I know that you might be surprised by my choice of words (abbreviated in the title to be somewhat polite), but it’s intentional. This strong language is most appropriate to describe the face of fear to which I’m referring. This terrifying mask looks you in the mirror and tells you: you’re stuck … you can’t do it … you aren’t worth it … you will never do it right … you don’t have enough money … you’re too fat or too skinny … too stupid or too ugly, and that you and everyone are doomed.
This type of fear is a debilitating monster. Its words cut, tear and freeze your heart and soul.
The fear I’m speaking of can prevent you from moving forward with conversations, trips, classes, relationships, songs, artwork, therapies, and adventures you could create and experience if you weren’t so fucking scared all the time. The worst part about this face of fear is that it lies to you, hides from you, justifies itself, and often stays buried in the subconscious psyche. It lurks beneath a numbed out haze of addictions — to substances, media, sex, or overthinking — whatever your poison is. And, just as you get inspired by a person, idea, or adventure that has the power to warm your frozen heart, its cold grip squeezes more tightly, protecting and preventing you from moving forward.
So yes, fear is a MF. I don’t need to ask you if you know what I mean because I know you do. We all know this fear and it has most recently been stalking us all like a hungry lion.
I spend a lot of time thinking about fear and resistance. As someone who has dedicated her life to healing, I see, feel, and experience A LOT of fear. I could build an impenetrable wall of steel out of the resistance I have experienced in others and at times, myself, to releasing all of the garbage that keeps us in the gridlock of unhappy life cycles. So I’ve made it my mission to investigate fear and resistance with great curiosity and the willingness to feel without needing to know the how, why, and what-will-happens. All of that attachment to understanding and intellectualizing is what freezes me up and prevents me from moving forward. Letting go of my obsessive need to know has been and continues to be one of the most ambitious things I’ve ever set out to master. I know nothing, but I feel everything, and do my best not to believe it.
Through experiencing my feelings as much as possible without my head, I liberate myself from the residual exhaust that comes from my mind-engine trying to make sense of things. I wrangle my ego as it authors novels of bullshit in my psyche, attempting to keep me safe. I’m guessing you might have your own best selling narrative of high drama fiction running all up in your mind-space too! So as much as you might want to push the fear away or exterminate it like a creepy-crawly pest, the golden compass that will navigate you away from your debilitating inner criticism is to choose to BE with it while not knowing why or what is next.
You must be willing to meet yourself where you are scared while being ready to put one foot in front of the other. As you take small steps toward aligning to your north star, your soul’s purpose, you will find the courage to take risks. As you choose to take one little risk and then another, and then another, you will find yourself smack dab in the middle of that scary thing you were resisting! WOOHOO! And then, you’ve done it. In that moment of conquering the stuff you’ve been so afraid of, you will feel your life-force fully. Befriending your fear and learning to overcome the challenges it perpetuates is that healing, transformative, change-making shit you’ve been searching for!
But what do I know?
Fear might not go away, but it can change faces. It can be exhilarating, inspiring, and motivating — but you have to feel it. It isn’t comfortable and can be even more destabilizing than staring into that mirror feeling like a schmuck….at least that mother fucker was familiar.
Feeling your fear and owning it might be strange, uncharted territory for you. It pushes you to be more than that distorted sense of self you’ve been buying into for so long. As you make fear your ally, it keeps you safe while you move forward and explore. To do this, you must be willing to practice this new way of relating to the powerful feelings, and the subsequent stories that your fear creates. When you stop the obsessive story-making that reinforces your trauma and drama, feel fear, and find the courage to align with your purpose and calling, you become authentically powerful. You can transcend the lies of the ego that hold you back while harnessing the vitality of your intense feelings.
Make fear your ally.
What are you creating? Can you start to take risks? Can you choose to let go of the terrifying grip of your mind by being in this moment, right here, right now, breathing, and bravely feeling?
I’m with you. We’re all in this together.