How to Overcome Fear: 10 Science-Backed Strategies

“Okay. Just say it. Raise your hand and SAY it.”

Your heart pounds. The meeting moves on, and the chance slips away… again.

How can you learn to overcome fear and conquer self-doubt? With a little bit of courage, a lot of confidence and a dash of improv!

In this episode of my series, “The World’s Most Interesting People,” I sat down with author and speaker Judi Holler. She’s a professionally trained improviser and an alumna of Second City’s Conservatory in Chicago who uses her training every single day to embrace fear, manage self-doubt, and get more comfortable being UNCOMFORTABLE.

So what does it take? Psychologists define courage as behavioral approach despite the experience of fear, which means acting while you’re still scared.¹

Here’s how:

Special Note We’re so glad you’re here to work on your fears! If you are struggling to find the help you need, please note that all content found on this website is not to be considered professional medical advice. It is always best to consult a doctor or licensed therapist with any questions or concerns in regards to your physical or mental health. For a good resource for therapists, you can check out Mental Health America’s helpful list.

Why Do You Feel Scared? The Brain Science Behind Fear

“Okay… why is my heart POUNDING? It’s just a meeting!”

Fear starts in the amygdala, an almond-shaped structure deep in your brain that acts as a smoke detector for threats. When it senses danger (or mistakes something harmless for danger), it fires off emergency signals before the rest of your brain has processed what happened.²

That racing heart, shallow breathing, sweaty palms, and pit-in-your-stomach feeling? That’s your body’s ancient fight-or-flight system doing EXACTLY what it was designed to do.

But it was built for escaping predators on the savanna, and it can’t tell a charging lion from a Monday morning presentation.

Your thinking brain is supposed to “vet” the alarm and shut it down when there’s no real danger. When that signal is weak, the alarm can go off for things that aren’t dangerous.

This is why “just relax” rarely works. Your body is in a high-arousal state, and you can’t simply think your way out of a chemical cascade.

But you can use specific techniques to strengthen that amygdala-to-prefrontal connection. Here we go…

Fear is your body’s ancient survival system firing in a modern world.

10 Strategies to Overcome Fear and Self-Doubt

#1: Be a Fear Boss

Speaker and improviser Judi Holler, an alumna of Second City’s Conservatory in Chicago and author of the Amazon bestseller Fear Is My Homeboy, argues that trying to eliminate fear is the wrong goal entirely.

“Fear less instead of being fearless,” Holler explains.

A life without fear means a life without challenge. Instead of fighting fear, Holler recommends learning to dance with it.

Dance with your fear.

How do we do that? To be a Fear Boss we have to manage our fear rather than conquer it.

So when fear hits, ask yourself three questions:

1. Is this fear here to keep me safe? (A dark alley at night. Listen to it.)
2. Is this fear here to teach me? (A hard conversation you’ve been avoiding. Lean into it.)
3. Is this fear just waking me up? (Pre-presentation jitters. Your body is getting you ready to perform.)

Holler’s biggest personal fear is becoming irrelevant, and she credits that fear with fueling her professional growth.

I believe that all fear is fuel. Our greatest fears are merely fuel for our drive. What can your fear fuel?

Action Step: The next time you feel afraid, pause and sort it. Write down: “This fear is here to _______.” Just sorting it can shift you from reactive mode to analytical mode.

Here’s one ordinary week, sorted:

#2: Use the “Name It to Tame It” Technique

We’ve typed “I’m fine!” while our stomachs did somersaults more times than we’d like to admit. Turns out naming the feeling might have been the smarter move.

A UCLA brain-imaging study found that simply putting your feelings into words turns down the brain’s alarm center. When participants labeled an emotional face as “angry,” their amygdala activity dropped. Picking a name for the face (“Harry”) produced no such drop.³

So the word “angry” can actually calm you down. Strange… but useful!

The psychologist who led the study put it in driving terms: “In the same way you hit the brake when you’re driving when you see a yellow light, when you put feelings into words, you seem to be hitting the brakes on your emotional responses.”⁴

Labeling an emotion activates the right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (say that five times fast!), and the more that region lit up, the less the amygdala responded.

