What to do with FEAR!

Childofmine

one day at a time
Great! Another is:

False Evidence Appearing Real.

However we define it, we are better when we face it, feel it, sit with it, let it pass and don't react from it.


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Scent of Cedar *

Well-Known Member
Fear can be hard to recognize. Sometimes, I go immediately to numb, or to rationalization. That is partially what was happening with interactions with difficult child son. It took about three days for MWM's posting about her verbally abusive child to present itself to me clearly enough that I could acknowledge my own situation. It was like I knew, but I didn't.

How strange the mind is.

I am learning to plumb those depths for the discomfort under the numb.

Cedar
 

Childofmine

one day at a time
Fear is something I continue to work on and I believe it is my greatest limiting factor.

Fear of failure. Fear of being alone. Fear of someone I love being hurt or dying. Fear of being humiliated. Fear of not having enough.

As I have begun this hard work on myself over the past __ years (seems like all my life, actually!), I have been uncovering more and more as I peel back the layers.

Looking at myself in full living color was terrifying at first. I didn't want to, and that's one reason I focused so much on everybody else.
And then I had the disease (dis-ease---great word, meaning lack of ease, not at ease) of grandiosity. I thought I was Super-Person and could do all things. It was all or nothing thinking. Either I could do ANYTHING or I could do NOTHING.

Sound familiar? I am so like the alcoholics and addicts in my life that I love. It's the SAME STUFF.

Fear, when I am being honest, is at the heart of most of my dysfunction. It doesn't feel good, to be afraid. In fact, it feels so bad that I used to DO ANYTHING to avoid that feeling. I can imagine that my precious son takes anything he can get his hands on to stop the feeling.

Once I changed my attitude...and wow, that has been a process, I was able to just entertain the idea of not running from my fear, even if for just a minute or five. Just sitting with it. Just letting it flood through me.

And guess what? I didn't die. I didn't freak out. The monster I had been fearing as mostly in my mind. Feeling my fear has been a good first step for me and I am still in that step. I am powerless over my fear and I am working to accept it.

Now, next is turning it over. Turning my fear over to Someone who CAN deal with it and letting go of that. Letting go of the outcome.

That is now what I am working on. The first step is amazingly freeing. I imagine this next step will be even more freeing as I learn to live into it.
 

Scent of Cedar *

Well-Known Member
These are things I've found helpful, Child of Mine.

Brene Brown suggests the way through our vulnerabilities (fears) is to ride that edge of discomfort. Not to change it, not to ignore it or pretend it isn't happening, but to welcome it as the growing edge of self. Just acknowledge and sit with the feelings. As I began to practice that, I became more present in my own life. It's shocking how noisy our heads get, and how little any of the noise or the imagined feelings matter. She writes about shame, vulnerability, healing.

Eckhardt Tolle wrote The Power of Now. If you haven't read it? This book is life changing.

Joel Osteen was also very helpful to me. He is like the healthiest therapist ever, telling us to combat negativities, to disregard negative labels, to speak positives into our futures. Made a very big difference for me during the worst of this.

The Brown talk is 5 minutes.

The Tolle excerpt is about three minutes.

Hmmm. I cannot get the Brown flyer to come up on YouTube or TED. If you google Brene Brown vulnerability youtube, she will come up for you.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLsSZ1gX8dc


:O)

Cedar

P.S. I love the honesty here, and the strength. We are an amazing group of people, when you think of what we have all survived and that we never, ever gave up or gave in.
 
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Childofmine

one day at a time
Oh my gosh, where has Brene Brown been all my life? I watched a 20-minute video of her on vulnerability and I was crying by the end. It is so right on the money.

Thank you so much Cedar and I will also watch the others. Everywhere we turn, it's all the same stuff. Without addiction in our lives, would we have ever searched all of this amazing truth out? I just don't know and that makes me grateful.
 
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