Fear and how it holds you back.
What is fear?
Fear is an unpleasant belief that something or someone is potentially dangerous and will cause pain or is deemed as a threat. This feeling is varied from person to person, culture to culture and is based on pure emotion. Not everyone will have the same fears as you. There are different types of fears, legitimate ones, and then ones that are lies you tell yourself to hold you back from becoming the creative genius you were meant to be. Please don’t take that as your fears are not legitimate, because they are. It’s just some fears are old systems in place to keep you contained in a box so that you stay in your comfort zone, instead of flying. Either way, whichever fear it is, it’s still a hard thing to overcome. Why is this?
Well fear plays on the sympathetic system. It takes all the sensory information over a lifetime and computes it to be perceived as a threat. So when a fear pops up for someone, lets say the fear of public speaking, then your body will have a reaction to it. You could throw up, you could get the cold sweats, you could faint. Fear causes a real body reaction. It raises the levels of adrenaline and other stress hormones so that when you are faced with it you will be able to fight it or you will run.
A lot of fears are based on a lack of system. A lack of love and acceptance will cause a fear of rejection, a lack of support will cause a fear of communities, and belonging, or abandonment. Fear is an emotion, based on things that happened or were perceived to harm your psyche or you. To fight a fear the only way that is done is by doing. It is only by proving to your subconscious that doing the thing that scares you most, will make that fear invalid as a perceived threat. De-sensitizing yourself to the things that scare you changes the paradigm shift in your Pysche. This allows for you to fully submerge yourself in those fears, and thus no longer being sensitive to them.
For me a huge fear is not belonging anywhere. This lie is ingrained in my subconscious mind, so when I do things that are based on communities or togetherness my body will react by shutting down and hiding. I won’t allow myself to be present or talk because that fear of not belonging is so intense that my body tries to safeguard me from being hurt. Over the years I have worked hard towards de-sensitizing myself with this fear. I have worked through the pain and trauma of my past and come to an understanding and acceptance of it. And by doing this it allowed me to understand that this fear is no longer valid. It’s now just a matter of rewiring that old programming.
Fear can also be a healthy thing. It’s a compass to show you what you need to do. If you are in true danger, having fear is absolutely healthy to have. It means you are in real mortal danger and that kicks your body into fight or flight. But there are the fears that are based on the unknown. Because fear wants to keep you in your comfort zone. It will pop up any time you are taking a chance on yourself. Anytime you are daring to alter your reality, it will want you to go back to the things you have known and trigger you to stop moving forward.
What are your fears trying to tell you? Have you noticed how your body reacts, or how your thoughts spiral out from a fear? What is the root to your fear? Can you look inside to see if the fear is legitimate or a form of old programming? When you can understand where this is coming from you can understand how to change it. And by taking control of the reigns, you are stepping in front of fear and transforming it from the monster that was under the bed to a sock or stuffed animal that it really was. Was there ever really a monster there? Or was it just a story you told yourself? We all have monsters under our beds, the question is, Are you ready to face it?