Feel the fear – and fully understand it before doing anything

“What’s that other book – err – oh yes, Feel the fear and do it anyway. That’s the one. Is your book the same as that one?”

I keep hearing it, so I’d better address it head on. What’s so different about What’s Stopping You? (due out next month, by the way) and Susan Jeffers’s well-known and best-selling book dealing with the fears that can prevent us from taking action?

On the surface, of course, they are similar. Both are focused on those that may have fear of failure, or other fear-based insecurities that are preventing them for achieving their potential. Both set out a course of action in order to help navigate those fears. Yet that’s where the similarity ends. In both style and content they are very different, as they are in both message and structure, and in the description of our condition and – perhaps most importantly – the journey required to prevent it disabling our progress.

A crucial aspect is the style. Jeffers invokes many case studies that feel fictional (although she states they are from her “fear classes”). They are of people such as Mary Alice, Patti, Teddy and Janet. Some want a better job. Some more respect from their partners. Others are keen to become artists or to overcome their fear of aging. These are feel-good tales of suburban redemption in which Janet goes back to college and Kevin summons up the courage to ask that girl for a date – all after a pep-talk from Susan.

Many people will be engaged by such a saccharin style, although it leaves me unmoved. I’m now in my 40s and have had plenty of encouraging chats from well-meaning people full of home-spun wisdom. Sure, the book gets more technical later (though not that much more technical), but another pep-talk from mum isn’t what’s needed in my opinion. I’d rather know why my brain reacts as it does when faced with major (and even minor) challenges. What process creates such reactions, and why are they so disabling? So I’m more of the persuasion that the sound reasoning of a psychologist (or even neurologist) is what’s required – telling me about post-traumatic stress disorder and its link, via traumatic childhood events and “fear conditioning”, to fear of failure.

I’d rather write about the permanent damage this can cause to the brain’s amygdale (a key cluster of components in the limbic system dealing with emotions such as anxiety, distress and fear). And the fact incidents of public humiliation as a young child can create an imprint generating a lifelong resetting of the brain’s default (i.e. instant) responses to potentially-humiliating situations. The fact it is this faulty wiring that leads sufferers to respond with fear is, in my view, crucial – especially as, in many cases, they don’t even realise why they are so fearful. Only from such awareness can sufferers, in my opinion, develop an appropriate strategy for progress. Yet none of this is explained in Susan Jeffers’s book.

I’m not saying there’s no room for the Jeffers approach. What I’m saying is that there’s also room for the more analytical approach. For instance, Feel the fear. . ..chapter one ends with giant and bold capitals shouting I’LL HANDLE IT! In fact, the entire chapter and much of the book is peppered with these capitalised “ra-ra” messages and this “go girl (or boy), you can do it” tone runs right through the book. This places Feel the fear…within the classic self-help genre that I’m somewhat critical of in What’s Stopping You? because, ultimately, they are asking you to become somebody you are not. In my opinion, such rousing prose soon fades. Without fully understanding our insecurities and fears they will soon resurface – usually at the first major setback.

This style of self-help book angers some psychologists because it deals with only the symptoms of the condition. They see it as an injection of foreign ideas and methodology into vulnerable people without offering any understanding of why their fears and insecurities have developed or retained such a grip on their behaviour. The assumption is that all fearful people can adopt somebody else’s personality traits. Traits that potentially go against the grain of their default and hardwired personalities. Yet “reframing” the brain of insecure people with helpful phrases that have to be repeated in front of the bathroom mirror (a Jeffers favourite) is a form of self-denial in my opinion (and the opinion of many psychologists). It is the adoption of a mask that, after the inevitable slip, can lead to a damaging reckoning.

I’ll give one (of many) examples:
“For the women reading this book,” says Jeffers, “a good antidote to any inner conflict between power and femininity is to repeat to yourself a least twenty-five times each morning, noon and night:

I AM POWERFUL AND I AM LOVED and I AM POWERFUL AND I AM LOVING.”

This has to be done aloud to allow the “pain-to-power concept” to really take hold. In fact, there is a helpful chart plotting this concept that has the word PAIN at one end, then an arrow pointing towards the word POWER. This is called the Pain-to-Power Chart and we are invited to draw it and place it on a convenient wall.

