This gift of profound fear showed me the way.
My resistance is gone. By speaking my truth it opens channels for other souls to connect with me in a powerful way and hopefully find some beneficial growth for themselves. Isolation and residual limited beliefs are LEARNED behaviors and I am now releasing them. Behaviors are just habits and I can learn new ones, just like everyone can.
Imagine in front of you is a glorious buffet of food. It represents all the emotions to choose from as part of the human experience. There is a pile of fresh fear, some dried up anxiety, soup of pure joy, deep fried silliness and under the heat lamp is someone carving contentment. I'll take a slice!
You CAN choose what you want, the vast array of items don't jump on your plate. But it may feel like sometimes that we lose control over what our plates fill with. Depending on your comfort level and your beliefs you will choose those you like because of a habit or what you are used to. For instance maybe you would never choose mussels because it seems weird and uncomfortable and you haven't tried them. Besides your family's comfort food was fried chicken. Generally you stick with what you know. You avoid the unfamiliar and challenging stuff.
This is a simple analogy but we "ingest" what is comfortable, even if that comfort is familiar Fear and Anxiety because if you don't choose it, it might force you to address other issues that are even worse.
Having the FAITH in yourself to limit the avoidance of the fears is your path to resolution and confidence building.
Once you get out of your comfort zone you will begin the healing process and see yourself managing it. In Fear and other Uninvited Guests, Dr. Harriet Lerner talks about it like this: "If you pay attention, you may find that it is not fear that stops you from doing the brave and true thing in your daily life. Rather, the problem is avoidance. You want to feel comfortable, so you avoid doing the thing that will evoke fear and other disquieting emotions. Avoidance will make you feel less vulnerable in the short run, but it will never make you less afraid."*
The buffet never goes away, and you can always work your way up to the mussels.
To embrace your courage AND reduce avoidance I have come up with several suggestions loosely divided into a couple categories.
1. Courage through Contemplation (awareness)
2. Courage through Fighting Back (action).
As these categories encompass many things and the length could get unwieldy I thought I would start with Contemplation now and next time Fighting Back.
- Courage through Contemplation -
- Meditation: Just as I discovered recently toggling back and forth through self-awareness and the expansive every changing Universe's impact on my life that I could release old outdated perspectives that limited my views on Time, Fear and Reality. Deepok Chopra in Ageless Body, Timeless Mind describes the process perfectly: "Fear creates rapid, shallow, ragged breathing....On the other hand, positive emotions such as joy induce more regular breathing as the chest cavity relaxes. At a subtler level, entering into the silence of deep meditation slows the breath, and what spiritual master call 'the rapture of God' ---contemplating Spirit directly --- is reflected in little or no breathing." ** Awareness of intentions, unhealthy patterns, areas of healing and possible solutions sometimes miraculously occur as the mind is quieted in meditation. Start with 10-15 minutes. Let go of expectations of what you have seen on TV. Let thoughts pass by as your mind and body relax into the breath and the present state. Trust what insights you receive. Journal afterward.
- Prayer: Asking the Angelic realm, your Spiritual Guides, ancestors or the Holy Spirit for guidance and peace can help in managing your feelings and for making room for miracles are all valid possibilities. Framing your request in the form of gratitude will make your prayer more powerful. It reflects your emotional and physical state so the spiritual world can respond appropriately. Reaching out to the Spiritual realms can give great comfort and fill our Soul with the eternal understanding and a relaxation about our fears. Dr. Doreen Virtue, well known Angel expert says in Angel Therapy: "The angels have wonderful gifts from God to impart to us…..Their messages help us heal our beliefs and thoughts, transforming them into empowering and loving viewpoints. They teach us how to use our spiritual senses to see, hear, feel and know the real world that transcends the illusory world's problems."***
- Subconscious Awareness: Addressing deeply held beliefs that determine your reactionary fears or anxiety can be an excellent and efficient way to shift your perspective. Hypnosis and other therapies are a relatively fast and a completely natural way to eliminate restricting beliefs about your self and what you can accomplish. If you have always responded in a specific way to difficult feelings like fear or anxiety and avoided situations chances are that it will continue unless you have the courage to look at what repeating the old thought patterns has kept you from doing. I had to adjust my beliefs and ask myself some hard questions…What is really true about my fear and what are the facts? What is my imagination? How am I using past experiences to judge this outcome? Are my expectations realistic for me as an adult or are they reflecting childhood emotions?