And you don’t even have to try to feel better, because the labeling itself recruits your brain’s calming system.

Next up… spiders. (Sorry!) Another study tested this with people who were genuinely afraid of spiders, over repeated sessions sitting a couple of feet from a live tarantula.

Some participants put their fear into words, with sentences like “I feel anxious the disgusting tarantula will jump on me.” Others reappraised the situation (“Looking at the little spider is not dangerous for me”), distracted themselves, or just looked.

One week later, the labelers had the smallest physical fear response: their hands sweated less near a spider in a new setting.⁵ Wild, right?

How to do it:

1. When fear spikes, say out loud or write down: “I’m noticing I feel _______ right now.”
2. Be specific. “I feel dismissed” works better than “I feel bad.” The more precise your label, the better it tends to work. (Stuck for the right word? Our list of emotions has one for almost every shade of fear.)
3. Don’t try to fix the feeling. Just name it and leave it there.

Pro Tip Set a recurring phone reminder three times daily (morning, midday, evening). When it goes off, close your eyes for 30 seconds and ask: “What’s happening in my body right now?” Name whatever you find. Over time, you’ll catch fear earlier, before it escalates into avoidance.

#3: Reframe Anxiety as Excitement (The Excitement Reappraisal)

Quick quiz! What’s the best way to handle nerves before a big moment?

• A. Calm down
• B. Get excited

A Harvard Business School researcher ran a series of experiments on pre-performance nerves.

Most people go with A. When surveyed, more than 90% picked “try to relax and calm down” as the best advice. The experiments point the other way.⁶ The answer is… B!

Why? Anxiety and excitement are both high-arousal states. Your heart races and your palms sweat either way.

The big difference is interpretation. Anxiety frames the situation as a threat (“What could go wrong?”), while excitement frames it as an opportunity (“What could go right?”).

Shifting between two high-energy states is far easier than forcing yourself from high energy down to calm.

Across three experiments:

• Karaoke singing: Participants who said “I am excited” scored 80% accuracy, compared to 53% for those who said “I am anxious”⁶
• Public speaking: The “excited” group was rated more persuasive, confident, and competent by independent judges
• Math under pressure: Participants told to “try to get excited” got more problems right (3.6 out of 8) than those told to “try to remain calm” (2.9 out of 8)

Action Step: Before your next presentation, interview, or difficult conversation, say out loud: “I am excited.” No whispering! Say it like you MEAN it. Even if you don’t fully believe it, the verbal statement alone nudges your brain toward an opportunity mindset.

Saying ‘I am excited’ before a high-pressure moment works better than trying to calm down, because anxiety and excitement are the same energy pointed in different directions.

#4: Go Scared (Use Gradual Exposure)

Judi Holler’s personal story is a great example of gradual exposure.

After building a career in hospitality, Holler accepted a promotion that led her to Chicago. Wanting to sharpen her communication skills, she signed up for improv classes at Second City’s Conservatory, paid all the fees, and… never went. Her biggest fear was that it was too late and she was too old.

Months later, she re-registered and finally walked through the door. The first people she saw were a 59-year-old professor and a 62-year-old salesman, both taking improv to stay sharp.

Perspective hit.

She went on to audition for the conservatory and started performing shows. She calls improv her “Fear Church,” the place where she works out her discomfort muscle.

Going scared works. Facing your fears directly is one of the best-supported methods for overcoming them. Across 33 randomized trials, exposure produced large improvements for people with specific phobias, and it outperformed both placebo and the other therapy approaches it was tested against.⁷

Exposure builds a new “safety memory” that competes with the old fear, while the original memory stays put. Researchers call this inhibitory learning, and the new memory gets stronger the more the real outcome surprises you.⁸ (Fancy name, simple idea!)