Ignoring the over-simplification of a complex mental condition for a moment, my own view of this chart if that, during my worst years with fear of failure, it would not have survived the first setback. In fact, as I was reading this I could visualise the moment it would have been ripped off the wall in anger as the pain of yet another rejection or dead-end or fear-induced self-fulfilling emotional reaction hit home. We are almost in the same territory as the hypnotisers and acupuncturists here – the world that promises “instance and transformative change” without any analysis or reflection or hard-fought re-evaluation.

Apologies. This is starting to sound like a trashing of Jeffers’s book. It isn’t meant to be. Any book that has sold so well will have helped many people take that all-important next step. And that’s a powerful thing that I’m in no position to criticise. I guess I’m simply stating that my target is the slightly more intelligent reader – someone looking deeply, as I did, at the root causes of their hardwired but disabling personality traits. Someone that wants to fully understand what is stopping them, before accepting it as part of them – a mental limb that is coming too, no matter what we say and do to remove it. But somebody determined to make progress despite the mental obstacles – through navigating the barriers thrown in our path (both externally and internally).

Which brings me to the title of Jeffers’s book – and my deepest criticism (sorry!). Having quoted over 100 books in What’s Stopping You? the only line I found worth quoting in Feel the fear and do it anyway was the title. And that was to refute its premise – at least the “do it anyway” proposition. Of course, we attack the same condition – fear of failure – but we differ fundamentally on the prescription because we have taken a different route from the diagnosis. Jeffers starts with the fear and works her way forwards, injecting helpful thoughts and tips as we pursue the goals that are triggering those fearful moments. What’s Stopping You? also starts with the fear. But it then works its way backwards, to how we got ourselves in this position. And this has a profound impact on how we should move forward from our current, stuck, status – re-evaluating our goals and seriously questioning the “do it anyway” element of Jeffers’s premise.

To explain, many fear of failure sufferers harbour inner dreams that occupy the highest-shelves of achievement. Many want to become famous via music, sport or broadcasting. Few will, because the dream is a nonsense conjured from our fear-based avoidance of challenging but realistic career choices that may involve exams and qualifications or other dreaded evaluations. In reality most fear of failure sufferers have yet to explore their real goals because their goals have all been motivated by the fear of public humiliation which, extraordinarily, can manifest itself in a willingness to pursue impossible dreams while eschewing challenging but obtainable career paths. And many sufferers may not even realise that this is where they stand – nurturing avoidance-based but inappropriate “wildest dreams” that are not goals at all. They are fantasies.

Yet Jeffers – and many other self-help writers – are focused on offering those with fear of failure the chance to, indeed, be a popstar. They are not decrying the dream as inappropriate or driven by avoidance of realistic but difficult challenges, as I am. Instead, they are saying: “go on – you can be a popstar” – despite the fact the desire to be a popstar may be yet another symptom or their fear of failure. Given this, my book is a million miles from “that other book” on the same subject.

That said, I want to end on a positive note. One thing Jeffers emphasises throughout is the need to take responsibility. And this means never “blaming anyone else for anything you are being, doing, having or feeling”. Yet it is also not blaming yourself – because that too is avoiding responsibility. “There I am messing up my life again. I’m hopeless,” is – again – not taking responsibility (other writers such as Stephen Covey support this). In fact, Jeffers is so strong on this vital requirement for recovery that she dedicates a whole chapter on it. It’s called “Whether You Want It or Not…It’s Yours” and it’s her best – even with the cuddly tales of Jean, Kevin and Tanya.

My shocking memories, and their impact

The Kelsey Effect also works in reverse, it seems. I had tickets for West Ham Vs Manchester United on Tuesday. Yet it was snowing and I assumed we’d (i.e. West Ham) would lose to the mighty reds (unbeaten since April). So I didn’t go. West Ham won 4-0, although it goes without saying that, had I been at the match, we’d have lost 0-4.

There was a more serious reason for my absence, however. Snowy midweek football matches trigger memories of one of the worst incidents of my life. As a 13-year old on my way home from a very snowy football match our train pulled into a station with policemen, expecting trouble, lining the platform. As we waited, the snow blew into our carriage. I got up to shut the window, only to find a policeman pointing at me from the platform. Before I knew what was happening I’d been hauled from the train and beaten in the face by leather-gloved fists.

