Two simple ways to overcome fear
I felt inspired to write this because I’ve had this huge fear of going to the dentist and it’s been eating me up on the inside.
I know it’s a logical fear, no one likes the things associated with a dentist trip (pain and cost) yet it’s still been a fear I’ve been unable to get a grip on.
What I’ve realised is, when we have fears that we keep inside they have a tendency to gnaw away at us, getting wildly out of control and out of proportion until they reach a level of disruption in our lives that we just can no longer bear.
I want to give you the courage to face your fears, because I know, from experience, that the only way to defeat fear is through fearlessness. While there is power in refusing to give our thoughts or attention to what we don’t want in our lives, it is often the case that the fear will keep popping up, whack-a-mole style, until we rip out the roots.
So, let’s explore exactly how we can do that.
What even is fear?
Fear is merely our imagination. It is a projection of the future. It is not real, yet we make it so through our thoughts and the weight we attach to them. We all have a tendency to believe our own thoughts, even though they are not necessarily true or real but it’s when we believe them that the fear has room to grow.
Fear is a future scenario that we attach to reality, even though it’s not real because it hasn’t happened. Fear isn’t at all logical yet it can have such a powerful hold on us.
For anyone who hasn’t read the astounding Feel The Fear and Do It Anyway, this is the perfect book to understand what fear is and how to tackle it.
Ultimately, as the author shares, fear stems from our belief that we can’t handle what might happen. Fear is merely the packaging that wraps around our self-doubt of ‘I can’t handle it’.
So, it stands to reason that when we feel more confident in ourselves, those fears subside. In this respect, courage really does impact our fear and fearlessness really can stop it in its tracks.
Fear versus faith
I’d also add that fear is the very opposite of faith.
Fear is driven by the ego’s desire to keep us safe, and it does that through control. Fear often stems from future ‘what if’ scenarios but we have no control over what happens in the future. We try as hard as we can but fear is often born out of a desire to control what can’t be controlled.
When we realise this we can let go. Faith is trusting the evidence of things not seen. To be faithful is to trust in your own ability primarily, that you can handle whatever life throws at you with confidence and courage.
Secondly, faith is about trusting the process of life. Everything happens for you, not to you, and nothing is chucked at you that you can’t handle. There is always a bigger picture, a greater meaning, a lesson, whether it’s karma we need to gracefully accept, or something else that sets us on a path of discovery.
Why fear is so detrimental to our wellbeing
When we tune our own personal wavelength to a frequency of faith, instead of fear, we step into the flow with life, and with it comes the support, guidance and love that we can’t receive when we’re stuck in a place of fear.
Fear is one of the lowest vibrations you can emit, it quite literally drags you down, blocking the natural life force that flows through you and stagnating your energy and clarity of mind.
Like a drop of blood in a glass of water, fear pollutes everything, making it impossible to find clarity. It also pulls us straight into our stress state of fight, flight or freeze in our sympathetic nervous system.
Fear is the murkiness that blinds all our senses. No wonder we find decision making so hard when in a state of fear.
When we allow fear to rule our hearts, we’ve lost
My fear of visiting a dentist has been in full swing for at least a month.
Fear has been having a party in my head, bothering me from the moment I wake up to the moment I go to sleep.
I may not think that I’m worrying about it on a constant basis, but it crops up in my mind constantly. There follows a battle to knock it back down, taking away valuable time, energy and focus away from much more important pursuits.
This is what fear does - it distracts us, taking up space in our mind that we could fill with all manner of wonderful things.
For anyone who has waited on exam marks, an interview result or a health check up, you will know the sense of lightness and relief that pervades your entire body. You could float through the air, you feel so unburdened and happy.
This is the feeling that fear steals from us and it has no right to do so.
So how do we bring fear out of the dark recesses of our mind and out into the light? We share it. It’s really that simple, we share the fear because by sharing it we begin to see it for what it really is rather than the monster we’ve made it into in our minds.
In our own heads, when fear is left to take root, it grows into an untameable thing, like a wild forest, that blocks out the light of joy. When we share that fear, we let someone else into that forest and we see it shrinking before our eyes because to that other person it’s not a wild forest, it’s just an emotion that’s gotten out of control.
Sharing a fear brings logic back into the equation. It also brings help, reassurance, support, relief, comfort and safety.
Liberating ourselves from fear
The power of unburdening the fears that keep us trapped and bogged down is liberating. The relief that you feel when you shine a light on that fear with a friend, a colleague, a member of your family, a therapist, and see it hiding in the corner, powerless and vulnerable, cannot be underestimated.
This is my one piece of advice, beyond anything else, because I know that sharing a fear breaks it apart. It might still be there but you now have an ally, someone to help you tackle that fear with fearlessness.
The second most important thing that breaks fear down is action. Fear paralyses us into a state of non-action, freezing us to a spot where we feel pinned down and unable to escape. By having a plan of action you are calling on your courage, the very thing that defeats fear. It could be as simple as making an appointment, taking a first step, reaching out or opening something up.
For me, I shared the fear that had been building and building up inside of me, and made an action plan to set in motion the wheels of fearlessness, just by making a dentist appointment. It’s always better than you think, it’s only our imagination that makes it so scary.
Rather than imagine ‘what if it all goes wrong’, what if it actually all goes right? And if it doesn’t, then you can handle it anyway.
Releasing fear through Kinesiology
I can’t talk about releasing fear and not mention how powerful Kinesiology can be in helping this process.
Fear tends to reside in the Kidney and Bladder meridians, which is why little children who are scared at night often wet the bed. Fear is all to do with the water element, so if there’s a fear stuck in the body, it’s most likely stuck in this area, which is what we work on releasing.
A Kinesiology treatment bed is also a wonderful space to lie down and lift those fears off your shoulders. Our job is to listen, to gently support and guide you to the answers you need to find within yourself, as well as nurturing your confidence to be able to tackle those fears.
By lifting the stress off you, highlighting the fears that you may or may not be consciously aware of, and equipping you with the confidence to handle them, you can begin to see the wood through the trees, finding clarity through the muddied waters of fear.
Our goal is to bring you out of a state of fear and into one of trust, so hope, joy and positivity can flood back in.
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