Breaking Up With Fear

Breaking Up With Fear

“Fear is the mind-killer, fear is the little death...” Frank Herbert’s words stopped me cold so many years ago. Frankly, I had never thought about fear, I only felt it.

Fear, like misery and worry, has a life of it’s own.

Fear, like misery and worry, can also become a habit that drains our life force. It can herd us into a smaller and smaller life, tight, constricting, until we can’t breathe.  We become reactive, anxious. We stop sleeping soundly. We may even start to be sick with chronic things like headaches, tummy trouble, asthma and allergies.

At the very least, we get cold feet. Oh, yeah. Did you ever wonder where that phrase came from? Now you know.

We end up treating fear as though it were an abusive beloved. We change our lives, change our homes. Some of us buy pepper spray, or tasers, or even guns. To protect ourselves from nameless fear. We stop doing activities we enjoy in order to satisfy our fear. We stop spending time with friends, and can end up barricaded in our homes, alone, cuddled up on the couch with our fear. Often, we are unaware of our relationship with fear, and if someone said, “Are you afraid?” We would say, “No, of course not.”

Fear is a really useful thing to motivate us in times of actual danger. It has another curious feature, besides motivation. It’s really memorable. So we go back to it again and again, often long after we’ve forgotten what frightened us so much in the first place.

And that’s the thing.

When we have a generalized fear of the world. we frequently have a traumatic experience in our past, sometimes buried, sometimes not. If we can go back in time in our minds, and resolve that experience, we often find the fear subsiding with no other effort on our part.

We can also practice feeling peaceful and protected. Trust is the opposite of fear. And for most of us, what we fear is an invention in our minds, fleshed out by worry, and brought to life with our own anxiety.

Why could I trust? How do I feel when I trust? What makes me trust?

Sometimes, I find myself feeling scared, that tight, icky feeling in my belly. As soon as I notice it, I look to my thoughts for the source. Mostly, it’s some idea I’ve had about something dire that is about as likely as an eclipse on my birthday.

Why can I trust? How do I know the Universe will provide?

If something needs attention on my part to dispel my fear, I do it. Mostly, it’s just a thought, an interpretation of circumstances, and only wants me to change my thought for the feeling to change.

Over and over, that’s all it takes, changing a thought.

When most of us live lives that are not full of danger, learning to let go of our fear is another step deeper into our natural life.

How have I changed from living in fear to living in trust?

(c) Pam Guthrie 2013 all rights reserved 07212013