Breakup, move, new job, birth… The slightest change causes you tears and anxiety? It is common. Where does this visceral fear of change come from and how do you deal with it? Our tips for learning to tame the unknown on a daily basis.
We change schools, apartments, jobs, lovers… Life is a series of changes, necessary for our personal and professional development. However, as natural as they are, these changes are not always easy to live with. Worse still, they generate intense anxiety in some of us. “Happiness is usually the main quest for any change. To change is to modify an initial situation in which one has built up one’s bearings and one’s habits. It is therefore completely normal to be afraid of change. However, the latter should in no way be disabling and prevent us from moving forward in our lives.”, comments Rodolphe Oppenheimer, psychoanalyst in the Hauts-de-Seine. So what to do when this fear of change becomes visceral to the point of hampering our daily lives?
How does the fear of change manifest itself?
The slightest disturbance in your daily life makes you inactive and fearful? No doubt, you suffer from the fear of change. “A lethargic attitude that we will seek to justify by finding positive aspects to remaining stuck in a poisonous routine that we ultimately find comfortable. Some subjects are so distressed by the idea of a change in their life that they bury themselves at home avoiding at all costs to think about the future, causing not only their isolation but also the impossibility of conceiving certain life projects. coming”, develops the specialist. To this can be added anxiety attacks, stomach aches, patches of eczema and palpitations.
Understand the origin of the fear of change
It is impossible to overcome a phobia until its origin has been identified. The priority is to determine precisely what worries us through change: the fear of losing something? Fear of failing? Fear of other people’s eyes? The fear of the Unknown ? The simple fact of putting words to our anxiety helps to soothe it and see it more clearly. “Human beings need routine, that reassures them. He is genetically predisposed to resist change so he can stay in control. He hates uncertainty. At the origin of the fear of change, there is often a triggering event that occurred during childhood: a change of school, extra-curricular activity, a badly experienced move or the loss of a loved one. dear… In short, an event that led to a loss of bearings”, details our expert.
The unknown, synonymous with insecurity
The fear of change is intimately linked to the fear of the unknown. Human beings have always tended to fear what they don’t know, what they can’t control. “It is a defense mechanism made by our brain that consists of protecting the environment that we have tamed over time while warning us against what is potentially dangerous.
The change can be experienced as a trauma or a violent shock as the upheaval can be significant. To change is to confront the idea of being happy one day while accepting that we will have to take certain painful paths to get there. It’s all this journey that’s scary”, indicates our interlocutor.
How to manage the fear of change?
Rather than trying to overcome the fear of change, it is better to learn how to use it intelligently. First, by asking where this fear comes from and what we risk by accepting this dreaded change or by refusing it? Very often, we realize that we are projecting negative things far from reality. “To overcome this fear and manage to conceive of change as something positive, it is necessary to gradually modify your daily routine and accept being confronted with failure and the judgments of those around you. Consulting a psychologist specializing in this type of phobia will allow the subject to overcome their anxieties and tame the future with serenity.”, argues the psychoanalyst.
Thanks to Rodolphe Oppenheimer, psychoanalyst. https://psy-92.net/