#002: Harnessing Halloween to Transform Fear and Anxiety

Imagine confronting your deepest fear not with avoidance, but with curiosity and understanding. Join me, Zac Erickson, as I share my personal journey from grappling with a fear of the dark, rooted in unsettling sleep paralysis experiences, to embracing mindfulness as a tool for transformation. With a backdrop as spooky as Halloween, I recount how my academic insights in psychology and neuroscience helped me rethink beliefs in evil spirits, shedding light on fear as a protective response rather than a supernatural threat. Through a brave experiment of sitting alone in the dark after a horror flick, I discovered the power of mindfulness to turn discomfort into clarity and strength.

Explore how Halloween, with its playful scares and eerie charm, offers a unique stage for rethinking our relationship with fear and anxiety. In this episode, we explore how acknowledging fear instead of suppressing it, and engaging with it in controlled environments like haunted houses or horror movies, builds resilience for life's real challenges. Reflecting on how past experiences shape our reactions, I share insights on grounding and acceptance as tools to overcome fear. The excitement of Halloween isn't just about thrills; it's a chance to recalibrate and find joy in facing fear, ultimately fostering a sense of strength and resilience.

Chapters

• 0:00 Confronting Fear and Anxiety With Mindfulness
• 9:10 Embracing Fear and Anxiety Through Halloween

Transcript

Zac: 0:42

Hello everyone, welcome to a very special episode of the ADHD Real Talk Podcast. My name is Zac Erickson and I am a psychologist practicing in private practice in Edmonton, alberta, and I am super excited about something really. Today I am recording this. It is October 29th and I have another episode in the hopper already for this show that is going to come out soon.

Zac: 1:10

But I have something that I love Halloween. Okay, by the way, my throat is like I think I'm slowly getting a cold or holding back one or whatever, so my voice is a little lower than usual, but we're going to roll with it because that's just. I mean, it's spooky season, so it's good anyway, right, us having a good relationship with fear and anxiety and how, uh, halloween is the perfect time to put this into action and to practice this a little bit and to have fun with it, right? So one of the things about halloween of course everybody loves you know like I always get in the mood for me at least, I get into the mood of watching some scary movies and you dressing up with my kids to go trick-or-treating and stuff like that. But I have not always been one that like, really liked scary stuff. In fact, I would say that, you know, looking back, I feel like some of the influences that I had when I was growing up, really I feel like I had quite a bit of fear and anxiety. That I didn't realize at the time was fear and anxiety. I probably would have called it something else, but I wanted to tell you a story, okay, so the story here. Here goes the story here. Um, I was actually it's funny, it's kind of embarrassing to admit that this was after I was married.

Zac: 2:46

I was easily in my mid-twenties probably by this point, but I remember for as long as I can remember, especially when I was really little, I was afraid of the dark. Okay, and it was. And looking back, I actually feel like I may have had some like sleep paralysis that sometimes would happen when I was really little but I remember waking up in the middle of the night and feeling like I could see some kind of figure off in the shadows and distinctly just forever had this feeling that you know, in the dark, where my heart would begin racing and something within me was just terrified right, and it was very uncomfortable and I really just didn't like it and for a long time I was worried that there was some kind of like you know you want to call it a demon or some sort of evil spirit or like something like that that was just out of eyesight. That I could feel at the time is how I would have described it is that I can feel this, but I cannot see it. And it was terrifying and as time went on, it and it was terrifying and as time went on, I started I mean, at the time that I'm describing, I was in the middle of a.

Zac: 4:19

I went to the University of Lethbridge and was going through the psychology program and then I can't remember if I was doing my bachelor's or my master's in neuroscience before eventually, you know, finishing that and then going and doing a second master's in counseling. But I was in the middle of all of these like hard science classes, right, and I was also sort of questioning or like doubting the existence of these like evil spirits that I had, you know, been convinced of or, you know, either by other people or myself, and I was nervous, like very worried about this, but also sort of thinking like, well, hang on a minute, like what evidence do I actually have that these spirits exist Like? Have I ever seen one? Obviously not I have had. What I had then later learned to realize was like I had some kind of experiences, but they were probably sleep paralysis. Looking back, for those of you who don't know, sleep paralysis is where you wake up but you can't really move and often you see things that aren't there right. There's some hallucinations that happen as you're sort of stuck in that half asleep, half awake kind of state.

