How to Overcome Fear

In this episode, I break down how to overcome fear in the moment using practical tools for emotional regulation, confidence, and mental health. We explore what fear really is, why it exists, and how it shows up in the body—especially in social situations, vulnerability, relationships, and personal growth.

This episode is designed to help you move through fear, anxiety, and overwhelm, whether you’re struggling with self-confidence, social anxiety, avoidance, or feeling stuck. If you’re feeling afraid right now, you can skip directly to the tools section for grounding techniques, breathwork, and movement-based practices to calm the nervous system and take action.

In this episode, we cover:

• What fear and anxiety are and why the nervous system creates them
• Physical fear vs. emotional fear (social anxiety, rejection, vulnerability)
• How fear shows up in the body and causes freeze or avoidance
• Simple movement and grounding techniques to break fear states
• Breathwork tools for calming anxiety (Wim Hof Method, physiological sigh)
• Using connection, community, and support to regulate emotions
• Overcoming avoidance and taking action despite fear
• Letting go of shame and self-judgment around anxiety and fear

Who this episode is for:

• Anyone dealing with fear, anxiety, or overthinking
• People working on confidence, courage, and self-improvement
• Men navigating vulnerability, relationships, and personal growth
• Anyone wanting practical tools for mental health and emotional resilience

Resources mentioned:

• Wim Hof Method (breathwork for anxiety and stress)
• Physiological Sigh (popularized by Andrew Huberman)
• Support groups, men’s groups, and 12-step communities

Thanks for taking the time to listen. Feel free to reach out with any feedback, or if you'd like to collaborate in any way. Peace!

@daltonrdan on Instagram

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction
• 1:28 What Fear Is & Why It Exists
• 1:50 Physical Fear vs. Emotional Fear
• 4:55 How Fear Feels in the Body
• 7:31 Tool #1: Movement to Break the Fear State
• 10:02 Tool #2: Breathing
• 13:12 Tool #3: Support & Community
• 15:55 Moving Toward Fear, Letting Go of Shame & Final Thoughts