"We are disturbed not by things that happen but by our
opinion of the things that happen" ****
Epictetus
- Breaking the Bond with Emotions: In Emotional Chaos to Clarity, Phillip Moffitt suggests thinking of your thoughts and feelings as separate from you and you HAVE A CHOICE in how you respond. When you are stuck in a fear do you HAVE TO identify with it? He suggests that you can learn to cope skillfully with them if you see them as impersonal in nature. "Difficult emotions are indeed just like a storm: they arise due to causes and conditions, they may soak you and make you feel miserable, but THEY ARE NOT YOU." ***** Many people live their mythology, "I could never speak in public, or everyone in my family has always been depressed or I am not the kind of person who is very social, etc." Repeating these family stories and beliefs reinforces your own limiting thought patterns.
- Ask yourself are you willing to imagine the possibility that what you tell yourself is not the truth? And can you know for sure that it is the truth? Is it because it is always been done?
Fortunately at any given moment you can change how you respond to thoughts, fears, anxiety, etc. if you allow for a different reality to be true. In many families, if you reject the "truth" then you are threatening everyone else's view of themselves and they will resist any change to THE STORY. It will mean they could have to get out of their comfort zone and perhaps not play the victim or martyr or feel you might reject them somehow. This scenario is very common in homes where addiction and dysfunction is present. Letting go of unhealthy thought patterns that keep you repeating fears or anxiety is difficult. It becomes second nature because your brain and physiology was forming around this training. You must decide what YOU WANT as your reality NOW as an adult and how you will interact energetically in the world to get it. How do you value yourself? When you adjust your perspective, the Universe will respond and support the new pattern.
If you find yourself in a fearful or anxious state, close your eyes and breath deeply for a few minutes regardless of where you just to ground yourself in your body. Notice your body's senses, are you trembling? Hand shaking? Heart racing or sweating? What do notice around you at that very moment? Listen to your breath move in and out of your lungs and let your body relax into the feeling. After a few minutes of this ask yourself a couple questions:
- Imagine you are now 85 years old and nearing your end of life, looking back to this moment in your existence. Would you regret letting this fear hold you back? Is there something amazing you are putting off or whose time never came due to the fear? What could you have done? Do you have the COURAGE to value your desires?
- Now imagine your 12 year old self is staring right at you. What could you say to them to help them to manage their fear? What are you aware of that they need to feel supported? A hug or an adult size dose of wisdom? We all have a scared child inside of us somewhere and they need extra love sometimes and to be told YOU CAN DO IT! Give them the COURAGE they need. They hold the key to much of what keeps us stuck in fear and limitations. As the adult share your wisdom and knowledge to help them to move forward.
Please reply with comments below. I love hearing from you.
If you would like to know more about the process of hypnosis, visualizations or any thing I discussed here please CALL ME: 480-242-4922
OR Email: Diane@azhealingarts.com
Diane Fales, BFA, CcHt is a hypnotherapist, spiritual coach, astrologer and artist.
** Chopra, Deepak. Ageless Body, Timeless Mind: The Quantum Alternative to Growing Old. New York: Harmony, 1993. Print.. Carlsbad, CA: Hay House, 1997. N. pag. Print.
*** Virtue, Doreen. Introduction. Angel Therapy: Healing Messages for Every Area of Your Life
**** DeVrye, Catherine. Hope Happens!: Words of Encouragement for times of Change. New York: Pocket, 2003. Print.
***** Moffitt, Phillip. Emotional Chaos to Clarity: How to Live More Skillfully, Make Better Decisions, and Find Purpose in Life. New York: Hudson Street, 2012. Print.