Overcoming Fears

This is a slightly different post this week - I'm talking about overcoming fears. This is going to be look into what I'm scared of and how I got past that. And yes, you can mock me in the comments.

Some things are scary sometimes. I'm talking will leave you thinking of it for days to come, takes a while to calm down and you kind of want to cry, levels of scary. For me these things are spiders (I am terrible and have frequently said "I can't get it, it has so much leg"), heights (fairly standard) and ... the sound of toilets flushing.

Two of those named above are kind of 'standard', just like the fear of things sticking to the roof of your mouth (I also have this but just nowhere near as bad) or a fear of clowns. They're more 'accepted' as fears.

The last thing I mentioned? Always takes people by surprise. I am genuinely scared by that sound, it makes me panic and want to leave the room as quickly as I can to escape.

Now, some fears we can avoid.

- If you don't like clowns then don't go to a circus and blacklist the term online

- I don't like heights? Don't go somewhere high up.

- Don't like dealing with spiders? Get a bug catcher with a long handle and door that I can shut without having to get close to the thing.

But the fear of toilets flushing? I've had to deal with that every day of my life. I can't really avoid it or them so I've found my own ways to make it easier.

I didn't lock the toilet doors in my house as a kid, and if I'm in the house alone now, as an adult, it takes a lot for me to be able to do that. If I'm in a public bathroom I have my phone with me, just in case and I have my hand on either the toilet roll holder or the stall wall. When it comes to flushing toilets I have noise cancelling headphones that work on really bad days.

It took a long time for me to work out how to get around this for me. But every day I can stand there a little easier, even if I'm having a bad day and I want to run as far away as possible.

One of the biggest things for me though was getting over the fear of heights. I wanted to be able to visit places and not be standing waaaay back from the edge or holding onto someone. I wanted to be able to do things myself.

And I did.

I went up Arthur's Seat last month for the first time. It took ages to get up - I had to keep stopping because I wasn't used to that sort of activity and because of how high we were going. I was constantly conscious of that. I felt like every time I was walking anywhere vaguely close to an edge I was going to fall.

But I made it to the top, and then up to the little stone bit at the very top. I did have my partner's help with that bit, he was holding onto me and really encouraged me to give it a go when I wasn't going to otherwise.

And I loved it. On the way back down I couldn't stop smiling (even as I got pelted by hailstones) because it had been a massive task for me to do and I was already making plans to go back up it again at a later date.

Then earlier this month I got the chance to go back up. I felt like I was taking my time, walking more slowly but actually made it up much faster (almost half the time) than the first time I went up. When I came close to edges I simply walked past and leaned into the rock on the other side, or climbed a bit, or sat down and shuffled. I did what I needed to in that moment to feel comfortable and safe.

I made it to the very top. This time on my own without any prompting and it was much, much windier this time. So I clung onto that stone for dear life, but had a photo taken and again, I couldn't stop smiling.

So, what's my point with this?

Sometimes we have fears that we can get over and they won't bother us anymore. Other times we simply learn how to deal with them and carry on with things (like heights and toilets). Other times we avoid the things because we don't want to deal with that (a friend of mine can't stand clowns) and that's okay.

The important thing is that no matter what, you're doing this for you and you know that you can take things as slowly and in as small a chunk as you need to.

And this applies to schoolwork too (coming back to the theme of my blog here!) - you might have a fear build up of one subject, not want anything to do with it and try as much as you can to avoid it. You may have others that you're okay with, but don't like and they scare you.

You can take it bit by bit. Ask for extra help if you need it (like I use my noise cancelling headphones to be able to flush the toilet), or ask for the teacher to repeat and give you some prompts or worksheets (like how I sat down and slowed down when I needed to climbing up Arthur's Seat).

Things might be scary now, they may be hard to deal with but you'll get there in the end.

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Hey! Tara here and thanks for checking out my blog. I update every Tuesday with posts about studying tips, advice and talk about productivity and organisation too. If you want to keep up to date with my latest blog posts I’d love it if you subscribed to this blog.