FEAR!

Upcycling my own post from on March 17, 2017…3 years later its even more applicable.

FEAR.

What is it good for? Absolutely nothing! (Anyone else into old Soul music? No? Well…carry on.)

What is fear good for? I bet you want to say “absolutely nothing,” and you would be wrong. Fear may not seemingly serve your highest good but fear can be used as a signal that something is off or unhealed. Similar to the way physical pain in the body signals that there may be injury or illness, fear can be a similar indicator for our emotional and energetic health.

If we’re experiencing fear, we’re usually living in the future. Eckhart Tolle explains that anxiety, worry, and stress, which are forms of fear, occur from living too much in the future. We don’t fear things in the past, do we? We may feel sad, bitter, regretful, or unforgiving of the past but we don’t fear it.

Why do we fear the future? Because it’s uncertain, right? How many times have you thought, “…but what’s gonna happen?!” We don’t know! We don’t know. I stopped offering readings about the future in 2017 because questions about the future are fear-based and I didn’t want to feed that mindset. The inquirer is looking for control of their fate. You never find yourself wondering, “hey what’s happening right now?” because you’re in the now. You know what’s happening right now. Right now, you’re sitting reading this. You never get anxious about something you’re doing right now. Maybe excited or stimulated trying something new. You can be anxious about something you’re doing in 1 minute or what we expect an outcome will be in the future, no matter how near or far that future is.

Anxiety, fear, worry comes from filling in the blanks. We assume we know what’s going to happen. We write in the story before it even happens. And the outcome, that we’ve made in our own minds is what makes us anxious. Or worried. Or stressed.

For example: I have a big test coming up. Right now, I am here studying but I start thinking, “What if I don’t pass? What if I can’t do it? What if I let everyone down? What if I’m not smart enough? What if _______?” And I go down the rabbit hole of all these elaborate and awful scenarios that will never happen but that make me sick with worry and anxiety. But what’s actually happening to me in real life, in that moment? What am I actually doing? I’m sitting here studying. Still haven’t taken the test.

The anxiety is entirely self-created by me projecting out into the future. In that moment, I’ve just created my own personal hell by making assumptions and stories about the future that doesn’t even exist yet. (And let’s be honest, how many times do the things we worry about actually happen? How many times have you actually had that confrontation you went over a million times in your mind? And how many times has the outcome to a situation been more manageable or better than you were worried about?)

So if fear-based emotions are self-created, why do we do it? Why do we indulge? Why would anyone want to do that to themselves? It may be a different answer for each person. It’s something to think about and we’ll go more into the “why,” in the another post. But its important to ask ourselves, “How does the fear serve me? What benefit do it get from being afraid?” For most of us, it is a way our subconscious or our inner wounded child is trying to keep us safe. Fear is usually the only or the most available tool the unhealed parts of ourselves have to try to keep us safe, even though it causes us pain. A self-inflicted pain from fear that is familiar tends to be preferred over the unknown (which often times is good, even if growth has some discomfort to it).

Notice too, if you watch a video or read an article or a post that triggers fear, anxiety, or worry in you. Is this post/article/whatever focusing/forecasting the future (which hasn’t happened yet and is still truly unknown)? Or does it trigger thoughts in you to project yourself out into the future and pull yourself out of the present moment? Limiting the intake of media that is targeted in this way (future-focused) will also help with this fear/anxiety/worry management. We are made of our diet: what we ingest. This includes what we take in mentally, emotionally, spiritually, and, of course, physically.

In the meantime, if you find yourself living in the future and creating fear in yourself, try listing the things you are grateful for in the present moment. Even the things directly around you by saying, “I am grateful for….” Gratitude vibrates very high, like love, and is an easy method to pull yourself out of fear, into the present moment, and back into love.

Beat the fear and choose love, my little light warriors. I’ll continue to provide to even more tools to do so.

Work me with to help you in this tango with fear and love.

With Gratitude,

Caroline