Zac: 5:30

So anyway, so I remember at some point thinking you know what I'm tired of? I'm tired of fear, I'm tired of being afraid of these things. I am going to do an experiment, and I think that this is the kind of experiment that I want to encourage you. If you haven't done this before, halloween is the perfect time to do it, because it's all about facing our fears, and I want to invite you to think about what is your relationship with fear and what is your relationship with anxiety, because in that moment I sort of started to realize maybe my body is just reacting because it's trying to protect me, but it doesn't need to and I'm actually safe.

Zac: 6:22

So I distinctly remember that this is actually around the same time that I started getting into like horror movies, and not necessarily like I don't love like gory stuff but, you know, like creepy or particularly like supernatural horror. Now I actually really love, but I think at the time I was worried about I just didn't like. Being uncomfortable is, I think, is what I would actually say. And so I remember watching a scary movie by myself around Halloween and afterwards, just intentionally sitting in the dark by myself in the middle of the night in the dark by myself in the middle of the night, and I turned off all the lights and normally I would. I would be like, oh okay, like I I got to turn on some sort of a light here and like maybe tell myself I I'm going to run into something or I'm going to you know something. But like, deep down it was because I was quite uncomfortable in the dark. I was afraid of the dark in my mid twenties, is what it was. So I sat in the dark and I just watched my body and this is something that often, if you want to get more into this topic, we're definitely going to talk about it in future episodes more.

Zac: 7:40

But this concept of mindfulness Now, when we talk about mindfulness, what we're talking about is being able to. The way that I describe it to my clients is. I want you to imagine in a moment where you are experiencing a difficult emotion. The challenge often becomes one just being aware that that is even happening. Right, you need to at least be aware oh, I'm feeling anxious right now, and that takes time and practice, and you know labeling that emotion. But once you're aware of it, then instead of that usual urge of like pulling away or like trying to make that feeling go away, imagine instead just taking a single step backwards from that emotion, just enough to get yourself a little bit of emotional distance and detachment from it, so that you can observe it. And what you'll notice is that there is a part of you that is the observer and another part of you that is that feeling, or that you know whether it's in your body, the thoughts, whatever you think or whatever you're experiencing, but you can start to notice that those are not you. It's like maybe a part of you or it's something that you're experiencing, but that not everything that happens or goes through your head or that happens in your body is necessarily something you need to identify yourself with.

Zac: 9:11

I am not anxious. I am experiencing anxiety, or I feel anxious, or I'm having anxious thoughts, or maybe even in that moment. I remember sitting there and thinking I am afraid. But even that I am afraid. No, no, I'm experiencing fear, I'm feeling fear. Oh, hit my microphone there, I'm feeling fear. Oh, I hit my microphone there, I'm feeling fear. But then I just simply observed it, noticed that there was sort of a rise, this feeling in my chest, and if I simply brought my attention to my breath, allowed myself to breathe through it and even brought a sense of curiosity to it, what I found was that this feeling of a willingness to experience difficult things arose and realized okay, so like I'm scared arose and realized okay, so like I'm scared, I like I feel scared, uh, I have a tension in my chest, maybe my stomach's doing a little bit of somersaults there, okay, so what actually? You know what, like it's kind of thrilling, is what I found in that moment? It's thrilling, it is something and I think a lot of people with ADHD once we've realized this.

