How to challenge your fear of difficulties

Cognitive behavioral therapy CBT, how to challenge your fear of difficulties?

Example: The story of Gu Ying.

Is there such a person around you and me who is more challenging and more difficult than others?-Gu Ying: an excellent photographer, a former member of the China International Paragliding Team, who won the national paragliding women's championship four times. During the second training, her waist was broken, and the doctor said that she could never engage in paragliding again in her life. After retiring, Gu Ying didn't choose to live a normal life, but decided that since he couldn't spread his wings in the sky, he should record all this. She began to learn to shoot wild animals, and the lens recorded the scenery and creatures that most of us can only see on TV. She has been to the cold north and south poles, the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau with high altitude and extreme hypoxia, and every place is facing many difficulties and dangers ...

Step one: the type of difficulty.

When dealing with various situations in study, work and life, people have three psychological states: comfort zone, study zone and panic zone. Some psychologists divide this into three areas: shore, shallow water area and deep water area. The area on the shore corresponds to the "comfort zone", which makes people feel a little anxious and uncomfortable, but they can adapt to it through study and practice, and turn it into a comfort zone. The fear zone exceeds the study zone, which makes people tired of coping with anxiety and anxiety and unable to spare more energy to adapt and study.

Step 2: Psychological comfort zone.

Comfort zone was originally a geographical concept, which was used to describe those areas with pleasant climate and spring-like seasons. Subsequently, the meaning of psychology is gradually derived-a person's psychological state and habitual behavior pattern. In this state or mode, people will feel comfortable, relaxed, stable, controllable and safe. In short, this is an inherent way to deal with the environment. What makes it special is that it gives us a sense of control and security. We use our most familiar coping style to live, instead of choosing the appropriate coping style according to the new life.

Step 3: Threshold effect.

Friedman and Freese, American social psychologists, put forward the "no pressure submission-threshold technology" in the field experiment of 1966. In general, people are unwilling to accept difficult requirements, but are willing to accept smaller and easier requirements, and when smaller requirements are realized, they often accept larger requirements. This is actually telling us that challenging difficulties is like climbing a ladder. As long as the first step is taken, the follow-up potential will naturally be stimulated. Many seemingly difficult things are not that we can't do it, but that we refused to open the door from the beginning.

Step 4: How?

Accept difficulties. "Every time you try something for the first time, you must feel a little uncomfortable." Because people are used to resisting change and staying in the comfort zone. It is important to understand this truth. Your attention won't be caught in the whirlpool of fear of difficulties, but you can turn your attention to how to face difficulties and find reasonable solutions. Psychologist Carol Dwek said: "We found that whenever people force themselves out of their comfort zone, learn new knowledge and accept new peach fights, neurons in their brains will form new and stronger connections, and they will become smarter and smarter."

Step 5: How?

Try taking a small step first. Taking the first step and setting a small goal that is neither difficult nor easy can stimulate self-efficacy. If your goal is to run a marathon, you can run 5 kilometers in the first month, 10 kilometers in the second month, and then gradually challenge the whole course. In this way, you can continue to achieve and choose, which can not only dispel some anxiety and fear in the early stage, but also make the big goal seem less difficult to achieve, and you can continue to break through yourself. A sudden fight with a big peach may make people uncomfortable, so take a small step forward first. If one small step is still delayed, take another small step. As long as it is not the same step, it is self-improvement.

Step 6: How?

Expand the psychological comfort zone. Do something different every day. Change the fixed pattern of life, find a new angle from the change, and make life full of freshness. You can try reading books on different topics, listening to different kinds of music and trying some new restaurants. In short, try more things you have done before. Trying these small changes may help you learn to accept new things slowly. Trying new things can make us reflect on the collision between old ideas and old knowledge, inspire us to learn more and challenge our consistent prejudice.