Reducing your fear and anxiety

Joanne Lockwood

Reducing your fear and anxiety

Mark offers people practical techniques and trauma guidance so that they are able to deal with whatever life may throw at them.

Fear and anxiety are universal and unless we manage to conquer them, they can hold us back from performing our best and reaching our potential. Despite the richness of our society there are still too many people that are discriminated against, mistreated, bullied, or ignored. Mark works on empowering these people and offering techniques on how to deal with this effectively and appropriately to ensure they can reach their full potential.

Published: 07.01.2021

Recorded: 30.11.2019 Episode Length

Duration: 1:07:03

Downloads: 70

Shownotes:

We all have unconscious biases and sometimes this can be overt prejudice, which can be very hard for the person on the receiving end to both accept and deal with. Mark works with his clients to develop coping techniques; ranging from communication techniques to staying calm when terrified/nervous. He also works as a trauma therapist, working on taking away the emotional context, so people can function without worrying about how they feel about it.

Everybody has their own fear and anxiety, but the grades of this and types will differ greatly. Our formative years dictate so much of the rest of your life. The fundamentals of who we are is said to be set by 8 years old, so if there is a negative event or trauma in your early years this can stay with you, unless you are able to deal with it. A lot of it is also learnt behaviour, if your parents were prejudiced against a particular group of people then you are likely to accept this as the norm. We now live in an age of instant gratification, which permeates in to so many different areas and often we struggle if our expectation of speed is not fulfilled. As technology advances, we have seen the introduction of cyber bullying and Mark works with schools on how to deal with this.

The way people reaction to different situations will vary greatly, this can be magnified within the workplace especially with ‘banter’. Often people’s intentions are not malicious – they are just trying to have some fun, but you do have those that will be doing it on purpose. It can be hard for people to stand up for themselves and express their discomfort, with it sometimes not being appropriate to deal with immediately, as you may be on the back foot and feeling overly emotional. It is important to pick the correct time, often without an audience as others may not have been impacted in the same way. It can help to step back from the situation, rather than reacting in the moment which may be from a place of anger. There is still a lot of discrimination within the workplace which can reinforce limiting beliefs. This is often not helped by the company leaders, who need to look at their company culture and how this is implemented across the business.

Mark has run programmes with three different train operating companies training staff in assertiveness and giving them techniques to deal with difficult customers. Their aim is to be focused on customer service, but not at any cost. The training instilled confidence in the staff, something that Mark finds very gratifying. They need to find the right balance of assertiveness without aggression. As part of the training, they deliberately frighten people, setting up intimidating scenarios to provoke fear and anxiety in order for them to learn to deal with this in real life situations.