Zac: 10:35

The nice thing about things like horror movies and Halloween is that we can experience the thrill of that in a controlled way, and what's interesting is that what it actually can do is help us develop a healthy relationship with fear, so that then in our personal lives, then all of a sudden, we can turn around and when we need to do something else, that's difficult and this is maybe something, a connection that we haven't made before, and so I'd encourage you to think about this. Right, if you can do that in a horror movie or at a haunted house you know you're walking through a haunted house, I'm going to subject myself to this scary environment but if I do that, then maybe I can do that other thing that I'm scared of too. Or maybe I can treat my shame that I experience in the same way, my shame that I experience in the same way when I embarrass myself, when I do something that I regret, when I feel self-conscious. Maybe I can take a step back from that and observe that too, and what we'll notice is, yes, that feeling is uncomfortable, but it's not necessarily bad. It's not accurate all the time. Often it's a conditioned response. In other words, it's not necessarily bad. It's not accurate all the time. Often it's a conditioned response, in other words, it's coming from past experiences, some other experience.

Zac: 12:01

We, we learned to be anxious. Um, I certainly growing up, you know, was it Not that anybody was like, oh, the evil spirits, all well, no, that is actually what I was told. Right, I was told that there are, like evil spirits trying to tempt you and don't want you to do well, which I don't particularly believe anymore. But I feel like those are the kinds of things that I don't need to believe, that that's not true for me anymore. I would much rather believe that I am here experiencing the ups and downs of life and that's okay. And I think that in Halloween, it teaches us that we can even find joy and be willing to experience the anxiety and the fear and the thrills of things. And I understand that trauma is a whole big thing that's much bigger than this talk right, or to find an acceptance of how we feel and to be able to take a step back and ground ourselves.

Zac: 13:21

And sometimes you just want to like, sometimes it's just about riding that wave right and to to, to know that, like this is, this is something that you know. This is a response that my body is having, but that's okay. I don't feel the need to fight it, I don't feel the need to push it down, I don't feel the need to rationalize it away. Sure, I'll like, you know, I can reassure myself if I really need to, if I really need to, but a lot of times just sort of experiencing. I know, even in my own friend group there are times where we play a lot of Dungeons and Dragons together and what I've found over time is that when other people are like, oh, that's horrible, don't say more, I'm like, ew, that's disgusting.

Zac: 14:14

And then I find myself leaning in more or oh, that's horrible, lean in more to it, and that's something that, if you can do that again, I'm not saying like become like this crazy, like you know, like a sadomasochistic kind of person, like obviously we don't want to hurt people, but life is hard, and I think that part of why so many people nowadays are having a hard time in life is because we have lost the art of um. Arts maybe a weird word, but like we are not experiencing the real difficult things in life um as much, or maybe that's a I'm trying to think of how to word this because I'm not trying to minimize other people's experience but I know that for myself, some of the biggest strengths that I've ever gone through have been, or the strength that I find for myself has come from very difficult situations. And if we are too, if we haven't experienced big things, we haven't challenged ourselves, if we haven't had our viewpoint challenged in ways, then how in the world are we going to and been able to come through the other side of that and to say, wow, I've been through some hard shit. It's crazy what I've been through and I am on the other side and maybe this other thing that I'm experiencing now it's not going to be that bad either, or not. That it's not going to be bad, but I'm going to survive it Because I got through all that other stuff and I. But I'm going to survive it because I got through all that other stuff and I figured it out. So maybe I'll figure this one out too.

Zac: 15:59

So I love Halloween, you guys. I love the fun and the creepy and the gross and everything about it, specifically because it helps me recalibrate, recalibrate. It helps me to feel excited and to learn to, and reminds me to have a good, healthy relationship with my own emotions. So that's it. That's my whole talk, whole talk, my whole. Uh. That's all I have here for today. Uh, thank you everybody. Do me a favor go to uh, uh, over to Instagram at recharge psych and you're gonna find a. Um, you know, you can shoot me an email or, sorry, just dm me a message or post a link to you know, a comment or whatever. Do the thing right. Let me know how your halloween goes. I'm excited, uh, to hear from all of you, and I will talk to you next time on the adhd real talk podcast. Bye.