Dealing with our fears in a most obvious and simple way

Hi guys, this is the draft of my recent podcast which you can listen to by clicking here. Recently I had this conversation with a gymnast who was a beginner - he told me about his fear of learning a back handspring. If you don't know what a back handspring is, allow me to describe it to you. So from standing you swing your arms up and backwards over the top of your head, just as your arms swing past the top of your head, you jump and flip backwards, initiating half a somersault and you land in a handstand position momentarily, before pushing off your hands and landing on your feet. It is not a skill that most beginners can master easily - the best case scenario is usually a couple of lessons before they can perform it safely and confidently. So this beginner said he was terrified of not quite making it and crashing onto his head, injuring his neck and spine - he simply didn't trust himself and was worried that he would hurt himself trying that skill. So he asked me, how do I deal with this fear and eventually learn how to do a back handspring safely without feeling petrified? 

So I explained it to him like this: our brains react with fear if confronted with something we don't understand, that is why your mind races to the worst case scenario of landing badly on your head and suffering a catastrophic injury. The way we teach complex and difficult gymnastics skills is to try to break it down into two, three or even four parts, so the gymnast focuses on each individual component which is a lot simpler and far less scary. So for example, the first part of the back handspring is the take off and we would train our gymnast to perform that take off perfectly but instead of flipping backwards into a handstand, we would make them perform the take off and not rotate, instead landing safely on a thick, soft stack of mats. Once the gymnast masters that, then we can progress to doing it onto a roller which would enable the coach to very slowly and gently lower the gymnast into the handstand position. The coach can then slowly increase the speed of it as the gymnast gains confidence to take off correctly in order to land precisely in the correct position every single time. The gymnast gains a good technical understanding of how the mechanics of the skill works - that fear and distrust was initially caused by a lack of information and understanding of what the gymnast is dealing with, so we cure that with plenty of information to foster a great understanding of exactly how the mechanics of the skill works. We will in the meantime use a range of safety equipment to allow the gymnast to try the skill without any fear of injury, for example, into the foam pit - so even if the learner panics, bails and does everything wrong, they will fall into a pit full of very soft sponge pieces and can't hurt themselves. It is only when the gymnast feels confident that they understand exactly what they need to do and that they can actually deliver it according to plan that we finally let the gymnast attempt the skill on their own. Furthermore, we never rush this process because we need to know that when the gymnast will always behave rationally: we always have a choice in our heads. We can surrender to blind panic or we trust in the technique and follow through with the plan. Our aim as coaches is to get the gymnast to the latter every single time so they feel safe. 

You naturally experience fear, anxiety and nervousness if you don't know what you're doing - our brain naturally reacts like that when we confront the unknown. So let me give you a simple example: recently when I was on holiday, I awoke in the middle of the night to what I thought was something moving in the room. I instantly got afraid, fearing the worst - was there an intruder in the room? But of course, it was nothing, I had left the window open for more ventilation and it had become windy in the middle of the night. The movement I saw was merely the shadow cast by the curtains being blown around in the breeze and nothing sinister.  I got up, closed the window and went back to sleep. Note how mundane the actual situation was compared to the worst case scenario I had first pictured in my head. We are not the most rational creatures when it comes to processing information like that, instead of processing the full range of possible explanations, we simply jump to the worst case scenario and focus on that before we even find out what we're actually dealing with. So in the case of my gymnast, yes there is a worst case scenario when it comes to attempting a back handspring and this is not helped by the fact that I've seen way too many videos on social media of people who have no business whatsoever attempting this skill yet are foolhardy enough to try it, with terrible consequences and these are known as fail videos on the internet, I know some people find that kind of slapstick humour funny, I just cringe and hope that no one actually ends up paralyzed in those videos. But let's leave gymnastics for a moment and use another example that we're all familiar with: making a journey by road. So this can simply be taking a bus to work or school, a simple journey like that. 

