Hello ….how are you today?

This week I’d like to invite you to think together about an idea that I’ve wanted to develop for weeks. The topic is fear. Fear of going through situations similar to others that made us uncomfortable or that stopped us in our tracks. The same fear that makes itself present when we are scared about terrible imaginary scenarios about the future (and when our heads won’t stop talking!). It goes something like this: at the first hint of fear, we end up frightening ourselves with both our stories from the past and with our fantasies about what’s to come.

You can listen to the podcast with this player, or if you prefer reading you have a written version below. Enjoy it!

Have you ever felt your belly was tingling with fear before a presentation because you remembered another presentation when you felt a tiny bit blocked? Have you ever felt some emotional discomfort that you couldn’t make sense of and felt scared about what could happen to you? Have you ever felt nervous before a social or work related gathering and you were afraid of having a bad time? It's almost like a paradox, it's like being afraid of being afraid, right? It’s fear of failing, fear of losing control, fear of not being loved, fear of not living up to "..." standards.

That happened to me. I like sharing real stories to describe what I want to convey and with the hope you might understand yourself better through another person’s example.

An example: my own experience

When I was 27 years old, I was going through a lot of stress in my personal and work life. My head was going so fast and my body was so exhausted that I stopped sleeping well, I started to feel uncomfortable at work and I could only think about going back to my house, the only place where I felt safe.

At first, I was very scared "what is happening to me?" "I feel like this is the final exams season." The truth is I had nothing to prove and no one to judge me. I only listened to my inner critic "if you don't try harder, everything you’ve achieved will fall", "if you fail, your boss will find out that you aren’t as good as he thinks you are"" What if you express what you feel, and X person takes it the wrong way? I was feeling stress, a lot of stress, and obviously, my mind and heart were out of alignment.

The circle

I was so overwhelmed by my emotions that I got into a vicious cycle. When I started to feel afraid, I rejected my feeling by covering it with extra effort at work, junk food, alcohol (I’d like to clarify that I didn’t become an alcoholic, but I did drink more than suggested), I watched silly shows on television (at that time there were no social networks, imagine!). And I started to get used to the following habit:

1. Trigger: feeling anxious / out of control / with little confidence

2. Behavior: working excessively / not planning my meals / drinking / consuming junk from the media

3. Result: I felt more anxious / more out of control / more powerless and with less confidence

What was my problem? I dismissed my feelings and kept on covering what was happening to me. Does this sound a bit familiar to you? And as the great Swiss psychologist Jung says “What you resist, persists; what you accept transforms you”. When we’re afraid or anxious, we convince ourselves that something is wrong with us, that we are flawed, and our first instinct is to get rid of that discomfort. What we don’t know is that this is like adding fuel to the fire. Our internal state of alarm will just increase.

Fear and us

In the trance of fear, we may either withdraw from the world or become defensive. Our body feels agitated, our head doesn’t stop talking to us and it’s difficult for us to find calm. However, fear doesn’t have to be our enemy. Fear is just an emotion. When we practice non-attachment to what we’re experiencing, we discover that we’re just the experiencers and that our emotions are transitory visitors. What’s more, if we investigate a little bit, fear has a lot to tell us. When Jung says: "What you accept transforms you" he is referring to this.

Nevertheless, to hear the messages fear brings us, we must first pause. In fact, what saved me when I was 27 was taking several weeks off work, being honest with my boss, and creating healthy routines that allowed me to move slowly.

This doesn’t mean that I was moving like a turtle, no! I slept well, I ate healthily and even took gym lessons. I simply allowed myself to feel that pressure in my throat that I’d been experiencing, I made friends with my fear and recognized it every day. “Hello! I see that you are there again”. Little by little, a big space opened in me and I discovered that I didn’t like the fast paced city I was living and I wasn’t working at the job that my heart wanted. I was doing it for reasons that had nothing to do with my deepest needs. Look at how wonderful it was to accept my fear, allow it and explore its messages.

How does fear manifest in you?

I know perfectly well that not everyone can take work leave as I did, but it isn’t necessary. After so many years, if there’s something that I’ve learned from fear both from my personal experience and from listening to others is that when fear is present, the healthiest thing to do is to make room for it without judging it or covering it up. It’s fundamental to get in touch with where and how it manifests in your body: Is your belly tingling? Do you feel horses galloping in your chest? Do you feel tension in your shoulders? How does fear feel in your body? Then try to develop a curious presence that observes what fear wants to tell you. What's behind it? What are you trying to avoid? What is this situation inviting you to see?

All this is very simple and it helps us create some distance between what happens to us and ourselves. This is a habit we can create to respond to our feelings mindfully and compassionately. I sometimes like to think about how we help our children to manage their fear. If your child tells you that s/he is afraid of turning off the light because a monster might appear, what would you do? Would you tell them not to suffer, to get out of their room and into bed with you? Would you tell them to watch a movie so that they forget about their fear? Or would you cuddle them and ask them what they feel, where, what they imagine, what would calm them down? Perhaps you can develop a routine so that your child gradually loses their fear of the dark.

Fear itself then is not the problem, the key is how we relate to it. There are many blogs with tips to soothe fear. Everyone wisely suggests it’s important to rest, to develop good habits, to move our body, to be in touch with our breath, and to meditate. I say yes to all these, my intention in this blog, however, hasn’t only been to treat the symptoms but to go one step back. In my experience and that of my clients, it has been crucial to learn to relate to fear and to stop reacting with fear. You’ll see how the dark clouds pass and the day becomes clear and bright. I wouldn’t like to round off without saying that I sincerely hope that this blog helps you and that I encourage you to ask for professional help to have a compassionate person walking by your side if you feel that you can’t deal with this by yourself.

A big hug ❤