Overcoming Fear
My Christmas cards are going to be late.
I’ve had the design picked out and the pictures in place, but something’s been keeping me from ordering them.
Fear.
I’ve been afraid to order the cards because one of the photos on them is Little Nugget’s October ultrasound photo.
I’ve been plagued by anxiety, fatalistic thinking and horrible dreams about getting bad news about this pregnancy. I’ve been counting down the weeks, days, and hours to the doctor’s appointment we had today. I’ve been praying everything is ok.
I’m always emotional during ultrasounds, but today I fought back tears when I saw our little one’s face, arms and legs, and tiny hands and feet. I realized I’d been holding my breath when I could see and hear a heartbeat…and I finally exhaled.
I don’t know why I’ve been feeling this way but I do know that fear is a powerful emotion. It can take over lots of other feelings and cause us to act irrationally. It can make you postpone ordering your Christmas cards. Fear can also get in the way of you doing things that are a lot more important than that. It can paralyze you if you let it.
Fear, anxiety, and worry are some of the things we’re going to be tackling in our “Year of Wellbeing” program. We’ll be rolling out more details this week, but right now we can tell you that January’s intention is “Time Management”. We hope you'll join us as we take on new areas of wellness each month in 2018.
I find that breathing exercises, and counting or math drills help me deal with anxiety, and I really like this FEARLESS list from clinical psychologist Dr. Carmen Harra:
F — Face the truth: Face the truth of your fears. Face what scares you head-on, and challenge your trepidation. Separate necessary concerns from baseless fears. Chances are that many of your fears are unwarranted in the greater scheme of your life. Remember, the unfortunate events which you fear will happen do not need to happen.
E — Erase negative imprints: Many times, your fears stem from your own negative experiences or from witnessing the hardships of those around you. Your fear of divorce may very well be rooted in your own parents’ divorce. What you must remind yourself daily — through simple affirmations or guided visualizations — is that your past is your past, and whatever happened in your past, which makes you afraid today, must be dealt with and its mental imprints removed permanently.
A — Allow change: People are by nature afraid of change. They fear that change will somehow disrupt their lives or uproot them from their comfort zone. But change actually serves to transport us into new greater manifestations of ourselves. Allow necessary changes to come your way, even if they may seem frightening at first. Every instance of change serves a purpose towards your highest good, and you will learn this in time.
R — Relax: Fear can be the accumulation of too much stress or extended pressure. A hectic life with too many responsibilities results in fear of failure. It’s essential that you take time out for yourself to relax and meditate and alleviate your anxieties. So calm down, take a breather and remind yourself that you will be shown how to resolve all things.
L — Listen to your intuition: If you learn how to follow it, your intuition can banish your fears. This is because your intuition is like a mental GPS into the future, so that you can sense what’s to come, where you need to go and ease your apprehensions of what tomorrow might hold.
E — End feuds: When you fight with others, you draw fear into your relationships: fear that others will betray, hurt or abandon you. In order to nurture fearlessness, you must make peace with those around you and understand that their intentions are not to cause you harm.
S — Selectivity: You have to learn to be selective about what you want out of life and the things you decide to go after. You have to pursue things which don’t inspire fear in you and make you feel completely comfortable. Select a vision for your future and stick to that mental projection until you’ve brought it fully to life.
S - Secure in yourself: In order to shun fear forever, you have to work on your self-esteem. Fear arises from not believing enough in your own abilities and talents. When you constantly live in the mindset of “I can’t do it” or, “I’m not good enough,” you narrow your window of success to a very slim opening and inadvertently put yourself down.