Bloodied and confused, and in utter terror, I was dragged to a corner of the station and interrogated. Perhaps at that point – through my tears and blood and my obvious shock and urine soaked trousers – it began to dawn on these burly cops that they’d pulled an innocent child from a train and beaten him up for no good reason. I could hear them discussing the train, now leaving the station, and the fact it was the last one of the night, which led to a bizarre sirens-wailing police-van chase down a snowy motorway to beat the same train to the next station.

As they put me back on the train one of the officers – pointing to my bloodied face – said: “If anyone asks, you did that falling down the stairs, OK.”

Only when I rejoined my friends – who were themselves still shocked from the incident – was I told that one of the officers had shouted “spit at a policeman would you,” as the first leathered-fist hit my face. I guess the snow, the boredom and the shutting window had confused him (although nothing excuses the violence).

Days went by with the only external evidence of the trauma being my fat lip – which I explained to my parents as the result of a crowd crush at the match (this was a decade before the Hillsborough disaster). Yet by the weekend the shock of the incident came flooding out – with me eventually breaking down in tears over Sunday lunch as I confessed the event to my parents.

And the incident has left permanent mental scars – something I have only realised since researching my book What’s Stopping You? It had a profound impact on my view of the world – ending my innocence and shocking my belief system. It shaped – and distorted – my perceptions for many years to come. My attitude towards authority changed. Even with teachers and my parents, I felt more marginalised and became less trusting, less interested in their view. I became more rebellious. More angry, even.

Sure this may have happened to me anyway – a lower middle-class teenager from the English exurbs in the rebellious late-70s could hardly escape the pervasive air of moral and economic decay. And, of course, I do not blame this event for the fear of failure I have experienced all my life (the tackling of which, forms the basis for What’s Stopping You?). Yet even here, unconscious feelings of victimisation – the “why me” aspect of my insecurities (even the half-joke Kelsey Effect with respect to luck) – can all come into play now I think of it.

But I write about the event, not to offer an excuse or seek sympathy, but as an example of memory triggering, and its consequences. The incident illustrates something important: the role of traumatic events in shaping our self beliefs.

In short, the event caused me to experience something akin to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). This is not as exaggerated as it sounds, and I mean no disrespect to ex-servicemen that have had their lives turned upside down by PTSD. As Yale University’s Dennis Charney – one of the most respected authorities on PTSD – states, even minor incidents, perhaps of public humiliation, can have a major impact on our beliefs because the incident has made a far greater imprint on the brain.

In Emotional Intelligence, Daniel Goleman – citing Charney and others – describes the impact of such traumatic events on the brain. The amygdale – which Goleman describes as a key cluster of components in the limbic system dealing with emotions such as anxiety, distress and fear – signals other brain areas to strengthen their impression of the incident, creating a bigger imprint on the memory. For instance, despite a gap of over 30 years, I can still clearly remember the leading policeman’s face, including his moustache, as well as the smell and feel of his leathered glove.

This strengthening generates what Goleman describes as a new neural “setpoint” in the brain that can cause a lifelong resetting of the brain’s default (i.e. instant) responses to even tangentially-similar situations. In other words our inner beliefs regarding our expected outcomes from particular circumstances have been fundamentally altered.

Importantly, according to studies into PTSD, even brief or mild exposure to traumatic stress – especially when young – can permanently damage the hippocampus (a key part of the brain for the formation of memories) stopping normal new cell growth. And this can prevent us from ever evaluating information other than via this traumatised default setting. Goleman uses the example of a child once frightened by a dog developing a fear of that breed of dog and never naturally developing a calmer response (and potentially the opposite – with each fear incident adding to the fearful “setpoint”). Indeed, it can go further than this – with the child perhaps unknowingly developing a fear of particular footpaths where an encounter with a similar dog is no more than possible.

From such incidents, large and small, our belief system springs – a system that can be all but impossible to shift. Sure, we can work on our responses, once aware that our initial evaluations may be faulty (I spend some time on this in What’s Stopping You?). But a total rewiring is unlikely to ever happen – even through hypnosis of other techniques that, in reality, produce only a deeply-embedded and dangerously unworked form of denial.

So is it any wonder that, once the sky turned snowy, my enthusiasm for the match disappeared? Of course there’s also the fact that, now in my 40s, I’ve done my time freezing my nuts off at a football match, whatever the potential for a historic win! Yet the memory was, indeed, triggered – hence me writing about it now.