How to build your own fear ladder:

1. Identify your fear. Be specific: “speaking up in team meetings” beats “public speaking.”
2. Rate scenarios from 1 to 10. A 1 might be asking a question in a small group. A 10 might be giving a keynote.
3. Start at 2 or 3. Face the mildly uncomfortable version first.
4. Drop the safety blankets. Remove crutches like always sitting near the exit or reading from a script, which stop your brain from learning it’s actually safe.
5. Write the prediction down, then check it. Before you start, write what you think will happen (“I’ll go blank and someone will smirk”). Then reflect afterward. Ask: “What did I expect to happen? What actually happened?” This mismatch is where the real learning occurs.

Someone on our team used to keep a full script tucked under the laptop for every big call, just in case. The calls went fine, and the script got all the credit!

Here’s that ladder filled in for “speaking up in team meetings”:

Stay on a rung for as many meetings as you need before you climb to the next one. (Our tips to speak up in meetings can help with rungs 5 and 7.)

Big Idea: Every time you face a fear and survive it, that safety memory gets stronger. You’re building new neural pathways!

And success means you stayed in the room. Your heart can pound the whole time, and it STILL counts.

#5: Apply the 3-3-3 Grounding Rule

Fear spiking and need relief right now? Use the 3-3-3 rule to interrupt a spiral of anxious thoughts⁹

• Look: Name 3 things you can see. Focus on colors, shapes, and textures.
• Listen: Name 3 things you can hear. A fan humming, traffic outside, your own breathing.
• Move: Make 3 physical movements. Wiggle your toes, stretch your arms overhead, rotate your neck.

Shifting your attention from the panic inside to what’s actually around you can pull you out of the spiral.

The whole thing takes about 30 seconds! Practice it a few times while you’re calm, so it’s automatic when you actually need it.

Action Step: Write “3-3-3” on a sticky note and place it where you’ll see it during stressful moments: your computer monitor, your bathroom mirror, or the dashboard of your car. (Someone on our team keeps one on the edge of their laptop. It gets a lot of use!)

#6: Challenge Your Fearful Thoughts (Cognitive Reappraisal)

Fear LOVES distorted thinking. Luckily, changing how you interpret a situation is a well-studied way to manage the feeling.

Here are three CBT-based techniques you can try on your own:

The Evidence Test: When a fearful thought pops up, interrogate it like a lawyer:

• “What’s the actual evidence for this thought?”
• “What’s the evidence against it?”
• “What would I tell a friend who had this same thought?”

Most fearful predictions crumble under cross-examination.

Here’s one done all the way through. The thought: If I ask a question at the all-hands, everyone will think I’m behind.

• Evidence for: Nobody else asked anything at the last all-hands.
• Evidence against: Two people thanked the last person who asked a question. And I’ve never once thought less of a coworker for asking one.
• What I’d tell a friend: “Ask it. Half the room is probably wondering the same thing.”

The Behavioral Experiment: Test your fearful predictions directly. If you think “everyone will judge me if I speak up,” speak up in one meeting this week and track what actually happens. Then compare your prediction to reality.

The Scheduled Worry Window: In an early study, teaching self-described worriers to save their worrying for a set time and place cut how much they worried day to day.¹⁰

Pick a 20-minute slot, say 5 PM. When an anxious thought pops up outside that window, tell yourself: “I’ll think about that at 5 PM.” By the time 5 PM rolls around, many worries have lost their urgency.

We tried a worry window on our team once. By the time the window opened, half the list had already sorted itself out!

A filled-in window looks like this:

Pro Tip Replace “What if it goes wrong?” with “What if it goes right?” That one question can move your attention from what might go wrong to what might go right.

#7: Use Box Breathing to Calm Your Nerves

When fear triggers the fight-or-flight response, your breathing becomes shallow and rapid. That tells your brain the danger is real… and now you’re in a feedback loop.

