[Master Your Fears] Exercise 1 – Adaptive or Maladaptive Fear
I have a confession to make. I have a lot of misguided fear. Or at least I suspect it’s misguided. I think that I’ve been this way for a long time (like probably 19 years or so). I don’t know how I got this way, but I’m pretty sick of it, so I’m making a best effort to change. I’ve started therapy (yes, I’m seeing a psychologist) and I’ve purchased a number of books (on Kindle so I can take them with me easily) that I think might help me overcome these fears or at least manage them effectively. I also think that it will be helpful for me to be truthful and upfront about this whole process, which is why I have decided to blog about it. Yes, it is deeply personal, but I’m hoping that everyone will be supportive and will let me know that I’m not alone in this journey.
So, here goes.
The Beginning of the End of My Fear
The first book I’m trying out is called Master Your Fears: How to triumph over your worries and get on with your life. It’s by Linda Sapadin, PhD and honestly I just picked it out of the air from Amazon. I liked that it has three parts; Part 1: Understanding Your Fears, Part 2: A Program for Change, and Part 3: Life After Fear. I’m only on Part 1, but already there are some exercises that will help you identify what your fear is so that you are able to rid yourself of it when you get to Part 2.
Adaptive or Maladaptive Fear
Sapadin defines two different types of fear, adaptive or maladaptive. Adaptive fear is the type of fear that keeps you alive (we’ll say that this is fear that has helped you out in Natural Selection). Maladaptive fear, however, lacks survival benefits and on the contrary impedes you from living your life. Sapadin provides a little True / False quiz to tell if your fears are adaptive or maladaptive. There are a series of 10 questions, odd numbered questions represented adaptive fear and even numbered questions represented maladaptive fear. The simple scoring technique used are the more true answers in odd or even numbered questions indicates whether your fear is adaptive or maladaptive.
It came as literally no surprise to me that I scored 5 trues for the even numbered questions, and only 1 true for the odd numbered questions. My fears are clearly maladaptive. Now that we have established that, I will be continuing with this book and see what it can do for me.
The next chapter that follows is: The Five Fear Styles. I’ll check back with you when I figure out what my deal is.
