Issue 61: Working With Fear
THE LEAP
BY QUANTUM ORANGE
GROW, EXPAND & EVOLVE
ISSUE 61 | WORKING WITH FEAR
Each week The (Quantum) Leap summarises a key aspect of success into what you need to Think, Feel and Do to create a personal shift.
THINK
In broad terms, fear sits buried underneath sadness, which sits under anger. From that point of view, many people never confront their deepest fears because they’re so far under the surface that they’re not obvious in day-to-day experiences. To the rest of us, they are as plain as day.
The most obvious aspect of fear is that it causes paralysis. If you watch someone step to the edge of a cliff, there’s a good chance that you’ll see them suck in their breath and stop breathing. This person will endure oxygen depletion as they breathe off the top 5% of their lungs.
Because we typically freeze as a reaction to fear, we tend to stay away from it as much as possible. It’s the emotion we are least experienced with due to a lack of time spent with it.
As with anger and sadness, the traditional method for dealing with fear in Western cultures has been to pretend to overcome it with large doses of bravery. You can probably recall hearing someone telling you to attack your fears and they will be gone - because nothing works like trampling all over these so called imposters!
The truth is that to attack your fears is usually to suppress them and get on with doing what you were afraid of in the first place. ‘Just shove it down, be brave, and do it soon!’
That methodology is ineffective at best - emotionally crippling at worst.
The best thing to do with fear is turn towards it seeking to explore it so that you can understand it. There is no need to crush it - just gently explore the fear so that you can learn about it.
FEEL
In as much as sadness sits underneath anger and fear sits under sadness, fears are quite often stacked in the same way. We could get away with saying that a fear of spiders is most likely a fear of death. It doesn’t appear as a deep-seated or bottom-line fear, such as the fear of death, because the owner has never allowed him/herself to go into the fear and experience it as it truly is. They have more than likely suppressed the fear of spiders by avoiding them at all costs. Therefore, they have little chance of resolving the situation.
Most of our actions are taken in order to move closer to happiness or further away from pain. We also often make plans by anticipating what might go wrong or cause us to be uncomfortable. Throw all of this together and it becomes obvious that a high percentage of our activities are fear based.
We live in a culture that encourages us to ‘face’ our fears, but this is in fact the wrong thing to do if we are seeking to move past them and let go. Fear requires gentle, patient exploration. Be careful - fears often run deep and strong enough to cause automatic reactions you may not observe without looking closely. Take your time.
Find a quiet place to reflect and answer the following questions for yourself.
- What was I taught about life in general and fear specifically
- What has been the impact of that ‘teaching’?
- What are my habitual fear-based thoughts?
- What have I avoided doing because of fear-based imaginings?
- What have I avoided saying because of fear-based imaginings?
- What do I need to do in order to free myself?
- Who do I need to speak to?
- What do I need to say?
- What are my fears around health?
- What are my fears around money?
- What are my fears around relationships?
- What are my fears around happiness?
- What are my fears around success?
- What are my fears around failure?
- What are my fears around family?
- What are my fears around death?
DO
Use the technique below to treat the fears revealed above by answering the questions listed.
- Where in my body does fear generally live?
- What colour is it?
- What shape is it?
- Is it moving or still?
- Does it have a name?
- Is it round of sharp edged?
- Furry or shiny?
- What does it want to do? (to me, within me, for itself)
- Which of the big five might it be a version of? (Anger, Sadness, Fear, Shame, Guilt)
You need to get to know the fear in such a way that you would be able to describe it (or express it) to another person. If you like, you can have a trusted friend or partner guide you through the observation with questions like the ones above.
By exploring, articulating and expressing your fear, you allow it to release its hold on you. You might also like to symbolise the letting go of the fear by writing it down on a piece of paper and burning the paper.
