At one time or another, we have all felt the feeling of fear. Sometimes it has been our natural instincts kicking in to warn us of danger. Other times it can be irrational and persistent.
Fear can turn into an anxiety condition otherwise known as a phobia. This is a serious condition where the Meditation can be the pathway to overcoming your phobias and learning how to navigate fear.
What Really Is a Phobia?
A phobia is an irrational deep-seated fear that causes internal panic and excessive fear. According to R. Reid Wilson, PhD, of the American Psychological Association, “Phobias are the most common mental disorder. Over their lifetimes, 11% of people will have a phobia.”
Some phobias can reach as far as to cause disruption within someone’s life. In this case, they may consult a therapist who commonly prescribes a medication to reduce the anxiety around the fear.
Although with phobias being more common than some of us may have realized many people do not seek help and simply avoid the fear. Meditation can work to treat and even cure phobias!
As a natural healing source with numerous health benefits and no negative side effects, it is something we should all known as a potent option for curing phobias and disabling fear.
Meditation To Treat Phobias
Meditation helps one overcome phobias in a plethora of ways. From physiologically to emotionally there we will cover a few of the potent ways meditation can assist curing fear.
Meditation’s Physiological Cure For Phobias
To go all the way to the root of phobias we will begin in the body. First, a stressor or threat has to be perceived. This is done within the brain in the amygdala after our senses gather information such as through sight and hearing.
The amygdala which processes our emotional reaction plays a vital role in managing the body’s flight or fight mode. It sends out a warning signal to the rest of the body. This then activates the sympathetic nervous system which you can learn more about here.
The amygdala can be triggered due to extreme phobias. This can then be detrimental to the body’s wellbeing due to the effects of chronic flight or fight mode triggering.
Through meditation, we can actually rewire the functioning of the flight or fight response to not be incorrectly triggered. A study led by a team at Massachusetts General Hospital and published in Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging focused on the results of meditation and the brain’s grey matter.
The results showed a decrease in stress that correlated to a decrease within the grey matter of the amygdala. This means that meditation is effective in decreasing our bodies stimulating stress response.
Meditation’s Mental Strengthening To Overcome Phobias
Meditation teaches how to strengthen the mental body in order to stop being victims of our emotions. This is done through increasing mental concentration, practicing observational mindfulness, and stoping attaching and identifying with thoughts.
Mindfulness practices such as mind over matter techniques will train your brain to become more familiar with letting go of emotionally charged thoughts and perspectives. This can help to distances one from their anxiety around a phobia.
It may even lead them to be able to neutral view the object or situation they are afraid of. They may also come to observe themselves feeling the full spectrum of emotions around their phobia but from a third-party point of view and not need to be run by their fear.
Continue Learning Meditation
To begin strengthening your health, wellbeing, and emotional body through meditation try out our guided mindfulness sound meditation.
