Creativity and fear are intimately connected.

Your fear will always be triggered by your creativity, because creativity asks you to enter into realms of uncertain outcome, and fear hates uncertain outcome. -- Elizabeth Gilbert

I've recently come to the realization that I need a more nuanced understanding of fear, for myself and for my coaching clients. Because fear isn’t actually one thing. So far, I’ve teased apart five distinct flavors of fear, each one calling for a different approach.

1. False fear

Is the "fear" I'm feeling actually fear, or is it fear-adjacent?

We all know fear's physiological signature. Increased heart rate. Shallow breathing. Sweaty palms.

But, equally, these can be signs of excitement (or over-caffeination).

A fascinating research study asked people to come into the lab and sing in front of strangers -- a typically anxiety-inducing task. Just by saying "I'm excited" before they started singing, people improved both their emotional experience and their overall performance.

As an example, a few months ago, when I was about to get feedback from an agent on my children's book manuscript, my heart was beating fast. But I checked in with myself. Am I actually afraid that something bad is going to happen or am I just excited about the chance to get honest feedback from someone with so much experience? Anchoring in excitement I was more open and positive going into that conversation.

There are other fear-adjacent feelings. The Swedes have the word resfeber to refer to that nervous anticipation we feel before we travel. Or in Hebrew, yirahdescribes the feeling of "inhabiting a larger space than we're used to inhabiting. It is also the feeling we feel when we are on sacred ground." Creativity is often accompanied by that sense of self-expansion which can feel like fear, but ultimately isn't.

So the first question I can ask myself is:

Is fear the best word for what I’m feeling? 

If the answer is no, problem solved!

2. Foreign Fear

Fear is highly contagious. We’re programmed to pick up on cues of danger from our environment. If we see someone is running scared, we run first and ask questions later.

We also pick up on fears from the news, parents, colleagues, and authority figures. For example, when I was on the academic job market there was a Google spreadsheet that PhD candidates in my field contributed to, anonymously sharing information about who had how many interviews, offers, etc. After I looked through it I noticed I was feeling really anxious. But then I had to check in with myself. And I realized the fear wasn't actually mine. I had absorbed it. My truth was that I had very specific conditions under which an academic career would work for me and I was at peace with the possibility that I wouldn't find the right fit.  

So the second question is:

Is this fear mine? 

If not, we can simply wave bye-bye and send the fear back to where it belongs. 

3. Frozen Fear

Some fear is the result of past hurt or trauma. We experienced pain and the fear wants to make sure that situation never happens again.

Trauma occurs when we experience more pain than we can process in the moment. I call the fear that results frozen fear, because trauma freezes the experience for us.

This is an essential and life-preserving process that helps us continue to function and survive. But trauma distorts our memory function so, when we get triggered, it feels like the past pain is actually happening again in the present moment. 

A big clue to frozen fear is an overwhelming embodied emotional reaction.

For example, I'm currently traveling for work and have my family along. I was concerned that the hotel might not give us the kind of room we needed, so I had the idea to call the hotel in advance to make the request. Easy enough.

Except I couldn't do it.

Something about that action triggered a huge amount of fear in me. To a debilitating degree. I still don't know what that's all about, but I do know what topic I'm going to be bringing to my next session with my coach ;).

So the third question is:

How much of this fear is in response to the current situation and how much is about things that happened in the past?

Here, we need to find a sufficiently safe and supportive environment to trace the fear back to the past pain that gave birth to it. By creating space to process that pain and grief, the fear can unfreeze and energy can flow again.

4. Flailing Fear

I have to admit that, at times, my fear can be a bit of a drama queen. Those moments when I sit down at the blank page and I feel like I'm going to die. Objectively, there couldn't possibly be less at stake. And yet, a part of me is completely convinced there couldn't me more at stake.

This feels different than frozen fear because it's not about something that happened in the past but more about catastrophizing about what might happen in the future. Flailing fear is the mind's storytelling function spiralling out of control: 'If someone doesn't like what I've written they'll lose all respect for me and I'll be an outcast and then I'll lose everything and be homeless living alone under a bridge'.

So we can ask ourselves:

Is the fear grounded in reality?

If not, we can fact-check the fear. Listen to its chain of reasoning and separate the wheat from the chaff. What's the worst case scenario? What's the likelihood of that happening?

5. Friendly Fear

Finally, we've made it to good old fashioned friendly fear. This is healthy, organic fear. The red blinking warning light that says 'Danger, Will Robinson. Danger! Danger!'

When my husband says, "I'm worried your keys will fall out of the pram" because they're dangling out of the side pocket.

We know this fear because it's actually trying to be helpful.

It's trying to help us stay safe and protect what matters to us. When we can filter out all the other flavors of fear, it gets much easier to actually listen to what our friendly fear has to say. And that's empowering because then we can take action to avoid whatever pitfall it's pointing us towards.

So next time you notice some fear in your system, get curious.

By figuring out what kind of fear we're feeling, we can un-fuse from the fear.

And then we can choose the wisest course of action. Do we need to take a step back and shift strategies? Do we need more information or more time? Do we need some kind of help or support? Or, do we need to just be brave and dive it?

The fear can't answer that, but your centered self can.

And one of the best ways to access that centered self is to write a letter to your fear, as Elizabeth Gilbert does, at the start of any creative project.

May you experience more freedom in your relationship to fear and in your creative pursuits!