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:23

What's up, you guys? I'm back with another episode of the podcast, and today we're going to be talking about fear. Specifically, I made this episode specifically to talk about tools to overcome fear in the given moment. I do also want to speak about what fear is, what I believe its purpose is, how you can identify it in the body, and just some other little tidbits about fear that I think are important and can maybe be helpful to people to know about fear. But if you're simply in a moment right now where you're you're feeling a lot of fear and you're trying to overcome something and you're looking for a tool, then go ahead and skip to the next timestamp in the in the uh in the podcast. It's it's entirely timestamped that says tools for overcoming fear and begins to list them out. And go ahead and skip to that. But if you're here to also learn about fear and you want to understand it better, then I'm gonna talk about that a little bit too. So, firstly, let's talk about what what fear is, at least what I believe fear is. Um fear to me, it seems to be something that wants to keep us safe. It's an emotion in our body that arises when there is or we perceive a threat. Now, the obvious thing that we could be afraid of would be a tiger, for example, or extreme heights, or if someone was sprinting in your direction with a knife, you know, or yelling at you violently. These are more, you know, physical threats to your body that would cause you to feel f fear in your body. And this makes a lot of sense. You're your being is in danger, so you begin to feel afraid. You feel this fear in your body, and it inspires you to do something about it and act, right? I think everyone understands that. It's what I'm more curious about is the emotional fear, you know, is sorry, the emotional threats that cause us to feel fear, you know. Um, so really common one for me as a young man is women, you know. Um, you know, approaching or speaking to women that I find attractive or men my age, you know, that I want to hang out with and get to know. Um, you know, social groups and people. You know, we often feel afraid when we're approaching a friend group. Maybe if we're not very close to them, right? If it's a it's a social group of people, like, oh my gosh, you know, one of these people are gonna accept me, you know, and it's it's uh it's okay to feel that. It makes sense that we feel that fear in that moment because that can be a scary situation, you know, to be rejected emotionally it hurts, right? It does hurt. It's not a physical thing, but it it can hurt emotionally, right? So that fear um that we feel um when it comes to emotional, emotional threats, is because at least we're perceiving that we may get hurt. For example, if I go and go and talk to a girl and say, Hi, I think you're so beautiful, she may say, Yeah, I'm not interested. And that that could hurt, you know. Or if I go approach a group of people and say, Hey guys, I want to hang out with you guys. Or if and they they show they they act like they're not interested. That could hurt, right? So I think that that fear that we may feel when it comes to you know social interactions is because we're afraid of being hurt emotionally, right? We may feel afraid when approaching people or groups and things like that. Um yeah, I feel like there's a lot of other situations where um fear can come up like that. That's that's what fear is, though. It's it wants to protect us, it wants to keep us safe and protect us from things that our body believes could be a threat to us. Secondly, I want to talk about how fear feels. Um I'm sure everyone could experience fear in a different way. Um I felt it earlier today, and it was um I the way I felt it and described it was um I felt this pain, not pain, it was just it felt like a coat of like a weighted blanket all around me. Like I like I had this heavy blanket all over me, all over my body, and it was just weighing me down. Or if my body was just heavy, you know, my body was heavy and I felt weighed down. I felt like I didn't want to move. This this feeling makes me not want to move. Makes it hard for me to move. What I think is interesting there is that it's almost like the emotion is is is coddling you and saying, no, no, no, no, no, don't move, stay right here. It's like it's trying to make you feel comfortable right where you are because if you begin, if you move, that could be uncomfortable, and or you may get hurt. So, so it's like this emotion that just keeps you, keeps you down, keeps you right here, stay right here, don't move, don't move, and we won't get hurt. That's how I feel fear. And it feels like it's all on my chest and my back on my shoulders, it's just everywhere. And it's like this weight that's just pushing me down, pulling me down, keeping me from acting. You know? Yeah. Um, so that's what fear will make you do is it will make you stay put. It'll make you not move, it'll make you not say something, it'll make you not move in a certain way. And it feels heavy and it feels constricting, and it feels it can almost feel comfortable, but you know, in a way it's comfortable because it makes you want to just sit right here. You know, it'd be uncomfortable to move out of the fear. It's so weird how that how that is. But that's what fear does, you know? It almost coddles you and says, No, no, no, no, no, it's okay. Stay right here, stay right here with me. And intellectually, you may really want to do a certain thing. Um but the fear is trying to keep you from doing that thing. So it can cause a lot of conflict internally, right? Because you feel like you don't want to do it, but you think that you really want to do it. It causes all this internal conflict. So now let's get into the tools to overcome fear. Because the last thing you want to do is if you're feeling a lot of intense fear in a given moment and you're trying to do something that scares you, the last thing you want to do is just sit here in this fear and let it coddle you. Maybe, maybe give it a moment. Just just sit there in that and maybe hold yourself and just yeah, just just feel it. What's going on? Be in be um be curious. Like what do I feel in my body right now? How does this sensation how does this sensation feel? What's