Corinne herself would never have pulled the ripcord. She wasn’t even able to do that anymore, she was too wrapped up in her sticky cocoon out of fear. She worried all the time. “Mainly because something could happen to my husband, the children or me,” says the 43-year-old Berliner. She called her loved ones on her cell phone far too often to be told everything was okay. She got heart palpitations when her husband was late. When her daughter went skiing with the class, Corinne thought about the bus accident and cable car accident. Her thoughts revolved around life and death, decay and illness. The stress she was under also had physical consequences: Corinne suffered from nervous diarrhea, hot flashes, headaches and difficulty concentrating. “There were more and more fights because I was just annoying my family,” remembers the half-French. Corinne’s husband finally took her to a therapist, who diagnosed a serious anxiety disorder.
About one in eight Germans suffers from severe anxiety that affects their life and that of those around them. So-called simple phobias, such as the fear of spiders, are the most common. Social phobias, panic attacks and generalized anxiety disorder, from which Corinne also suffered and which around 1.6 million Germans have, follow in the places. A serious illness – which, however, does not seem so far-fetched. We live with the ideal that we can master everything and nothing knocks us down. There are no fears there. But honestly, don’t you also worry about those who are important to you? Don’t think about diseaseslike Alzheimer’s just because you’ve often forgotten something? And that leaden feeling in your stomach when someone is standing on a motorway bridge – it could be a stone thrower. Is that already an exaggeration? Where is the boundary between worry and worry, and when do doubts and signs of fear of life drift into spheres that require treatment?
Normal anxiety does not differ from an anxiety disorder in terms of content,” explains Isabelle Drenckhan, therapist at the Christoph Dornier Foundation for Clinical Psychology in Münster. “Criteria such as duration, intensity and controllability are decisive.” Anxiety and worrying brooding can even be very helpful when it comes to solving a problem. However, if, as with Corinne, 95 percent of the time is spent fruitlessly thinking about horror scenarios, something has gone wrong. Especially if it’s been like this for more than six months. At the latest, this time factor is seen by therapists as the dividing line between healthy and unhealthy. But even if fear becomes independent and occurs even though there is no real danger, this is a sign that it is too dominant.
The fact is that we all live with fears that sometimes make life difficult for us. And the future is a bit bleaker: According to a recent study by R+V Versicherung, 54 percent of all Germans fear that they will need nursing care when they get old. 49 percent are afraid of serious illnesses and almost one in three (30 percent) worry about being lonely as they grow old. At the top of the list, at 66 percent, is concern about the worsening economic situation and higher unemployment.
It doesn’t matter what you fear most in the end: The fatal thing about fear is that the mind justifies it all too quickly and puts a logical cloak over it. The anxiety therapists and authors Ines von Witzleben and Aljoscha A. Schwarz (“Finally free from fear”, Gräfe and Unzer) call this “rationalizing”: Flying is risky because planes can crash. The fear of giving a speech is justified because you can really make a fool of yourself. The fear of breast cancer is justified, because every eighth woman suffers from it. The feeling of fear is given the coat of explainable. Or it is trivialized, along the lines of: “My fear annoys me, but others are even worse off.” The danger here is that you come to terms with your situation and continue to suffer. Ultimately, our mind tries with both methods, Putting fears into perspective and feigning security. With the success that nothing changes and the worries only solidify.
According to the Bielefeld historian Joachim Radkau, we all know that fears are also a collective social phenomenon, “into which one mutually increases oneself”, since the “swine flu” at the latest. Quasi in daily alternation, the arguments for the vaccination sometimes outweighed the arguments for epidemic researchers and doctors, then again against it. From the pandemic plan to the face mask, the topic was chewed through. And what the British risk researcher Bill Durodié calls “rolling fear” happened – the fear of swine flu swept over society like a huge wave.
