By Keely Savoie
Does the thought of flying make your palms clammy? How about starting a new job or speaking up in a meeting? Anxiety plagues as all in different ways, but new research from the University of California suggests that conquering fears could be as easy as naming them.
Researchers asked 88 people who were afraid of spiders to get close as they dared to a captive tarantula, touching it if they could. They were then divided into four groups. Group one was asked to verbalise their emotions, group two to describe the spider neutrally, group three to talk about something else entirely and group four to say nothing at all.
They were then asked to approach the tarantula again a week later. The results: “People who verbalised their emotions showed decreases in their physical fear response,” says study author Katharina Kircanski, PhD, now a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University.
They were able to get closer to the spider than the others and had significantly less hand sweat, which is a good measure of fear. Why? “When people get better at identifying what they are experiencing – positive or negative – it give them mental space to process their emotions, rather than be controlled by them,” explains anxiety expert Doug Mennin, PhD. Ready to tame your fears? Try these effective tricks.
2 Comments
No fear = no common sense either
ReplyFear is necessary for survival. Conquering it is meaningless.
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