Is Fear Holding You Back From Your Dream Life

Fear is an emotion that will keep you from living your dream life. It will literally hold the things you want away from you. Many of us have been taught that fear is a good thing, that is somehow protects us. However, the true definition of fear is an anxious feeling caused by OUR anticipation of some IMAGINED  event or experience. If you have been reading my articles or coaching with me you know that what you think and believe is responsible for what you feel and experience. So, the only way these imagined fears can become a reality for you is to continually think them.

If you believe fear is a helpful emotion or that it is somehow just a part of life then you will always be blocking some of what you want and you will tolerate the emotions that stem from fear including anxiety, perfectionism, jealously, shame, guilt, humiliation, worry, and the list goes on. ALL negative emotions are feedback from yourself that you are thinking something in OPPOSITION to what you really want. That is it. That is their only purpose. And since ALL negative emotional states stem from fear it can be helpful to understand that all this negative emotion we can experience comes from only 5 basic fears.

Once you identify that the negative emotions we feel are all a form of fear all brought about by 5 basic fears it becomes much easier to identify negative emotion and also what thought brought it about. This in turn allows us to choose better feeling thoughts and move past them.  When you aren’t concerned about what negative emotion means or trying to ignore it or reacting to it because you think it’s so important,  you can move past it. Also, this means other people who are in a negative emotional state are also operating from a place of fear. It is so much easier to be compassionate when you realize everyone is afraid of something when they are in a negative emotional state. Fear is not protecting you from anything except what you really want. Everything you’ve ever wanted is on the other side of fear-G. Addair.

Here is an excerpt from an article written by Dr. Karl Albrecht, Ph. D for Psychology Today. There are only five basic fears, out of which almost all of our other so-called fears are manufactured. These are:

1. Extinction—the fear of annihilation, of ceasing to exist. This is a more fundamental way to express it than just calling it “fear of death.” The idea of no longer being arouses a primary existential anxiety in humans. Consider that panicky feeling you get when you look over the edge of a high building.
2. Mutilation—the fear of losing any part of our precious bodily structure; the thought of having our body’s boundaries invaded, or of losing the integrity of any organ, body part, or natural function. Anxiety about animals, such as bugs, spiders, snakes, and other creepy things arises from fear of mutilation.
3. Loss of Autonomy—the fear of being immobilized, paralyzed, restricted, enveloped, overwhelmed, entrapped, imprisoned, smothered, or otherwise controlled by circumstances beyond our control. In physical form, it’s commonly known as claustrophobia, but it also extends to our social interactions and relationships.
4. Separation—the fear of abandonment, rejection, and loss of connectedness; of becoming a non-person—not wanted, respected, or valued by anyone else. The “silent treatment,” when imposed by a group, can have a devastating psychological effect on its target.
5. Ego-death—the fear of humiliation, shame, or any other mechanism of profound self-disapproval that threatens the loss of integrity of the Self; the fear of the shattering or disintegration of one’s constructed sense of lovability, capability, and worthiness.

That’s all—just those five. They can be thought of as forming a simple hierarchy, or “feararchy”:

That strange idea of “fearing our fears” becomes less strange when we realize that many of our avoidance reactions—turning down an invitation to a party if we tend to be uncomfortable in groups; putting off a doctor’s appointment; or not asking for a raise—are instant reflexes that are reactions to the memories of fear. They happen so quickly that we don’t actually experience the full effect of the fear. We experience a “micro-fear”—a reaction that’s a kind of shorthand code for the real fear. This reflex reaction has the same effect of causing us to evade and avoid as the real fear. This is why it’s fairly accurate to say that many of our so-called fear reactions are actually the fears of fears.

When we let go of our notion of fear as the welling up of evil forces within us—the Freudian  motif—and begin to see fear and its companion emotions as basically information, we can think about them consciously. And the more clearly and calmly we can articulate the origins of the fear, the less our fears will frighten us and control us.

Now go and live your dream life!

XO,

Dana