How To Get Over Your Fear of Crowds
Unless you live in absolutely the middle of nowhere, you’re almost never far away from a crowd.
Which means that if you’re afraid of crowds, you’re in big trouble.
Trouble is, crowds can appear as if from thin air. You could be standing in a shopping mall or empty street, then you look round and you’re surrounded by people and more people. It’s like you’ve stepped into a movie.
Most times, crowds are harmless. However, if you are afraid of crowds then it’s a completely different story when you try to tell your mind that fact. Instead, you’ll likely be running all sorts of different scenarios as to why this particular crowd of people means you harm. Regardless of the fact that they’re just a group of strangers intent on minding their own business, not a crowd carrying swords and torches.
So what are your options to make yourself calmer if you’re unfortunate enough to find yourself standing in the center of a large, seemingly angry, crowd?
Rationally telling yourself “no worries” probably won’t do the trick.
You could go for a quick deep breath or two to calm yourself down. Or at a minimum, stop you fainting with fear.
Then let your survival instinct take over and head for the closest exit. Steadily. Without running.
After that, you should look for a better solution.
If your memory will let you, work out when your fear of crowded spaces first started. Maybe it was when you were a child and you lost track of your parents for a few super-scary minutes. Lots of the time, fears like this one go back in time to when we were younger and we weren’t as rational and straight thinking as we are as an adult.
If it’s possible to trace your fear of crowds back to one particular time, one of the most permanent methods to heal yourself is to change the response you learned in those few minutes. There are some tricks you can do to achieve this but they’re best left to professionals.
That said, one thing you can use is a hypnosis track for fear of crowds – this works most of the time for most people and well worth checking out as your first step to curing yourself.