Fear
Fear gets such a bad rap. Like, being afraid of something is an indication of personal weakness. So people resist fear by not speaking about it or by rationalizing the fear as "real."
It's absurd. Fear is simply a feeling, a spot on communication from your body that either:
- I am in immediate danger or,
- I am thinking in ways that are not congruent with my best self
Facing Fear
I am so grateful that my fears fall into the realm of "thinking in ways that aren't congruent with my best self" rather than present moment survival issues. Some people are looking some serious survival issues in the face right now. They are confronting domestic violence, genocide, hunger, slavery right now.
One way to honor the struggle of people everywhere is to face our struggles here. The best way to respect the fears we don't have is to deal with the fears we do have. We can stop dismissing our fears as not good enough. We can stop avoiding fears with the excuse that they are real rather than possibilities in our head that we've simply given a disproportionate amount of attention.
Here's what works for me. Maybe it will work for you:
Don't believe your thoughts. Whatever thoughts you have that create the feeling of fear, don't believe them. If you must, you can leave room for the possibility that the fear is real, but don't assume it is. Focus on the possibility of things going either way.
You may be surprised to notice that it's challenging to let go of fear-based thinking and focus on things going either way. Don't beat yourself up if it's hard. It's been hard for me, too.
Fear-based identities
I stayed in graduate school for five years longer than I needed to because of a fear that people would find out that I was substandard and a fraud. To compensate for that fear, I began a PhD program so I could get a credential that would prove I was good enough.
Some of you got jobs, quit jobs, married, divorced, moved, cheated, exercised, went on diets, stopped doing what you love to do, to prove that you are okay.
The problem with this approach is that the fear doesn't go away, it simply gets ignored.
When I finally had the courage to look my fear in the face and conclude that the graduate program I was in had nothing to do with my calling but everything to do with my ego (remember that article I linked a few days ago?), I had built an identity and life around my fear. So, letting go of the fear meant letting go of my identity as a graduate student, my regret about the debt I incurred, my plans for the future, my daily/weekly routine in terms of how I spent my time, and judging myself for not understanding all of this sooner.
If you built a life, a marriage, a career, relationships, identities from fear-based thinking, you are not alone. You are simply courageous and loving enough to see "the way it is" without judgement.
Fear is inevitable
Audre Lorde completely transformed my life by writing the poem A Litany for Survival. Honestly, I'm not going overboard saying that. She helped me stop running from fear:
...when our stomachs are full we are afraid
of indigestion
when our stomachs are empty we are afraid
we may never eat again
when we are loved we are afraid
love will vanish
when we are alone we are afraid
love will never return
and when we speak we are afraid
our words will not be heard
nor welcomed
but when we are silent
we are still afraid
So it is better to speak
remembering
we were never meat to survive.
** Try This! **
Write out all your fears. No fear is too small or too big. Just write them out on however many sheets of paper necessary. Daily fears, once in a while fears, material fears, existential fears.
That's all. The exercise is to write out all your fears and keep writing until there are no fears left to name.
Notice your excuses for not writing them out:
You don't have to do anything. You are under NO obligation! And:
Don't believe your thoughts. Whatever thoughts you have that create the feeling of fear, don't believe them. If you must, you can leave room for the possibility that the fear is real, but don't assume it is. Focus on the possibility of things going either way.
You may be surprised to notice that it's challenging to let go of fear-based thinking and focus on things going either way. Don't beat yourself up if it's hard. It's been hard for me, too.
Fear-based identities
I stayed in graduate school for five years longer than I needed to because of a fear that people would find out that I was substandard and a fraud. To compensate for that fear, I began a PhD program so I could get a credential that would prove I was good enough.
Some of you got jobs, quit jobs, married, divorced, moved, cheated, exercised, went on diets, stopped doing what you love to do, to prove that you are okay.
The problem with this approach is that the fear doesn't go away, it simply gets ignored.
When I finally had the courage to look my fear in the face and conclude that the graduate program I was in had nothing to do with my calling but everything to do with my ego (remember that article I linked a few days ago?), I had built an identity and life around my fear. So, letting go of the fear meant letting go of my identity as a graduate student, my regret about the debt I incurred, my plans for the future, my daily/weekly routine in terms of how I spent my time, and judging myself for not understanding all of this sooner.
If you built a life, a marriage, a career, relationships, identities from fear-based thinking, you are not alone. You are simply courageous and loving enough to see "the way it is" without judgement.
Fear is inevitable
Audre Lorde completely transformed my life by writing the poem A Litany for Survival. Honestly, I'm not going overboard saying that. She helped me stop running from fear:
...when our stomachs are full we are afraid
of indigestion
when our stomachs are empty we are afraid
we may never eat again
when we are loved we are afraid
love will vanish
when we are alone we are afraid
love will never return
and when we speak we are afraid
our words will not be heard
nor welcomed
but when we are silent
we are still afraid
So it is better to speak
remembering
we were never meat to survive.
** Try This! **
Write out all your fears. No fear is too small or too big. Just write them out on however many sheets of paper necessary. Daily fears, once in a while fears, material fears, existential fears.
That's all. The exercise is to write out all your fears and keep writing until there are no fears left to name.
Notice your excuses for not writing them out:
- I don't have time
- I'm just reading these emails sometimes, I picked General Admission so that I could choose when to engage Real Like That
- I've done this before
- I don't understand the point
You don't have to do anything. You are under NO obligation! And:
- You make time for what matters. Sharing your best self more and more matters. Your best self expands in direct proportion to your willingness to transform avoiding fear to seeing fear.
- This is the time to engage Real Like That.
- Good! Do it again.
- You don't have to understand something to experience it.
Fear has been a big part of my life for a long time. This post is timely for me as I continue to practice seeing my fears for what they are: thoughts that don't serve me and keep me living small. In the past 2 years I have been inviting myself to do the things that I want to do but that generate fearful thoughts and physical feelings. Although I have been very uncomfortable, mentally (more fearful thoughts) and physically (feeling breathless, shaky), I have been practicing staying with these feelings and letting them occur without giving them more power. There are many times when I think "I just want to feel safe and comfortable again and remove myself from this" but as Audre Lorde mentions, the fear doesn't go away by ignoring it. It remains and keeps me living small, nagging at me. So I practice doing things and revealing more of who I really am to people in spite of my fear. It can get messy, uncomfortable and scary but I also feel like it's allowing me to live a more authentic life.
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