For years I've had a kind of weekly review practice session, what I call fear rehearsal. I realize I've never have it documented anywhere, so this is as good a time as any.

The Stoics had a practice called premeditatio malorum. The idea being that you should imagine the worst than can happen, such that when it does you won't be caught off guard.

Fear rehearsal is that idea applied to my personal fears. By placing my mind in imaginary situations that stoke very specific fears, the exposure eventually wears down the terror, hopefully neutralizing altogether.

The basics

Example, I imagined myself having lost all my money and assets. There's no house to stay, no car to drive. And then I simulate what I would do to create value and to get back on my feet.

Another example: I listened to audio of women yelling and screaming on top of their lungs, on loop. All the while I tried not to be bothered by the reflexive tension.

Getting started in this is really quite simple: make a list of the things you fear, then spend 20 minutes immersing in one of them each week.

My fears are different than yours. If you fear literal demons, imagine vividly that one is lurking around the corner. When it shows up, confront it. If that's too much, start small and let it lurk for a minute. Then two, then four minutes. At some point you'll be able to confront the demon and know what to do if things get ugly.

My fears

I once heard a friend casually saying that I fear nothing. That's far from true, it's just complicated.

My list of fears for the rehearsals started out pretty simple. Running out of money, being blind, amputation, to name a few.

Something straightforward like fear of height is easy to identify. This is simply your lizard brain trying to keep your alive. I tackled that by jumping out of a plane, for real.

I had to resort to increasing the intensity for sensory fears. I bought a VR headset with the primary purpose of playing horror games. I set out to be surrounded in darkness and getting mauled by live sized monsters. Dying a thousand times in game makes death feels trivial.

As I rehearse over time, my list of fears stopped being terrifying. Fear rehearsals were no longer frightening.

And that's a problem.

It felt as if I'm running out of fears to rehearse. But I would be kidding myself if I believed it.

Because I know I still have plenty of fears left in me. But why are they not making it into the list?

Because my real fears are much more abstract. Abstract fears are way harder to simulate in the mind compared to something sensorial like fear of darkness.

Your real fears though are deep seated, burnt into your firmware via a variety of trauma. To even find out what these fears are require heavy amount of dissecting.

Once you found them however, it feels like having solved who the killer is in a murder mystery.

Advanced rehearsals

Finding an abstract fear is one thing, neutralizing it is something else. This is still work in progress for me.

Literature-writing can be one method. Construct fictional drama, vicariously live through the characters confronting your exact fears. For many people this is clearly has a high barrier of entry, I don't foresee many people taking this up except for hardcore writers.

Any other method of choice can be highly contextual. But mostly it will look like a variation of getting out of your comfort zone.

One unorthodox thing I'm actively trying out is to work the fear into my sports.

Not too long ago I managed to dig deep enough to uncover a deep fear: shame of incompetence (I won't bore you with the details).

To be exposed to the fear of shame would mean having to manufacture situations where I'm so incompetent I feel ashamed of myself.

Well that's easier done than said. I just have to play badminton and Street Fighter. I don't have to worry about winning because I never do. Only this time I have to take the loss, embrace the shame and not fight it like before.

Conclusion

I can't be sure if exposure is the only approach to tackling fear but so far I'm pretty convinced it's the best.

The conquer your fear is to lean into it.

It may also be mistaken for masochism.