Guest of the Métamorphose podcast, actress Michèle Laroque explained how to get rid of your fears “to avoid something serious”.
Everyone has anxiety. To different degrees, each person shares worries and fears which can go so far as to ruin everyday life. The brain is our best ally in combating these fears, but it can also become a formidable enemy. “We are very powerful, thought is very powerful” supports Michèle Laroque, in one of the latest episodes of the Métamorphose podcast. “I really noticed it: when you are afraid of something, you attract what you are afraid of.”
Psychology validates this: our fears influence our behaviors consciously or not, and these behaviors can create exactly what we fear. For example, a person who fears rejection may become distant, less spontaneous, or even defensive. Result: others will find her cold or closed, and will distance themselves. She may end up being rejected, not because she “attracted” him but because his fear changed his attitude. So, strongly believing in something can influence our actions, to the point of making that thing real.
This is exactly what Michèle Laroque describes. “So, sometimes, when something matters to me, there is a very, very good method that someone told me about” she explains. This method is based on an initial postulate that is “difficult to accept” warns the actress who firmly believes in it. “I’ve been told this and I think it’s true, that what we fear is something we unconsciously desire.” In fact, this view was recognized by the psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud. For him, certain fears can be linked to repressed unconscious desires.
The mechanism is as follows: a desire deemed unacceptable (socially or morally) is rejected out of consciousness. But it doesn’t disappear. It comes back in another form, sometimes in the form of anxiety. For example, someone may feel intense fear linked to a situation which, deep down, awakens a desire that they do not allow themselves to recognize. Faced with a fear that is too present, which comes back recurrently and parasitizes thoughts, Michèle Laroque suggests a very simple thing: ask yourself the question of the benefit that you would get if the event you are afraid of happened.
“If we understand what this famous hidden benefit is, we can, in the present, see how we can achieve it. For example, I have a friend who I asked what she was afraid of, she told me “of ending up paralyzed”. I said to her: “What would be the benefit if that happened?” She replied: “I will be able to rest.” So “rest now”, I told her” illustrates the actress. For her“it’s a way of overcoming your fears and not attracting something serious, when you function like that”. As summarized by Anne Ghesquière, author of the podcast, who interviews Michèle Laroque, “by doing this, we unconsciously seek repair (of ourselves, editor’s note).”
