FEAR: It’ll Make You Scream, It’ll Make You Cry, It’ll Leave You Shaking In Your Boots

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But don’t panic. Advice that will help you vanquish this enemy within. Fear is the real king of the jungle. It rules our actions, consciously or not. It makes us wuss out of skiing down a black-diamond slope and spaz out while hitting on that hot Lindsay Lohan look-alike. But why? And how can we stop it?

Remember that cost-cutting report you were supposed to deliver to your boss last week? How could you forget? You’ve thought of little else since the deadline came and went, and you’re pretty sure he hasn’t forgotten about it, either. You owe him an explanation, but you’re way too terrified to go into his office and give him an excuse.

Instead, you sit in your cubicle, sweating profusely, hyperventilating, imagining the worst. Now your boss is standing over you, grinding his molars–you can actually hear them. He waits for your explanation You want to tell him that a two-day deadline was perhaps a bit unrealistic. But you can’t. Your ears are buzzing. Your face feels hot. A bead of sweat falls from your forehead to your desk. This, you realize, is how the wounded gazelle feels facing the hungry lion on the savanna plains. You stagger on, but it’s useless. You can’t get away.

In this era of terror threats and job threats, of orange alerts at home and monkeypox abroad, we can’t avoid dread any more than we can control its cause. But we can control our fear. It starts with knowing the enemy. What often seems like an all-encompassing emotion is actually manufactured in a small knot of neurons called the amygdala, the brain’s Fear Command Center. When it senses a threat, it unleashes adrenaline and pumps blood to muscles, sharpening our senses and prepping us for action. How well we initially respond to challenges may largely be a function of biology.

Yale University’s Charles A. Morgan III, M.D., who’s currently studying the physiological toughness of Green Berets and Navy Seals, has found that his subjects have higher-than-normal levels of a brain hormone called neuropeptide Y, which he believes counters the adverse affects of an adrenaline surge. “They’re more relaxed and have clearer mental focus under severe stress,” explains Morgan. “They’re excited by risk, but they’re also very conscientious about performing well.”

Civilians like us can also benefit from high anxiety. Fear of failure, unemployment, and homelessness drives us out of bed and off to the office in the morning. And, when the pressure’s on, it helps us concentrate harder and focus more. It’s when panic gets in the way of work, say, or our sex lives that we should really be scared.

Psychologists, sex therapists, and others trained to treat these so-called “performance-based” fears will tell you there’s no miracle cure for panic. But we can keep it from ruling our lives. Here’s how.

At Work

A creative executive once worked for a brilliant guy who managed by reign of terror. When he wasn’t reaming the staff during meetings, he was tearing apart their work, constantly dismissing it as the worst he had ever seen. And that was on a good day. The entire crew was working scared until someone got the nerve to confront him. Suddenly, the verbal tirades stopped. The lesson? Whether we’re terrified of a bullying boss or an impossible deadline, the most effective way to wrangle fear at work is to face it down–the sooner the better.

“One of the chief causes of stress is avoiding stress,” says Ben Dattner, Ph.D., an organizational psychologist and the president of Dattner Consulting, L.L.C., in New York. “If your boss sets unrealistic sales goals, you’re going to have to confront that sooner or later.” We need to learn how to stand up to the big man and, similarly, get over our dread of falling short. Some strategies:

* If that big assignment finds you hiding beneath your desk, it may be because you’re still hung up on some past failure. Eileen Wolkstein, a career counselor and executive coach in New York, suggests focusing on a recent achievement–such as when you earned praise for your work on an earlier project or even when you broke through the 300-pound ceiling on the bench press. Think about the effort you poured into those tasks–the grit, the stamina. Now do the same with your new assignment. As Wolkstein notes, “A lot of skills you’ve developed elsewhere can transfer to your job.”

* When you’ve got a beef with a workplace superior, write it out before confronting him, suggests Wolkstein. Then choose an ideal delivery time, such as when he’s not overwhelmed. (FYI: In the men’s room is not a good moment.) And don’t be combative: Use “I” not “You.” (Correct: “I feel this idea won’t work.” Incorrect: “Your idea is butt-headed.”) “Your message will be better appreciated if you engage in a dialogue,” says Wolkstein. “You’re not there to be right. You’re there to communicate.”

