Does fear ever hold you back? Tell you what you can’t do? Limit you? Maybe you’re a high performer who wants to push through everyday fears to achieve more. Maybe you are paralyzed by an outsized fear or phobia. Maybe you are somewhere in between. Regardless, if you want to fear less so that you can be more, the Fear Less podcast is for you.
Hosts Will Laughlin, MA, M.Ed., and Zack Schafer, MS, OTR/L, are colleagues at one of the nation’s premier anxiety treatment centers, Mountain Valley Treatment Center. Located in Plainfield, NH, Mountain Valley, Moosilauke Visions is proud to support MVTC.
Will, Zack, and their colleagues at MVTC have seen again and again that even severe anxiety, also known as fear, can be transformed from enemy to ally and from disability to super-ability. In fact, when fear is in its proper place—as our servant instead of our master—it can function as a sort of superpower, animating us and making us safer, more compassionate, smarter, better.
We reached out to Will Laughlin and asked him a few questions about the Fear Less podcast.
To whom is the podcast geared towards?
Anyone who experiences limiting fear – from high performers who want to tackle a new, but scary, challenge to those really struggling with everyday anxieties. We interview individuals who have bravely conquered significant fear, psychologists who are anxiety specialists, and high performers (professional athletes, special forces operators) who face down fear in their work. We also offer one simple and immediately applicable anxiety “hack” at the end of each episode.
What is your purpose in pulling together a project like this? What is the need you are trying to serve?
Not everyone needs, or can afford, the level of support we provide at Mountain Valley, but everyone can benefit from our approaches. We want to make those approaches accessible and available to a wider population. We also want to get the word out regarding our expertise in this field.
What have you learned through the initial experience so far? What are you most excited about moving forward?
We have learned that everyone has a different relationship to fear, and that fear, properly understood and engaged, can be an ally instead of an enemy.
Listeners can listen, subscribe, and rate the Fear Less Podcast on all major platforms, including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Audible. The current plan is to release three new episodes every month.
