Mental rehearsal makes your scariest moments more bearable

We all know the feeling of fear.

Sometimes, it's rational: Clinging to the edge of a cliff, not roped in, you feel the strain on your fingers as your hands sweat and know you need to pull yourself to a safe position.

Other times, it's completely, infuriatingly irrational: Stepping to the front of a room, about to discuss a new proposal, your throat starts to close and your heart starts to pound.

Fear is an imperfect mechanism, a throwback to a time when it would be triggered by real threats likely to kill us. Most of us don't face those threats now, but the same part of our brain, the amygdala, lights up in response to a situation rightly or wrongly perceived as threatening, and something in our brain tells us to take flight, flee, or freeze. 

We want our minds to function correctly, and so we can't wish or cut away the biological circuitry that triggers that fear reaction. But over the years, psychologists have developed a strategy that can prevent those moments of fear from becoming overwhelming.

Instead of trying to avoid thinking about what might go wrong, researchers say that carefully rehearsing each potential fear-inducing moment before it happens can help. That way, when those moments inevitably arrive, they aren't a surprise or a shock. Rehearsing the way that certain scary moments will feel means that those moments feel "right" when they happen, instead of feeling surprising.