In Society

When top football running back Ricky Williams was a rookie with the New Orleans Saints, he was a panicky head case. He’d conduct post-game interviews with his helmet strapped on, and he’d recoil from giddy fans, feeling sick to his stomach. So great was his terror of speaking to people, he couldn’t even place an order at Burger King. “I thought everyone was staring at me all the Time,” he later told Sports Illustrated. “The stress skewed my view of reality.”

With the help of a therapist, Williams eventually overcame social-anxiety disorder, a disease that afflicts some 10 million Americans. It can be a dread of something specific, such as talking at a shareholders’ meeting, or a more widespread panic. But both are generally fueled by a profound fear of rejection–a feeling everyone can relate to (even you). The next time social interaction drives you into a cold sweat, consider these game plans from Charles di Cagno, director of the Public Speaking & Social Anxiety Center in New York:

* Scared to give that presentation? “Practice in a similar situation,” says di Cagno. First, rehearse standing in front of friends with your hands at your side and your feet in place (that is, don’t sway). Next, get comfortable reading aloud, going at an even pace and pronouncing every word. Then try speaking for a couple of minutes on a topic you know cold. Now prep your speech, outlining just a few key points and anecdotes. “If you work in manageable steps,” promises di Cagno, “you’ll build confidence faster than by just doing a presentation to death.”

At Play

From the chairlift it looked simple enough. A quick chute through some aspens, a patch of moguls, then nothing but lush, untouched snow. But your gut drops as you stand atop your snowboard, 12,000 feet up, staring down a 50-degree run. Whose idea was this? Oh, yeah–your stupid friends, who are already gouging the powder with hard, swooping eurocarves. But you can’t bail now. So you plunge in, and right away you know you’re going way too fast. You can’t turn, can’t stop, can’t even breathe. And the trees? They’re speeding right at you? You crouch low and tight, bracing for impact, thanking God and the guy at the board shop for your shiny new helmet.

This moment of prime-time terror is brought to you courtesy of a biological phenomenon called the anxiety curve. When our emotional state is at the lower end, we don’t feel much fear or pressure, so we’re easily bored and distracted. When we’re on the high end, our panic is so great that we can’t focus on anything but our fear. By controlling our dread of big waves or nasty slopes, we can learn to perform somewhere in the middle–or that ideal state of excitement that sports psychologists call “the Zone.” The surest way to get there is to face down challenges and tune out that voice that says, “No way, dude?’ Try these mantras instead:

* What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.

Research has shown that the more we Pace a terrifying challenge–like that 50-degree slope–the better we perform. “If you’ve successfully dealt with a certain stress before,” explains Yale’s Morgan, “you can fall back on a memory of behavior. You’ll perceive that you have more control, and that gives you confidence.” But just boarding or surfing isn’t enough. Board or surf in the very conditions that freak you out. Then keep doing it, again and again.

* I think I can, I think I can.

Block out thoughts like, “The wave is too big” or “The trail is too steep.” These fern’s become self-fulfilling prophecies, says New York clinical sports psychologist Jonathan K Katz, Ph.D., because they drain our energy. “I’ve constantly told Wimbledon players to focus on the next point, not the one they just lost;’ says Katz, who’s also worked with Olympic hopefuls and some New York Mets. So what if you ate coral a minute ago? Get out of your head and back on the wave.

FEAR FACTORY

In his five seasons as executive producer of the NBC reality TV series Feor Factor, Matt Kunitz has become an authority on freaking people out. “We try to tap into people’s primal fears,” says Kunitz. “Fear of heights. Fear of spiders and snakes. Drowning. We’ve done a lot with cockroaches.” He’s especially proud of a stunt from last season, in which contestants were wrapped in a body bag then submerged underwater. “It was a simple thing to get out of, but five out of the six panicked completely,” he says. “The one guy who made it went last, so he knew exactly what to do.”

Kunitz, bemoans the fact that the most successful contestants often make for TV bores. “The big, macho guys–they rarely win,” he says. “It’s not about being physical, it’s about focus and being in the right mind-set.”

This year Kunitz is really aiming to crush morale. “We’re going to put them on a metal beam and shoot 2 million volts of Tesla lightning bolts at their heads,” he says giddily. “It’s going to be complete psychological terror.”

L.C. Smith is a freelance writer living in Brooklyn. He’s not afraid of anything–except his dentist.