Controlled breathing breaks this cycle by activating the parasympathetic nervous system, your body’s rest-and-digest mode. Box breathing is one version, and the U.S. Navy SEALs use it.¹¹

Box Breathing:

1. Inhale through your nose for 4 seconds
2. Hold for 4 seconds
3. Exhale slowly through your mouth for 4 seconds
4. Hold for 4 seconds
5. Repeat 4 cycles

The 4-7-8 Technique (for when you need deeper calming):

1. Inhale through your nose for 4 seconds
2. Hold for 7 seconds
3. Exhale forcefully through your mouth for 8 seconds
4. Repeat 3 to 4 cycles

Cyclic Sighing (for a reset you can do at your desk):

1. Inhale through your nose.
2. Take a second, shorter inhale on top of the first to fill your lungs all the way.
3. Exhale slowly through your mouth until your lungs feel empty.
4. Repeat for up to five minutes.

In a month-long Stanford trial, people who spent five minutes a day on cyclic sighing got a bigger boost in positive mood than people who spent about the same time on mindfulness meditation.¹²

Don’t ditch box breathing, though! State anxiety came down in every group in that trial, box breathing included. So if box is the pattern you’ll actually remember when your hands are shaking, keep it.

For more ways to settle your body down, see our guide on how to be calm.

Action Step: Practice box breathing for 2 minutes before bed tonight. Build the habit while the stakes are low, and it’ll be there for you when fear strikes.

#8: Embrace the Everyday Improv

Improv, short for improvisation, is two or more people collaborating in an environment of uncertainty with the common goal of creating a solution. Judi Holler points out that you’re already improvising every day: collaborating with coworkers, navigating unexpected changes, and solving problems on the fly.

That’s a LOT of your workweek… the meeting that goes sideways, the client question nobody prepped for, the colleague who changes the plan on Thursday afternoon.

What separates people who freeze under uncertainty from people who thrive? Practice. Improv trains you to say “yes, and…” and build on whatever just happened.

Here’s how to bring improv to your fears:

• Accept the offer. In improv, everything your scene partner says is an “offer” you build on. In life, treat unexpected situations the same way. Instead of “This wasn’t supposed to happen,” try “Okay, this is what’s happening. What can I do with it?”
• Make your partner look good. Shift focus from your own fear to how you can support the people around you. This redirects your attention outward, which can ease self-conscious anxiety.
• Fail fast and loud. In improv, the biggest laughs come from the biggest mistakes. Practice being wrong in low-stakes environments so being wrong in high-stakes ones doesn’t feel catastrophic.

Action Step: This week, say “yes” to one thing that makes you slightly uncomfortable. Try a new lunch spot, start a conversation with someone you don’t know well, or volunteer for a task outside your expertise. Treat life like a big improv show: be playful, experiment, and see the people around you as partners with a shared goal.

#9: Reframe Self-Doubt as a Growth Signal

“Any minute now, they’ll realize I have NO idea what I’m doing.”

Sound familiar? That’s imposter syndrome, the nagging feeling that you don’t deserve your success and will be “found out.” Studies put it anywhere from 9% to 82% of the groups studied, depending on how it’s measured, and it appears in both men and women, from teenagers to late-career professionals.¹³

I used to think my self-doubt and my fear of being unworthy were bad things. But Judi reframed this for me in a powerful way. When you feel out of your depth, it often means you’ve stretched beyond your comfort zone, which is where growth happens.

Judi believes that when you feel this self-doubt, you’ve arrived.

Judi Holler puts it this way: “You’re becoming a version of yourself that you’ve never been before. It’s new, so it makes you feel out of sorts, out of place. Self-doubt is a side effect of bossing up. It’s evidence that you’ve leveled up.”

Research on workplace impostor thoughts supports that reframe. Employees who had those thoughts more often put in more effort when their workload piled up, and that effort helped their performance, with no sign of later costs like stress or emotional exhaustion.¹⁴

Mild self-doubt after a promotion or new challenge is a normal growth signal. Chronic self-doubt that leads to overwork, burnout, avoidance, or exhaustion? Different story.

How to tell the difference:

• Healthy stretch: “I’m nervous because this is new, but I can figure it out.”
• Chronic pattern: “I’ve felt like a fraud for years and I’m exhausted from trying to prove myself.”

If you recognize the second pattern, talk it through with a professional.

For the everyday self-doubt that comes with growth, Holler suggests remembering that people will have opinions about you no matter what you do. So are you living your life for them, or for yourself?

