- Fear of Love - Truly being vulnerable and open. Letting someone in to really know me, every thought and desire. Letting them see not just the good but also the not so nice things about me. Not just opening myself up to being loved but also allowing myself to truly love others without fear of rejection (which I will talk about later).
- Fear of Loss - I have an overwhelming fear of something happening to my children, which a lot of times is projected as anger at them when I see them doing something dangerous that could potentially harm them. I have noticed that my fear of loss supports my fear of love when it comes to my relationship with Jason. As much as I love him there is a part of me that still doesn't open up completely because I have a fear of losing him and I want to protect myself. This all stems from losing my father when I was 11. I have felt the pain of loss and work very hard not to feel it again.
- Fear of Being Judged / Rejection - I see the way this fear effects my daily decisions and interactions, a lot of concern over what others think about me. Do they think I am a good person, smart, funny, pretty, talented? Am I wearing the right thing? Saying the right thing? Doing the right thing? This fear is one of the reasons I decided to start this blog, a way of stepping into and challenging my fear. I have made quite a number of changes in my life over the past few years (my relationship, spirituality, job, health, lifestyle, passions and desires) and I find myself constantly concerned over what my friends and family think about it all.
- Fear of Losing Control / Not Being Safe - As I have mentioned before, I have had quite a number of experiences as a young child which have made me feel unsafe, unloved, and have experienced quite a bit of grief. So, as a coping mechanism I have found that if I am able to control others and situations, I am able to make myself feel quite safe and loved. I would venture to say that most people that have "control issues" do so because they have fear....if this applies to you, look at it a little deeper and figure out what is motivating you to want to have control.
AJ does a fantastic job of explaining fear and gives it quite an appropriate acronym:
False Expectations Appearing Real
I have found, through a lot of self examination that fear is exactly that. It is expecting a certain outcome that doesn't yet exist based on a childhood experience. As a result we make choices and decisions in our life that help us prevent that expectation from occurring....we are at that state, living in our fear. I am also starting to understand that when fear is denied it then gets expressed as anger (annoyance, frustration, irritation, etc are all various shades of anger) and where fear exists God's Truth on that subject cannot enter our soul.
It is with these understandings that Jason and I have made a commitment to feel our fear so that we can then allow more of God's Truths to enter our soul. Our motto for this new commitment is "May the Fear Be With You" (thank you George Lucas). Now naturally, we do not literally want the fear to be with us forever. Our intention with all of this is to recognize the fear, allow ourselves to feel it and physically experience the fear so that the emotion of it can pass through us. The end result being releasing the fear so it no longer affects our future decisions and we can accept more of God's Truth.
If we can remember that emotion is "Energy In Motion", we can begin to look at it from a different perspective. God made us so that emotions can be felt, passed through us, and released from our soul. No matter how scared we may be of truly feeling our emotions, we are all capable of getting through it. It is how we were designed. As someone who was previously what people refer to as "New Age", I know how some of those teachings tell people to "control their thoughts", "be positive", etc. I feel as though there is a lot of denial and suppression of emotion on that path. Anger and fear become something that we view as bad or negative and then in turn we judge ourselves when those emotion show up. If instead we look at it from a place of "okay, I'm feeling angry about this, I wonder what I am afraid of" or "okay, I am fearful of this happening, I wonder what I am sad about" then we could grow in love (or as "New Age" would call it, "raise our vibration") a lot faster. There is this belief that "what you feel is what you attract". How can that be true when God made us to feel? It is denial and suppression which inhibits our progress. It is our soul's condition that determines what we attract. So if in our soul we have fear, the only way to remove it is to feel it. My goal is to feel it all....and the sooner the better.
So, with all of that being said, here are a few of the things that Jason and I are doing to amp up our law of attraction and trigger our fears so they can be acknowledged, felt, and released:
- Starting an anger list - Every time we feel angry, frustrated, slightly annoyed, or irritated, we are writing it down and then reviewing it once a week to see if we can determine the fear that is involved.
- Focus on not reacting in anger but instead feeling the fear and connecting to the emotions of it - Jason and I have both noticed that when we are experiencing fear we both feel pain and tightness in our stomach. You know, that icky feeling in your gut when you are scared. Instead of "nursing ourselves" through that with certain foods, drinks, alcohol, or medication, we are staying connected to it. Feeling the pain and focusing on our breathing by taking deep breaths into our diaphragm and allowing ourselves to experience the emotions.
- Starting a fear list - Once we recognize a fear that is present it goes on a separate list.
- Prayer - identifying the fear that causes the largest emotional response (anger, etc) and focusing prayer to God about confronting and experiencing the fear
- Taking action to trigger our fears through movies, books, and experiences. A couple examples here: I have a fear of losing my children so watching movies where a mother loses a child would trigger that fear in me. I have a fear of anger from men, so confronting (in a loving way) the actions of man being unloving or disrespectful towards me..... this happened at the grocery store a couple weeks ago. I was going through the self check and I was bagging my groceries when the gentleman in line behind me started running his items through and sending them down the line crashing into my unbagged items, crushing some of my fruits and veggies. I normally would not say anything and instead get angry and then vent about it later. Instead, I chose to step into my fear by confronting him and I asked if he was in a hurry. He then realized how unloving he was being and apologized so it ended up being a great learning experience for both of us. Jason had a similar experience recently that perhaps he will write about at some point. Moving on...
- Drinking water and eating a mostly vegan diet - It is a lot easier to connect to your emotions when your body is well hydrated and nourished with healthy clean food. We are also not giving into our food cravings and instead feeling the emotions associated with not allowing ourselves to have the chips, potatoes, cheese, etc.
And where there is fear, love can not exist.
