Externalizing Ridiculous Fears Harry Potter Style

Externalizing Fears

Lets face it, some fears are ridiculous. Irrational, untrue and vague, they plague us anyway. One of the best things you can do is externalize them: Name the fear and be specific. (Fears like to be vague about themselves, evasive they gain power over us. Exposed, we undermine that power.)

Take the fear outside your identity, see it as a fear, and give it a name: (i.e., fear that you forgot the door unlocked, fear of not being cool enough, fear of spiders, fear of getting robbed, fear of a loved one leaving you, fear of looking fat).

Sometimes, fears seem like they are so closely connected to us that they are us. They seem to become part of our identities. When the fear tells us to be afraid, we believe it because it appears to be us telling us. We need some distance, naming it is the first step in getting distance.

Once we name it, we can take a look at all the ways that it effects us: avoid social events, stop eating, accuse people of wanting to leave, pick only the food from the bad shelf in the grocery store. This invites us to put even more distance between ourselves and our fears; where we can see our fears from a new perspective. We can see all that we lose when we listen to them. This can have us get angry instead of afraid, empowering us into action!

From this vantage point, we can assess whether the fears are okay by us. "Is this okay to let this fear have so much control over my life and decisions?"

If the answer is: No. This is a ridiculous fear. It has taken up too much of my life, my well-being, my relationships, my fun! You have two choices:

1. Be Like Harry Potter

In Harry Potter and the Prisioner of Azkaban, a boggart- a creature that is usually found hiding in cupboards- manifests as your worst fear when coming out into the open. The curse to get rid of the boggart is to incant "Riddikulus" - changing the fear into something you'd find ridiculous. What I love about this scene from Harry Potter is that it is the laughter that finally gets rid of the boggart. Remember: Laughter and anxiety cannot share the same moment together!

Fears often run as a video in our head about something horrible happening. We need to purposefully change that video into something less scary, less disturbing, just like the students do with the boggart. We need to replace the terrifying video with a new video full of hope or at least a greater sense of control over the situation. Then find the humor and/or joy in it. Just like the boggart. This is what finally gets rid of the anxiety.

We let them go since we realize that we don't buy into them anymore. Yay! Or...

2. Judge yourself for being so weak, stupid, and abnormal.

This obviously increases our suffering. Judgment on top of the fear always compounds the issue. It attaches us more firmly to the fear. We feel like a loser and trust ourselves less, making fears harder to get over. We ultimately need trust in ourselves to get over fears. Trust that we can handle the situation.

In the end of the movie, Harry is able to conjure a powerful patronus charm only because he trusted himself (he knew that he had already done it.)

Listen. We get to choose which choice we take. Trust takes us out of it faster.

By Jodi Lobozzo Aman

I blog here: Heal Now and Forever Be In Peace
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