Action Step: Keep a “proof file” on your phone. Every time you receive positive feedback, finish a hard project, or do something that scared you, add it. When imposter syndrome hits, open the file. Evidence beats feelings!

A few lines might read: “Ran the Q3 review without notes.” “Said no to the Thursday ask.” “Got a reply to that cold email in nine minutes.”

Mild self-doubt after a new challenge is a growth signal. Chronic self-doubt that leads to burnout deserves real attention.

#10: Put Yourself First

Judi works harder on herself than she works on her business, and this is a good thing!

Your business can’t work, if you don’t work.

When Judi works well emotionally, mentally, spiritually, and physically, her business does better too. Do you work on yourself? How can you protect your personal time as well as your business time?

Tamsen Webster, the creator of the Red Thread, does this by using “Mind Day Mondays” in her workplace. She sets up an ‘Out of Office’ that tells everyone she is offline to write, think, walk, research, and ultimately create and inspire new content.

Holler protects her own time the same way, with “Freestyle Fridays,” dedicated time for thinking, exploring, and creating without an agenda. She encourages everyone to step off the “hamster wheel of going to work, checking email, going on social” and carve out regular time for playful experimentation.

How can you carve out time for yourself?

Action Step: Block one recurring slot a week that belongs to you, and put it in your calendar as a real appointment. A Friday afternoon with no meetings counts!

Stack the Tools Into a Five-Minute Pre-Game Routine

Some scary moments you can see coming… the pitch, the interview, the review with your boss. For those, run the tools above back to back.

Here’s what the five minutes before a client pitch might look like:

Only have 30 seconds? Skip straight to… “I am excited.”

The Part of Your Fear That Isn’t Yours to Fix

Everything above is something you can do on your own. But some fear comes from the room you’re in.

Some teams believe it’s safe to take an interpersonal risk in front of each other: to ask the obvious question, disagree with the senior person, or say you don’t know. That shared belief is called psychological safety. In a study of 51 work teams, the ones that had it did more asking, seeking feedback, and talking openly about mistakes, and those habits went along with better team performance.¹⁵

So before you decide your nerves are a personal failing, read the room first:

• What happened the last time someone admitted a mistake in your team meeting?
• When your manager is wrong, does anyone say so? How did that go for them?
• How many questions get asked in your stand-up, and is it always the same person asking?

If those answers aren’t great, cyclic sighing won’t fix the problem. In a room like that, your fear may be telling you something true.

You have three options, and some are easier than others.

First, make things a little safer wherever you have influence. Ask the first obvious question yourself, thank the person who owns an error, and respond to bad news by asking what happened.

Second, find the parts of the organization where it already feels safe, and do your riskiest thinking there.

Or third… decide the room itself is the problem and start looking for a different one. That’s a perfectly valid choice, too!

How Fear Impacts Your Career (The Numbers)

What does fear cost you at work? A LiveCareer survey of over 1,000 workers found¹⁶

• 87% of workers admit to having work-related fears
• 35% have missed out on a promotion because of fear
• 35% have been forced to quit a job because of fear
• 81% would turn down their dream job if it required facing their biggest fear
• 80% believe having fears is something to be ashamed of, a stigma that can keep people from seeking help

Wait… 81% would turn down their DREAM job?!

The concerns workers named most often were making decisions, taking responsibility, and public speaking. Those are the EXACT competencies leadership asks for. So fear can keep you from practicing the very skills that would help you get past it.

If work scares you sometimes… you’re far from alone.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the 5 steps to conquer fear?

The five steps are: (1) Understand your fear by identifying what triggers it and recognizing the physical response as normal, (2) Name it using specific emotional labels to activate your brain’s calming system, (3) Reframe it by shifting from “I’m terrified” to “I’m excited” or “My body is preparing me,” (4) Face it gradually using a fear ladder that starts with the least scary version, and (5) Reflect and repeat by noting what you expected versus what actually happened after each exposure.

What is the 3-3-3 rule for anxiety?