going on? Hmm. Yeah, get curious. But um, and if anyone disagrees with me, I'm open to discussing this, but I don't think we can't stay here. So, what are we gonna do about it? Because we gotta get out of this, we gotta get moving. We can't let this fear just hold us down, right? So, what I'm gonna suggest is some movement. You know, get up. I mean, you you know what? You don't even have to get up. Move your shoulders. Move your shoulders, yeah. Move your neck. Yeah, move your body. Start just just move, just get curious, start moving your body. This fear is trying to keep you right here. It does not want you to move, it wants you to stay right here and cuddle up, get small, hide. Don't do that. So just start start moving against it a little bit. You don't have to do anything crazy or totally wild. It's just just get out of that a little bit. Just the fear is putting you in a box. Step outside of the box just a little bit and start moving a little bit. So maybe that means getting up. Maybe that means walking around. How does it feel? Is it scary just to walk around in the situation that you're in? Walk around, take a few laps, you know, maybe jog a little bit. Maybe um do some jumping jacks. Um yeah, I don't know. Sing, dance, do something, start moving, get it your get your body moving. Because in this state that you're in, this fear, this emotion will keep you from acting. And it we could get into why, and oh, yeah, well, the emotion wants to keep you safe, and that's great. But we know that it would be better for us to overcome this fear, right? Unless it's like you know, jumping into a cage with a tiger or something. Don't do that. But if it's something else in your life, you know you want to overcome this fear, then yeah, start moving. We're not gonna let this rule us, right? So begin moving. Another thing I'm gonna suggest is breathing. And this could be as simple as just taking deep breaths. Maybe move and take deep breaths. Nice. Yeah. Move, take deep breaths, jump around, shake it out. If you have like 20 minutes, I would recommend doing the Wim Hof method. That cleans my slate. I I see it as a cheat code for just clearing out anxiety, fear, whatever the hell. Um personally, I love doing that. It takes about 20 minutes. It is pretty intense. It's not something you want to do at like work. Well, you could do it at work, surely, but I mean, some people might think it's strange, um, but it's a lot of intense breathing. So, what you're gonna do is just real quick, if you don't know what the Wim Hof method is, is so deep breaths like that, right? I just took two. So you're gonna take 30. And then at the very last breath, you're gonna hold it at the top for as long as you can, then breathe, and then do that three times, three rounds of that. And if you want to really understand how to do the Wim Hof method, you could look it up. It's a great method. Wimhof is a badass guy. He wrote a sweet book where he talks about it. Um, yeah, I think Wimhoff, um, the Wim Hof method is a great breathing method you could do to kind of get out of this fear state, you know, to knock it out. That's a great way to just knock it out of the park, honestly. I think it does that. Something else, um, the physiological psi, which I don't know who coined that term. I heard about it um from Andrew Huberman and a few other people. But pretty much what you do is you just go. So it's uh you inhale about 70% and then another 30%. And the goal is to do one big inhale, but cut it into a 70-30 split. So um, and then just sigh and let it all out. Really emphasis on that sigh. And I've been doing that at work, I've been doing that throughout my life. And it really does just kind of help me relax and get out of whatever story was just replaying in my head about my life. You know, because we tend to do that. A story will just kick in, and then all of a sudden you're lost in it and you're afraid. Um, that the physiological side tends to bring me back into the present moment just long enough to knock me out of that story and remind myself, oh, I'm here. I got this, no worries. You know? So, yeah, you could do those physiological side, do some Wim Hof technique, or you could just do some deep breathing, just and combine that with some movement. Get moving, man. Start moving, start running around. Um, another thing I would suggest is call a friend. And this, if you're anything like me, can be very difficult to do sometimes. If I'm in the groove and I've been calling my friends and staying in touch with them for a long time, you know, and we've been having some good conversations, we've been staying in touch with each other, maybe we've been hanging out, and this is pretty easy for me to do. Oh, yeah, I'll call I'll call my buddy, you know. But when I've gone a week, two weeks, three weeks without reaching out and calling people a lot, it can be really freaking hard to pick up the phone and call somebody. I don't know why, but my friends that I've known for years, for some reason, I'm just like, they're not gonna want to talk to me right now. Or, you know, whatever. I get like a freaking story will play in my head that fear, you know, will keep me from calling somebody. I really encourage you to reach out to somebody. And um especially if you have a friend you could call. Man, I'm feeling really afraid right now. You know, um, I think that's that's so powerful, you know, just to, yeah, one, give give a good friend of yours an opportunity just to just to comfort you and say, dude, what's going on, man? Talk to me about it. You know, what's going on, dude? That can be so, I think, heart opening. You know, any time in my life where a friend has called me and said, dude, I'm struggling right now. Can you help me? I've been like, holy shit, yeah, man. You know, like I'm getting emotional right now just thinking about it. Because I mean, that's just like that means so much that you thought to call me when you're feeling this and you're sharing this with me, you know. I just want to share that, you know, um, because I think that oftentimes we get in our head to heads too much, and people will help get us right out of there, you know. So call somebody. Call somebody and tell them what's going on and give them the opportunity to help you. Um yeah. Uh, and just a