Managing Fear by Kris Fant
Heart pounding, you crest the hill. A moment of jubilation, and then you realize that the way down is steeper, rockier, and even more exposed than what you just did! Your heart races for a different reason: fear starts to take hold.
Is this a familiar experience? It can be about anything from loading the bike to leaving on a cross country trip to riding through sand to meeting new riding friends. Fear is a normal and helpful human emotion that, with some strategies and practice, can become a friend rather than a foe.
Acknowledge your fear
It can be tempting to try to squish fear into a little ball and pretend it doesn’t exist. The problem with that approach is that our body is responding to the fear. Denial will simply serve to increase it. So, let’s try another approach: name it to tame it. Take the time to be specific, saying “I’m afraid of steep rocky downhills, especially with significant exposure.” Those moments are the ones to remember so that you can effectively tackle the situations you fear.
Why not simply fake it to make it? Our prefrontal cortex manages our rational responses, and if fear was rational, we could think our way through it. Fear exists in the amygdala, the oldest part of our brain, and is hard-wired into our body to protect us from danger. Our prefrontal cortex alone cannot override a fear response.
What we need to do is develop our emotional literacy to help us with fear on the motorcycle… and in life.
Develop Skills to Manage the Physical Response of Fear
Did you know that when you breathe in, your heart rate speeds up and when you breathe out it slows down? If you practice breathing at an even six breaths per minute, you develop sympathetic tone. This tone is like building a muscle, and will allow you to utilize your breath to engage manage your stress response, even in stressful situations.
This breathing gives you balance between the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system, also known as the fight/flight system and the rest and digest system. That is to say, the gap between your in-breath heart rate and your out-breath heart rate that tells your brain whether you are being chased by a lion or sitting around a campfire.
We cannot learn to calm our breathing in the stressful moments; we must practice during the calm times so we can use breathing as a skill when we need it. Try practicing three times a day for 2-3 minutes a session to develop this skill.
You may have heard of mindfulness; my definition of mindfulness is being in the present moment with non-judgemental awareness. Think about the above situation; the moment is not necessarily what you are afraid of; after all, the moment is actually a splendid view. However, our brains like to supply us with all of our potential catastrophic futures, so instead of being in the moment, you are living in a disastrous future. Practicing mindfulness can help us bring our minds back to the present when they are borrowing trouble from an uncertain future.
Tune in to your body and learn to recognize muscle tension. Tense muscles make the bike more responsive to input, creating more tension to try to manage the bike, leading to us tensing our muscles more. To intervene in this viscous cycle, a Body Scan Meditation can help you learn to recognize tense muscles in your body. After practicing deep body scans, you can start to practice a 30 second body scan, simply checking in with parts of your body where you know you carry tension when you are stressed. After checking in, if you discover you are tense, you can use breath or movement to relax tense muscles. Have some simple reminders about the way you want your body to feel after the check in. For example, when we rode the CABDR, I was pretty stressed about the sand. I would say over and over in my helmet “baby birds baby birds” to remind myself to have soft hands on the handle bars; after all, if I was holding a baby bird, I wouldn’t want to crush it!
Thought stopping and thought replacement can be effective at shifting our attention in the moment. This takes a little preparation; before a stressful moment, think of a place that helps you feel calm. Picture it in your mind - the sights, the smells, the sounds, all of it. When you are in a stressful moment and thoughts of danger and death are spiraling your emotions out of control, say “STOP!” out loud, perhaps even adding a hand motion to make it firm. Then, pull up this well rehearsed picture of a peaceful place. This can effectively distract you from catastrophizing, and help you bring your body back into balance.
Practice these fear reducing skills in lower risk situations
Steep rocky uphills have been my archnemesis in off road riding. Once I realized that I was fearful of lifting my eyes (in case a rock sent me out of control) and that I was afraid of going faster (lest the rocks send me off the trail and to my death), I realized I needed to tackle this fear off of the bike. So, I would visualize the hill that gave me the most trouble: Baby Head Hill on the WABDR. I would practice my breathing as I could feel my heart rate respond when I was just thinking about that darned hill. And my body would respond: I’d get calmer, and over time, I could visualize myself successfully summiting the hill.
Personally, one of my favorite fitness routines is running. I found a hill on my run and would then picture that I was riding up Baby Head Hill while running up this hill. Physiologically, this increased my heart rate and mimicked the anxiety I felt with Baby Head Hill. I practiced lifting my eyes and looking at the top of the hill, instead of looking at my feet while I ran. I practiced staying in the moment and naming the physical response: “My heart rate is up, but I can do this.” I practiced this daily, and the next time I tried to go up a long rocky uphill, success was mine!
Generalize
Practice these skills on the bike, even before you find yourself in a scary situation. Practice your off road riding skills for challenging obstacles, even on the easy parts of your ride. Practice your breathing on the bike, even when you are not feeling fear.
Do these skills only apply to riding motorcycles? Absolutely not! Perhaps you are about to give a big presentation at work, or have a meeting coming up with your boss. Perhaps a challenging family visit is around the corner. This same process applies: acknowledge the feeling, develop skills, practice skills in lower risk situations, and then generalize.
Kris Fant is a motorcycle enthusiast and mental health counselor. She is passionate about the positive effect motorcycles have on mental health, as well as the multitude of opportunities for growth that learning to ride has provided her. Kris loves to write and make videos about motorcycle adventures, coach off-road riding for newer riders and riders experiencing anxiety, and to volunteer with organizations including SheADV and Backcountry Discovery Routes to promote safe and sustainable exploration. Her current motorcycles are a KTM 690 Enduro and KTM 350 EXCF.
Instagram: @freespiritpixie
YouTube: @fortheloveofknobs