The 3-3-3 rule is a grounding technique for moments of acute anxiety. Name 3 things you can see, 3 things you can hear, and make 3 physical movements (like wiggling your toes or stretching your arms). This redirects attention from internal panic to external stimuli, which can pull you out of the anxiety cycle. The whole process takes about 30 seconds.

Why do I feel fear for no reason?

Fear that seems to come from nowhere usually has a source your conscious mind hasn’t identified. Common causes include evolutionary wiring (your brain’s “better safe than sorry” programming), intolerance of uncertainty (the brain enters anticipatory anxiety when a situation is ambiguous), internal false alarms (your brain associating a harmless physical sensation like a racing heart with danger), and brain chemistry that keeps the nervous system in a heightened state. If unexplained fear persists, consulting a healthcare professional can help identify the root cause.

What does overcoming fear mean?

Overcoming fear means acting while you’re still afraid. Psychologists describe courage as behavioral approach despite the experience of fear.

How can I train my mind to overcome fear?

Four approaches from this article help: affect labeling (naming your emotions to reduce amygdala activity), cognitive reappraisal (challenging distorted fearful thoughts with evidence), gradual exposure (facing fears in small progressive steps to build safety memories), and regular practice with breathing techniques like box breathing. Practice them in small doses, a little every day.

What is the root cause of overthinking?

Overthinking (rumination) is a fear-driven coping mechanism. It’s fueled by the illusion that replaying a situation will produce a perfect solution, perfectionism, and past experiences that trained the mind to anticipate and avoid pain. You’re problem-solving when you end up with a plan you can act on; without one, you’re ruminating. The scheduled worry window technique, saving your worries for one set time each day and postponing anxious thoughts until then, has research behind it as a way to break the cycle.

How to Overcome Fear: Key Takeaways

1. Treat the physical symptoms as information. Your amygdala fires the same chemicals whether you’re facing a predator or a performance review, so read the racing heart as your body getting ready.
2. Name your fear to tame it. Saying “I’m noticing anxiety right now” activates prefrontal braking systems that quiet the amygdala. No positive thinking required.
3. Say “I am excited” before high-pressure moments. Harvard research shows this simple reframe outperforms trying to calm down across speaking, singing, and math performance.
4. Build a fear ladder and climb it. Start with mildly uncomfortable situations and work up. Each successful exposure builds a safety memory that competes with the fear.
5. Use the 3-3-3 rule for instant relief. Three things you see, three you hear, and three movements can pull you out of a panic spiral in about 30 seconds.
6. Distinguish growth-doubt from chronic doubt. Feeling nervous in a new role is healthy. Feeling like a fraud for years is something to talk through with a professional.
7. Get uncomfortable on purpose, every day. Judi’s bottom line is to get uncomfortable, every day, on purpose. It will never get easier, but you will get stronger.
8. Read the room before you blame your nerves. If nobody on your team admits mistakes, your fear may be telling you something accurate.

So pick one thing this week, like the meeting where you finally say the thing or the email you’ve been drafting in your head since Tuesday. Write down what you expect to happen, do it while you’re still scared, then go back and see how close you were. (Our guess? Not very close at all!)

Ready for your next rung? Our guide to stepping out of your comfort zone has dozens more ways to practice being uncomfortable on purpose.

1. PMC — Courage and Behavioral Approach
2. Cleveland Clinic — Amygdala
3. PubMed — Affect Labeling Disrupts Amygdala Activity
4. UCLA Newsroom — Putting Feelings Into Words
5. Psychological Science
6. APA — Get Excited: Reappraising Pre-Performance Anxiety
7. Clinical Psychology Review
8. PMC — Inhibitory Learning in Exposure Therapy
9. Newport Healthcare — 3-3-3 Anxiety Rule
10. Behaviour Research and Therapy
11. Cleveland Clinic
12. Cell Reports Medicine
13. Journal of General Internal Medicine
14. Journal of Applied Psychology
15. Administrative Science Quarterly — Psychological Safety and Learning Behavior in Work Teams
16. LiveCareer — Fears and Phobias at Work