Facing Fear
I’ve been thinking about fear lately, specifically what I’m afraid of and how it impacts my life. My list of fears is long: messing up, failing, rejection, anger, blame, inadequacy, lack of control, abandonment, worthiness, feeling lovable, judgement, being hurt. Essentially, I’m afraid of messing everything up or being messed with.
The last blog entry addressed my history of working with limited perceptive abilities, mainly because my better judgement was offline as I lived in a state of perpetual panic with no awareness of this. As I’ve worked on regulating my nervous system and tuning into my body, everything has slowed down. I have more time to process and discern, but fear still governs a lot of my energy system. I feel fear in my chest, braced and tight, and it transmits to my breath, which I hold until it’s time to take a gasp of air, which reinforces the fear in my body. My jaw clenches, my teeth scrape against each other. My neck and shoulders hug tight to my spine, making my posture rigid, stiff, and achy. When I’m going to sleep, I notice fear in my legs. I often have to shake them loose because they hold so much tension. There really isn’t an area of my body where fear doesn’t live.
The thought of this is unnerving, and that is why I’m exploring it. I am wondering what a life with less fear looks and feels like for me. I think it feels like presence, being in the moment and seeing it for what it is, and acting instead of avoiding. Avoidance is a big part of my lifelong survival plan. I avoid thinking, feeling, deciding, confronting, like a turtle inside its shell. The plus side of this is the experience of peace when I live inside my head, inside my idealized world. The minus side is immense, and I’m just beginning to understand this. Avoidance gives me a false sense of calm and peace, while my body continues to hold tension, and my breath, indecision and passivity feed it. Conflict and painful feelings hang in the air, consuming my energy and my self authority. Avoiding the hard things in my life disempowers me physically, emotionally and spiritually. It’s worse than a holding pattern, I cause harm to myself when I avoid.
Fortunately, avoidance isn’t my only tool for survival. I was born with a lot of faith, and that is a huge power in the face of fear. When I’m afraid and feeling helpless, I turn toward prayer. I ask for strength, faith, and clarity. The more miserable I feel, the more I lean into my faith, which keeps me present because I’m constantly asking for guidance and relief. This presence connects me to my body and my own internal guidance system, where I feel my intuition speaking to and through me. I summon my courage to face fear, and I feel tremendous relief even though it’s really hard. The practice reinforces everything I am trying to build in my life: faith and trust in myself, empowerment to communicate my wants and needs, tolerance of discomfort and uncertainty, and gratitude for my life. It is such a relief to understand and to feel that I am so much more than my fears…that when I face them, at my own pace and with the support of my own internal guidance, I have more power than my fears.