Now the worst case scenario when it comes to a traffic accident is death and I'm not exaggerating, in the UK alone, in 2023, 1,624 people were killed in traffic accidents and a further 28,087 were seriously injured. This makes the simple act of making a journey across town in a car, bus or bike far more dangerous than gymnastics as there were zero deaths from gymnastics in that same period and we've yet to have recorded a single death from gymnastics in the UK. Yet somehow, my gymnast was far more afraid of a back handspring but was happy to put his safety in the hands of a complete stranger (a bus driver) when he took a bus to the gym for the lesson. Why would he trust a random stranger instead of himself? That just doesn't seem rational to me, but it isn't unreasonable to feel safe when taking a bus simply because we have done it thousands of times before without incident. I suppose I feel that way about the difficult skills I perform at gymnastics because I've been doing this sport for over 40 years whilst my beginner has had very little experience with it. But here's the problem that can arise when we rely too much on just our own experiences: let's deal with a simple question which we often ask ourselves when we are traveling, is it safe to drink the tap water? Should we be confident in the quality of the tap water or should we worry about getting sick if we consume it? After all, it may be entirely safe in some countries whilst in others, it might have an unpleasant taste but otherwise won't make you sick. Then in some places, you are warned, hell no, you must use bottled water even just to brush your teeth as the tap water is so unclean. Thus if we want to find out the correct information, we might look it up online or ask the front desk manager at the hotel where you are staying but you would never use your own body as some kind of experiment by drinking a pint of the tap water and waiting to see if you start feeling sick within the hour. Of course, we would act rationally when it comes to solving an issue like finding out if it is safe to drink the tap water when on holiday abroad, we simply find a reliable source of information either online or from a trusted local instead of trying to figure it all out for ourselves. 

So let's finish where we began: my gymnastics student came to me because he wanted more information about how to deal with his fears of a skill - that is exactly the right response to such a situation and thus I am glad he did that. But so over to you, what do you do when something scares you? Do you act very rationally like my gymnast to try to obtain information to deal with the situation and figure it out? Or do you just give in to irrational behaviour? I watched an Australian reality TV where there was a woman with a fear of heights and she started wailing hysterically when she had to take a cable car, even though it was a very busy place with thousands of people using the cable car without any risk to their safety. Yet she acted as if her life was in danger and didn't stop to think, hang on a minute, all these other people are quite happy to get on the cable car as well, so why am I acting like this? I should calm down and be like them. We're not even talking about making that woman do a bungee jump or skydiving, it was merely sitting in a cable car so her behaviour was very irrational to say the least. My response to that case study is that this woman does have a fear of heights and her parents and her other family members simply gave in to her whenever she screamed and cried hysterically rather than try to get her to act reasonably to confront her fears. Choosing to deal with our fears in a rational manner is a very good habit but it is also a conscious choice that we have to make when placed in that kind of situation. I also think it takes a certain amount of humility to say to yourself, you're just being stupid yes your feelings are valid but your reaction is not based on reason and you're not doing yourself any favours by acting this way. The key question is this: do you ever ask yourself what others would do in that situation or do you believe that your reaction is the only one in the whole world that actually matters? Is there a way we can train people to respond correctly in this situation? 

Let me give you a ridiculous example to illustrate why it is so important to seek another person's point of view instead of simply insisting that you already know all the right answers. Some years ago when my mother visited England during the winter, she brought enough clothes for the entire trip despite having access to a washing machine during the trip. I told her that she could do laundry anytime during the trip in order to help lighten her luggage but she insisted, "England is cold during the winter, if I do laundry then the clothes will never ever dry." And at times like that, I have to just bite my tongue and censor the first thing that comes to mind - after all, there are 56 million people in England, are you seriously telling me that all 56 million people don't do any laundry until spring arrives? If you don't know the answer to a question like, "how do people in cold countries dry their washing in the winter months?" The right way to deal with that situation is to simply ask someone who knows the answer, rather than make a wild guess and get it horribly wrong. There is absolutely no shame in admitting that you don't know the answer to a question, but there is a lot of shame when you get it horribly wrong by making a ridiculous assumption without consulting someone who knows the right answer. To put it mildly, yes my mother made an utter fool of herself - I didn't expect her to know the answer to that question but I expected her to ask me rather than assume that she knew the answer. She handled that situation very poorly and that's done to a lack of awareness of how limited her own knowledge was - she didn't have the humility to tell herself, "I don't know enough about this topic, so I really ought to ask someone who knows better to help me out." So there you go, that's it from me on this topic. What do you think? How do you react when there is something that scares you? Would you be as rational as my gymnastics student who went to seek professional advice from an expert? Or are you like that Australian lady on that reality TV show who went hysterical when she had to take a cable car? How would the people around you react if you threw a tantrum like that because of your fears? Am I being too harsh on people for not dealing with their fears rationally? What kind of person are you when it comes to facing your fears? Many thanks for reading.