quick thing I would recommend too is if you don't already, go find groups to go to, man. There's 12-step groups out there. If you don't know what that is, you should look into it. 12-step groups. Um, there's support groups all are all around the world. If you're a man, go find a men's group. If you're a woman, go find a woman's group. I know women and women's groups, you know, but dude, go go freaking, if you need it, go find some community. Some people just have really great community around them and they don't need to go to a support group or something, and that's phenomenal. But if you don't have a really solid community around you that you're communing with consistently, go get go get yourself into a group of people that can that can support you. Yeah, I need to take that and and take and apply that to my life because there's a lot of moments in my life I do not I do not apply that knowledge. Something else I would suggest is um move in the direction of the fear just a little bit. Okay, so you've so you've already gotten out of this state, right? Where you're just sitting still. Oh, I'm so afraid, I'm not gonna do it. Okay, so you've moved, you've breathed, okay. Maybe you've jogged around, maybe you've done a freaking cartwheel. I don't know, man. Get get out of your head. Start moving, you know? Now, whatever it is that you're afraid of, just take a few steps in that direction. And I promise you, the closer you get, it's you're just gonna do it. Okay, it's weird. But like if you just start walking that way, you start moving towards it, you'll do it. Um, so if there's something that you're very afraid of that you're not wanting to do, loosen yourself up and then just start walking the direction. You don't even have to make the commitment. You can make a freaking U-turn, or you could, you know, take an exit. You don't gotta do it. Yeah, but I'm telling you, the closer you get, the more you're gonna be like, oh, I can actually do this thing. That's just an idea. Yeah. And then the last step is to just do it. Nike. Okay, just do it. And um, which that's that's not very good advice. That's why I wanted to start with some other tools prior to that. Um, yeah. There's very few instances in my life where I've done something that I was afraid of and I really regretted it. You know, I I can't actually think of any that I've just straight up regret. I think I've learned something from everything in my life that I've done that came with some fear. Um, yeah, and that doesn't, I know in the moment, it can be very difficult to jump into something when you're feeling very fearful. Um, it can be actually it can be impossible. It can be like there is a literal brick wall standing between you and the thing you want to do. And it's it feels that way. And I get it. You know, that's why I'm trying to provide some other tools to help that, you know, help that break down that wall a little bit and make yourself feel a little loosened up. Um start stepping towards it, you know. Ultimately, though, you have to be the one to just do it, um, which is difficult. And that's where I think support from people can really help as well. If whatever the goal is, the thing you're trying to overcome, if you can, you know, get a buddy to just like kick you and be like, just freaking go, man. I'll be right here. Just go. You know, that's that can be really, really helpful. Um, another thing I wanted to talk about was the shame around fear and how in a given moment when we're feeling very overwhelmed and we're feeling like we're really struggling with an emotion like fear, it can be easy to shame ourselves and be upset with ourselves that we're feeling it, or upset that we're allowing it to control us or have any influence on us. And I just want to invite some ease into that. And like some I was gonna say forgiveness, but forgiveness isn't the right word. You didn't do anything wrong. You're a human, you're feeling afraid. That's like one of the most human humane emotions in the world. For you don't, that's okay. That's okay, that's real, that's very, very normal. I don't even like the word normal. It's it's just going to happen. You're you cannot get around fear. It happens. It's it's a very natural thing. It's natural. That's the word I want to look, I was looking for. Don't beat yourself up because you're feeling afraid. That's okay. That's okay. If you don't have the courage to do something right now that's making you afraid, that's okay. I would invite you, however, to do some of these tools to try to move out of the fear and into what is scaring you. Um in my personal experience, when I've been afraid of something and I don't face it, I I I typically don't feel good after. I feel like I had an opportunity to do something and I didn't do it. I feel some sort of shame, or maybe shame's not the right word, but guilt. I feel guilty. Like, oh man, I did something wrong. I could have, I could have done that. I wanted to do it. I should have done it. Why didn't I do that? Um, so yeah, I would invite you to do this thing that you're wanting to that you're wanting to do. Use these tools, get support. Um, but don't bully yourself for feeling this way. You're always gonna feel this way, and it's not a measure of who you are, it's a measure of what you are. You're human. So let yourself have your fear. You know, say hello to it. It's okay. You're gonna see your fear again, it's always gonna come back. And um, I guess I'm inviting you here to change your relationship to it and not not let it control you or keep you down, but you know, learn to move out of it a little bit. And I think that that fear will begin to lessen. I I think that that fear is almost like an entity in your body. It's part of you that's afraid and wants to keep you safe. But the more and more that you move out of it, the more that it'll realize. Like, oh, that part of you will realize, that part of your psyche that's causing that fear that's creating it, it's gonna realize, like, oh, we actually don't need to be afraid. There's not much of a threat here, you know. The more that you move into whatever you're afraid of, the less afraid you become. Yeah. So, guys, that's it for this episode. I hope that you found it helpful. If you did, let me know. Reach out if you feel called to. Thanks, guys.