Overcome Your Fears Through Visualization

Your imagination can be a powerful tool for confronting your fears. Through various methods, you can change a big, overpowering fear into something small and manageable.

Steps

 * 1) Find a comfortable place where you can imagine free from distractions.  Your bedroom or a quiet location outside on a nice day are some good options.
 * 2)  Choose the visualization listed below that best suits your fear.
 * 3)  Imagine your chosen scenario.  Go over it again and again until you're satisfied and familiar with what you've imagined.
 * 4)  Continue imagining your scenario regularly so you don't forget it.  Now that you've imagined it once, you can easily bring it up again any time or any place.
 * 5)  Put yourself in a relatively low stress situation where you have to face your fear.
 * 6)  Recall your visualization as many times as needed to stay calm.
 * 7)  Challenge yourself more. When you feel comfortable with the low-pressure situation, start putting yourself in more challenging situations until you have conquered your fear.

Comforting Visualization

 * 1) Imagine your feelings of fear as something inside of you that you can see, such as a ball of light.
 * 2) Take your fear out of you.
 * 3) Change your fear into something you would want to take care of, like a baby animal or a small child.
 * 4) Comfort your fear.  Pat, soothe, or reassure it.  Give it treats or play with it if you want.  Whatever you feel like doing to make your fear happy and unafraid.

Hero Visualization

 * 1) Imagine your fear as a character, whatever type you think suits it best.
 * 2) Now imagine a character to combat your fear.  It can be anything, a strong figure like a superhero or wrestler, a character appropriate to the fear (like a stilt walker to take on your fear of heights), or just something you like, such as a kitten or a even a bowl of ice cream.
 * 3) Imagine your hero character conquering your fear.  The fight can be simple, lengthy, or just plain silly.  All that matters is that your hero beats your fear.

Shrinking Visualization

 * 1) Imagine your fear as something very large: a monster, an animal, a huge person, or whatever.
 * 2) Have your fear say some of the things that go through your head when you start to feel afraid.
 * 3) As your fear is talking, shrink it down or change it into something smaller than you.
 * 4) Get back at your fear.  Yell at it.  Make faces at it.  Kick it around.  Scare it.  Put it in a cage.  Do whatever it takes to make your fear seem small and ineffective to you.

Tips

 * If you're worried you might get so afraid when faced with your actual fear that you'll forget your visualization, take something with you to remind you of what you imagined. It can be a special piece of clothing or jewelry, a small picture, a few words on a scrap of paper, or anything else that helps you remember.
 * Feel free to alter the visualization when you need too. If you're feeling really scared of an upcoming event, you can ramp up your visualization and have your hero really pummel your fear.
 * Though it's a great method for adults too, visualization can be especially good for helping kids overcome fears. A child who's afraid of a scary monster under the bed can imagine a big friendly monster to chase it away.  Encourage your child to tell a story or draw pictures to help him or her remember the visualization.

Warnings

 * If you find your visualization really funny, you may end up laughing when you think about it, possibly in an inappropriate place. Re-imagine your visualization several times in private so it doesn't seem laugh-out-loud funny to you when you use it in public.

Things You'll Need

 * Good imagination
 * Calm place to start imagining
 * Reminder of your visualization (optional)

Related Tips and Steps

 * How to Overcome Ambulophobia
 * How to Overcome a Social Phobia
 * How to Build Self Confidence
 * How to Prepare and Give a Speech
 * How to Develop Poise
 * How to Hypnotize Yourself Using the Best Me Technique