Stop Demonizing Fear
How can we overcome anxieties, worries, and doubts?
Befriend your fears
As a child, I hated pain. Every time I got hurt, I’d wish that I couldn’t feel the pain.
One day, I was watching the Discovery channel, or something like that, and they began covering a case of these two people who didn’t have pain receptors.
They still had sensation, just couldn’t feel pain. How perfect! I was jealous and intrigued, but the longer I watched, the more I realized it was actually more of a disability than a super power.
They had to check their bodies multiple times a day to make sure they hadn’t been severely injured. If they were to take a bath or shower, they had to have a thermometer to make sure they weren’t burning themselves.
If they were touching a hot stove or stepped on something sharp, they wouldn’t notice until much later.
This is when I realized that pain wasn’t my enemy. It wasn’t something to be wished away. It was actually an alarm system to alert me of threats to my well-being.
Fear is our mental security system
In the same way pain protects our physical body, fear is meant to protect our mind.
When we feel anxiety, doubt, fear, etc. instead of making it into a bad thing - rejecting our emotions - recognize that fear is calling your awareness to something you need to adjust.
The pain of a prick on your skin makes you pull away and look at the point of sensation to make sure you are ok. In the same way, take the time to bring consciousness to whatever your fears are pointing at.
Value your mental well-being enough to lean into your fears.
Your true self is an immortal being and immortal beings have no use for fear. In which aspect are you identifying with / attached to something fleeting. Where have you not yet come to accept temporality?
The more we can acknowledge our fears instead of trying to subdue them, the more we learn, and the more we step into our eternal essence.
From here we develop a deeper appreciation and gratitude for our waking lives. Our physical bodies, daily experiences, interactions, etc. become so much more valuable because they are no longer conditional.
