Brianna Wiest - The Mountain Is You_ Transforming Self-Sabotage Into Self-Mastery (2020)

THE MOUNTAIN IS YOU
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you would panic, and then because you’re scared, you
never think through the rest of the scenario. You never
think about how you’d get through it, what you’d do to
respond, and how you’d eventually move on with your life
afterwards. If you were able to do this, you wouldn’t be
scared of it, because you wouldn’t think it had the power
to “end” you.
This is why exposure is the most common treatment for
irrational fear. By reintroducing the stressor into your life
in a safe way, you are able to reestablish a line of thinking
that is healthier and calmer. Basically, you prove to yourself
that you will be okay, even if something scary does
happen (which most of the time it does not).
Either way, mental strength is not just hoping that nothing
ever goes wrong. It is believing that we have the capacity
to handle it if it does.
Maybe you don’t have that self-belief yet. That’s okay. It’s
not something you’re born with; it’s something you build
slowly and over time. It’s something you develop with
practice, by addressing small problems, and then learning
healthy coping mechanisms and effective reasoning skills.
The thing is that there are millions of scary things that can
happen to us in our lives. That is true for everyone. When
we are hung up on one scary thing over another, it’s not
because it’s a more imminent or likely threat; it’s because
we are less convinced we would be able to respond to it.