I’ve recently been reading Cam Barber’s book ‘What’s Your Message: Public Speaking with Twice the Impact Using Half the Effort’ and he talks about the secret to not getting triggered (into fear) is to flip our thinking from unconscious reactions to conscious management of a situation by first becoming aware of what’s happening and then redirecting our attention to escape that ‘fearful’ mental loop.
This is like what happens when we are swimming in the ocean and get caught in a rip (happens often to swimmers – ever watched Bondi Rescue?). Many people get into trouble and can even drown because the rip drags them quickly away from the beach. If they are a weak swimmer, they struggle against the rip to try to get back which quickly exhausts them.
If they pause and think (rather than panic) simply swimming sideways out of the rip (which is usually a narrow channel of water) takes them into a safer space and halts the drag out to deeper sea.
Building our awareness of what’s going on around us and becoming conscious to what we are feeling helps us escape that fearful rip.