Article: Expressing Your Emotions Can Reduce Fear

It appears that noting emotions, as opposed to denying them, helps people with fear... (is anyone here surprised?)

"This is unique because it differs from typical procedures in which the goal is to have people think differently about the experience -- to change their emotional experience or change the way they think about it so that it doesn't make them anxious," said Michelle Craske, a professor of psychology at UCLA and the senior author of the study. "Here, there was no attempt to change their experience, just to state what they were experiencing."

...

"We've published a series of studies where we asked people, 'Which do you think would make you feel worse: looking at a disturbing image or looking at that disturbing image and choosing a negative emotional word to describe it,'" Lieberman said. "Almost everyone said it would be worse to have to look at that image and focus on the negative by picking a negative word. People think that makes our negative emotions more intense. Well, that is exactly what we asked people to do here. In fact, it's a little better to have people label their emotions -- multiple studies now show this. Our intuitions here are wrong."

Read the whole article (recommended):

www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/09/120904192045.htm

Yes! I read that article, and the one thing that bothered me was reading people's negative language about tarantulas. I don't like to hear any living creature described that way. But to the point: the last couple of times I've tried playing my violin in public, I've felt that jab of fear, and I've let myself think, "I'm afraid of that awful sinking feeling I will get when my bow arm starts to shake." Then I think about it in detail, as much as possible. I imagine how awful it will feel, and I try to verbalize it. And I even talk back to myself, and say, "I know, honey, it feels really really awful, but we've been through this before and we're still here, and whatever happens, you'll get through it. It may even sound really bad, but it won't be the end of the world."

This morning I went further and realized I was afraid of death, of the fact that my days and hours and moments are slipping away. Somehow, as I went deeper into the fear of losing control of the muscles in my arm and hand, that came up. I can't say that I wasn't afraid when I had to play, or that there was no shaking. But I wasn't traumatized by it. Well, we'll see. The truth is, I still would dearly love to "fix" this problem. Yet I'm beginning to think I may be willing simply to own it as a disability--kind of like having a bad knee. A person can still walk, just not as quickly or as gracefully.

The fact is, though, all fear is from a place of duality. It needs to be named and understood as such. It takes the transient life we live, essentializes it, and tries to keep it from disappearing or being threatened. This is what we do.

Laurel, that is very, very well said. Beautiful!

That's cool that you're willing to play violin in public. I played as a child and teenager, but I don't play much anymore. It's a challenging instrument.

Thank you for that post, Laurel!
I can relate to it even though I don't play the violin...

I wonder when will they discover that also "Attention To Body Sensations Can Reduce Fear"!