But what can you actually do to prevent fear from taking over? “In therapy, the most proven method is still confrontation,” says psychologist Drenckhan. Patients consciously expose themselves to their greatest needs and learn to endure them. As a result of the sense of achievement, the fear-triggering situations in the head are increasingly marked as “not dangerous”. Corinne also gradually learned to get through her worries under professional guidance. For example, she had to refrain from making check-up calls while her body adjusted to the fear triggered by the uncertainty. A training effect that also works when fear is not pathological. “Don’t let fear float freely. Think through what is bothering you specifically and with all facets,” advises psychologist Drenckhan. It is also helpful to be informed. Anyone who is afraid of flying, for example, can read statistics about how many million passengers take off and land unscathed every day (see also other tips for self-help).
After all, you have to accept a certain residual risk. Life is characterized by many uncertainties, but also by joy and further development. It would be ideal to even discover the positive side of fear. It is known that a medium level of anxiety is very energizing. It doesn’t matter whether it’s in sports, at a performance or in an exam: an anxious, slightly neurotic person who thinks everything through, worries and constantly doubts, is more agile in the head, plays through alternatives and can reach top form. The Göttingen psychology professor Borwin Bandelow, one of the world’s leading fear researchers, even describes the feeling as super fuel for success. Because it “stimulates creative action and increases imagination and creativity”. Sounds like good news. And even the fear deserves it.
Self-help tips
There are many ways to overcome fear. Here’s how to help yourself
How to solve thought patterns, keep your distance and relax Grief, separation or a new start: there are always phases in life in which fears come to the fore. When the soul takes a hit and, for example, finds it difficult to get over a loss. Or because they lack confidence in their own abilities. A few tricks will help to overcome emerging fears:
- Don’t form worry chains! Are you afraid of cancer, stroke and heart attack? Concerned about the husband’s job, the children’s future and the entire planet? Once it starts, you can quickly get into it, but chains of worry narrow your perception. Psychologists advise taking a step back and asking yourself: Is that even realistic? Important: Answer honestly, then it will quickly have a grounding effect.
- Educate yourself An old adage says: “Fear makes you stupid.” Old adages are mostly true, including this one. Because anyone who is afraid of something usually avoids it, does not deal with the frightening topic and thus misses the opportunity to overcome their fear. Or to realize that everything isn’t that bad.
- Movement distracts Do sport to dissipate anxiety and slow down classic anxiety symptoms such as tachycardia, dizziness or sweating. Ideal: walking or cycling in the fresh air. If you are in the office or cannot go outside: open the window, do a few knee bends or push-ups, then shake out your arms and legs.
- Positive self-instruction If you are afraid of a certain situation and anticipate problems, it doesn’t have to end in disaster. Think of possible problems as solvable – without glossing over them or just flatly dismissing them. Instead of “Nothing will happen”, the motto is “Whatever happens, I will deal with it”.
- Paradoxical intervention Ignoring a concern takes a lot of strength and energy, and above all it often only exacerbates the problem. Hence the counterattack: provoke your fear, do whatever it takes to make exactly what you fear happen. For example, are you afraid of fainting? Close your eyes and make it a point to fall over on the spot. The trick: The subconscious reacts with defiance and denies the symptoms – the pattern of expected fear is broken.
- Stay calm! Remember: Anxiety is normal and harmless. No matter how strong it may be, it’s uncomfortable but not threatening. Don’t keep thinking about what could happen, focus your thoughts on the here and now. Meditative words or mantras like “I am calm, I am power, I am strength, I am confidence” that you say to yourself have an additional calming effect.
- Breathe properly Breathing and our physical and mental state are closely related. To “come down,” focus your attention on your breathing, on the rise and fall of your chest, on the air you’re sucking in and moving through your body. Make sure to breathe calmly and deeply. Breathing out should take twice as long as breathing in – because the basic rule is: long breathing out calms, long breathing in stimulates.
- Shed your worries If you take your troubles to bed with you, you can hardly relax. Because at night, problems seem even more earth-heavy when your thoughts are constantly circling around them. Symbolically shed a problem with every piece of clothing you take off at night. The next morning you can take care of it again – but please fresh and rested!
