Do you want to be free of fear? How many times have you tried to make a change in your life only to fall back into the same self-sabotaging routine? Perhaps you committed to freeing yourself from fear and getting healthier each year by changing how you think and feel but found yourself giving up after a few weeks. Maybe you pledged to quit seeking unhealthy relationships with partners who leave you feeling unfulfilled, only to find yourself walking right back into them.
Why do you avoid doing what you know will improve your life? Why do you embrace self-sabotage and resistance?
The answer is often rooted in the desire to avoid uncertain outcomes. Recent research has suggested humans are so hardwired to avoid uncertainty that we prefer specific adverse outcomes over an uncertain future.
We find uncertainty so uncomfortable because it is inextricably tied to fear of the unknown, fear of your abilities, or fear of failure. Fear can cripple forward motion and keep us wallowing in the same unhappy and unfulfilling place when it takes center stage in our lives. We begin to create a self-fulfilling prophecy—I’m afraid, so I resist change. I will likely fail, then I fail because I’m resisting the steps necessary to elicit change.
So how do we break the cycle?
We must acknowledge that at the heart of fear lies trauma.
Before you can stop resisting change, you must address the fear that keeps sabotaging your efforts. And, to address the fear, you must deal with the underlying trauma that feeds it—trauma you may have been holding on to since early childhood or adolescence.
Why is Fear So Scary
What are we afraid of anyway? Do you know? Fear of the future? Fear of love? Fear of living a happy life?
Fear is triggered by real or perceived experiences from the past. The subconscious remembers these triggers, and reacts; long after you have forgotten about them. Part of you desires forward movement while another part red flags that movement out of a sense of self-preservation, which is fear. It is as if, deeply worn grooves in the subconscious memory keep you stuck with the same thoughts feelings that repeat over and over again.
Fear has many layers or names attached to it. The names are like adjectives or colors that we give to other things. Fear is:
- Abandonment
- Jealousy
- Anger
- Resistance
- Denial
- Betrayal
- Doubt
- Blame
- Guilt
Buddha referred to fear as a ‘delusion’, a distorted way of looking at life. In Hinduism, fear represents the need to detach from the object creating the upset. In these spiritual philosophies, there is a need to release the ‘strong-hold’ fear plays in your life.
3 Steps to Release Fear
To tackle unhealthy fear, we want to look fear right into its eye and take back our power:
- Step one: Feel the fear. Do not push it away. Do not be afraid of fear. It is not more powerful than you.
- Step two: Relax the body. Especially, the solar plexus and abdomen area. Breathe deeply into tight areas.
- Step three: Dialogue with the fear. Ask questions like, “What am I afraid of?” “What is so scary?” “What am I learning from this experience?” “Does this feeling remind me of something from the past?” Once these questions are answered, you can move forward. Fear then becomes less scary.
When you embrace fear as a friend, you start to diffuse its power over you and your life and now have an opportunity to change. Once we implement these three simple steps:
- relax
- breathe
- dialogue
Any fearful energy associated with the experiences releases, and you move forward, detaching from the object (s) of upset. Practice 3 steps when fear is present and watch how the tightness and uncomfortable feelings disappear.