same process can help. Name each event, talk it through, write it down, to help your brain to process the memory instead of keeping a threat pattern that is harming your emotional health.

Naming brings emotional health

’Talk therapy’, or giving voice to our experiences, helps shift the blockage caused in processing traumatic events during which certain pathways of the brain ‘seize up’ as they are deprived of an adequate blood supply. Thinking about events is not enough as they remain inside and do not allow us ‘to see’ the whole event as it happened. Initially we can find ourselves speechless as our neurological pathways are not working properly. Try to begin small and move at a pace that feels comfortable to you.  Talk, one word at a time, with the intention to name events. This will help your neural pathways to clear and help you understand what happened.

Describing feelings or circling events does not work. For example, I am afraid of dogs because I got bitten once is an incomplete memory compared to “I saw a dog. The dog was brown. It barked at me, and then it jumped up on me, and it bit my arm. It hurt when it bit my arm. I was terrified. I cried and tried to run away and fell. When I fell I grazed my knees. The dog jumped and bit me again. When I got home my clothes were torn and I got into trouble from my parents. They laughed at me and said it was only a small dog and that the bite and the grazes were not very serious. But I was frightened, and I was hurt, and I needed someone to help me and comfort me”.

Sometimes the words that we need to say sit in our chests like stones and we cannot give them voice. We think that we can begin the process but sabotage ourselves by sliding into talking about something that is more comfortable.

Find your voice

Tell someone, perhaps your counsellor or therapist, that you need to talk about specific things, that you know you need to name them but that the words are not yet there. Ask for what you need to be able to approach a subject a word at a time; be that help, silence or patience. Critically, ask to be listened to. There can be a lot of value in “getting it off your chest”. Name and talk your way to emotional health. Regain control.