The Loudest Guest

Sharing my learnings from the book, The Loudest Guest by Amy Silver

The Loudest Guest by Amy Silver

The loudest guest, explored in this fascinating new book, is fear. Author and psychologist, Dr Amy Silver, believes that if you reduce the control that fear has on you, you take back control of your life. Fear is merely a guest in your mind, albeit a noisy one, and you are the host.

• Everyone experiences fear. It’s actually there to protect you and, in the right balance, it limits your risk exposure. But when fear is in control, it can stop you from enjoying your life.
• A healthy dose of fear gives you the motivation to achieve things you otherwise wouldn’t.
• When you sense fear, your sympathetic nervous system is triggered. Your amygdala – a small almond-shaped area of the brain – signals your hypothalamus – another brain structure – to release hormones into your blood. These raise your blood pressure and blood sugar. Your muscles prepare for sudden and violent movement. Your heart and breathing rates increase. The cerebral part of your brain – the thinking part – switches off. You’re optimally prepared for fight or flight.
• When fear controls you, it can become so overwhelming that you even become afraid of fear itself. You become self-critical, hate your fear, and ultimately become ashamed of it and your other feelings.
• When fear directs you, it helps you to identify opportunities and warns you about risks. But it can overdo this, and you find yourself overthinking outcomes and resort to doing only the predictable. You become full of self-doubt and choose comfort over challenge.
• You’re more in control when fear acts as an advisor. When fear simply becomes a commentator, you can decide whether to heed its advice or not. Fear should be one among equals with your other emotions – there to be called upon when it suits your purposes. Don’t lose your fear, just learn to control it and turn the volume down when you need to.
• Six steps of a never-ending cycle you can use to control your fear
  • recognize and understand your fear
    • understand your goals
    • think about what fear is telling you about achieving your goals
    • get to know what triggers your fear.
    • how do you react before, during and after being triggered?
    • you become more conscious of your behavior and can begin to understand how it contributes to any situation.
  • have some self-compassion & welcome fear to the party
    • the more rational part of our brains must soothe or lessen the intensity of our fear.
    • we need to treat fear with respect and compassion.
    • When you approach your difficult emotions with compassion and understanding, your self-compassion comes forward and self-criticism fades into the background – taking fear with it.
  • separate your fear from your self
    • A whole raft of biases makes it difficult for us to change and our core beliefs frequently become “truths.” In the same way, our early experiences of fear are difficult to change.
    • try this reflection on your own life. Start by drawing a horizontal line on a blank page, with your date of birth at one end and today at the other. Mark it out into 5-year chunks. Above the line, write down the important events that happened in each period. Below the line, comment on how these events have shaped your fear. Take as long as you need. Next, look at your timeline as if you’re an outsider. Do you see any patterns or themes? Externalizing your own story allows you to examine how fear uses the past to tell you about now rather than evaluating now from a less biased viewpoint.
    • If you understand this, you can begin to separate fear’s message from the fear itself. And you’ll stay in the present, focusing on what you want rather than listening to fear.
  • Evaluate your fear and identify its key messages
    • Fear deserves attention as long as it’s useful. But you need to evaluate it in order to understand what to take note of, and what to ignore.
  • decide to be courageous & create a contract with your fear
    • Make sure each goal you want to concentrate on is SMART – that is, Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Time-sensitive. Think about what fear says about them. Ask yourself how your goals would be different if fear wasn’t involved.
    • You can even write a contract with your fear – to approach it and experience discomfort rather than opting for avoidance and comfort. Sign and date it. You could even have someone witness it.
  • overcome your fear through experimentation
    • We need to experiment to test the truth in fear’s choices. But we need an experiment where we feel safe, something that our fear can tolerate.
    • When you choose a behavior that fear doesn’t like, you put yourself in the driver’s seat. Gradually increasing the discomfort you feel allows you to countermand fear’s choices.
    • Reduce the discomfort of your fear by calling on gratitude, forgiveness, and hope.