Being Scared
Some other feelings that go along with being scared
Being scared of things, especially if they are things that most people aren't afraid of, and that are making it tricky for you to get on with doing the things you want to do, can bring on other feelings as well, such as:
- shame
- feelings of worthlessness
- feeling that you aren't normal
- depression
- frustration
- anger
What might help?
Staying away from things that scare you isn't always a great idea. It can cause you to stay scared or even cause the fear of that thing to grow bigger. Like if you were scared of drowning, staying away from water wouldn't help you get over that fear, but maybe learning to swim would! Or if you were scared of school so stayed at home, you might never find out that school can be a fun place to be.
If you don't sort it out, sometimes being scared of one thing can get bigger and bigger and move on to other things. Let's pretend that a friend's dog nipped you. That would be scary and might hurt, so it would be normal to feel scared of that dog and to want to stay away from it! But what if, after that, you weren't just scared of your friend's dog but became scared of ALL dogs? That could make it hard to do things like visit anyone who has a dog or have fun at the park when people were walking their dogs. Think of the good things you would be missing out on!
If that happened it would be important to think about ways that you could stop being scared - can you think of any? Perhaps you could watch the dogs at the dog park from a distance or over the fence, and then when you felt comfortable, you could start spending time with a gentle, familiar dog, to slowly get used to dogs again.