Hello and welcome to the Being Well Podcast, I'm Forrest Handsome. In our last episode we discussed how to manage Paper Tiger

paranoia, needless anxiety that arises as a result of threats that are

exaggerated by the mind. Today we're going to continue our focus on the

experience of fear with an episode dedicated to feeling safer.

Joining us is Dr. Rick Hansen, so this may seem like a simplistic question, but at bottom what causes someone to feel afraid?

It's a great question.

I think it's the simple questions that are usually the great questions.

And if you think about it at bottom, fear, has to do with a sense of a mismatch between threats and resources.

For example, if you let's say realize you suddenly have a flat tire, but on the other

hand you know that your tire went flat 100 yards from a gas station where they could replace your tire and you've got a

spare in the trunk and you've got plenty of time to get to your meeting and in fact you just

got a bonus gift from your tenure membership in the Trip American

Automobile Association with a free tire change you're going to feel fine on the

other hand if that tire goes flat, same event, except it happens at 2 in the morning,

driving home late at night on the middle of a lonely road in a bad part of town and you're

nervous about being stuck there and you realized earlier that your spare tire in the trunk is actually completely flat and you look in your wallet and you realize you forgot your wallet and you have no credit cards and you're in deep trouble, well then the

threat is the same but the sense of resources has really dropped.

So there's a mismatch there.

And this gives us a wonderful strategic structure with four ways to deal with real issues

while feeling less needless anxiety. In other words, while suffering less. So number one, we can increase

actual resources and the accurate perception of resources because people

usually underestimate their resources,

...